A nonprofit at the center of an LAist investigation of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do has missed another deadline to account for over $3 million in taxpayer dollars Do gave the group to feed needy seniors during the pandemic.
Viet America Society has faced scrutiny since LAist reporting found numerous records listing Supervisor Do’s then-22-year-old daughter as a top leader. Do did not disclose the family relationship publicly or to at least three of his four fellow county supervisors.
It’s unclear what exactly happened with the money. The nonprofit was required to submit audits to the county each year confirming it was spent appropriately and that financial records were accurate.
The first was due two years ago. It still hasn’t been turned in.
For the past year, county staff have been asking the nonprofit for a copy of the required audit, according to public records.
In February, the county warned the nonprofit that it could be required to pay millions back to the county if it didn’t provide the audit and other required records about how the money was spent.
The audit deadline ultimately was extended to this past Sunday, June 30.
As of Wednesday — three days after it was due — the audit hasn’t been turned in, according to a county spokesperson and the nonprofit’s lawyer. It’s supposed to cover the first two years of the meal contracts: 2021 and 2022.
“The County has not received the single audits,” wrote Alexa Pratt, a spokesperson for the county department that oversaw the contract.
What their lawyer says
Sterling Scott Winchell, the nonprofit’s lawyer, told LAist in an interview Wednesday that the audit will be completed within the next few days. He said the nonprofit has had to create documents to show the auditors what happened with the money.
“There’s still some things, some documents that need to be located. But basically, it’s almost done. So it’s probably going to go over a few days or so,” Winchell said, speaking by phone. “The meals were delivered. The issue has been they haven’t kept the normal accounting for what they’ve done. So they’ve had to basically create the…documentation in the form that an accountant would want to watch and see for an audit.”
Winchell said that the nonprofit also has needed to obtain invoices from the vendors it was paying with the county meals money.
“So they have all the raw materials, but they’ve basically got to assemble it all in a way an accountant can read. But the meals have been delivered.”
“A lot of what’s left is obtaining invoices from the vendors they used, that they don’t have copies [of],” Winchell said.
Winchell, who was hired as Viet America Society’s attorney earlier this year, previously served as Supervisor Do’s appointee to the county ethics commission from 2018 to 2023.
Over $13 million in county funding
At Supervisor Do’s direction, Viet America Society has received more than $9 million from the county to feed needy residents, plus $1 million to build a Vietnam War memorial. He also joined votes to fund up to $3.1 million in mental health subcontracts for the group, all without disclosing his close family connection.
Supervisor Do awarded most of the money to the group after it failed to submit the first required audit, according to county records.
Supervisor Do has not responded to multiple interview requests from LAist over the past six months, including this week. In a November interview with another news outlet, he defended his decisions to award money to his daughter’s group without public disclosure, saying he wasn’t required to disclose his family connection.
While current law bars elected officials from awarding contracts that financially benefit their spouse or minor children, there is no prohibition on benefitting an adult child or other close relatives. Since LAist began reporting on Supervisor Do, two bills, spurred by the investigation, have been introduced in the state legislature by lawmakers who say it’s a loophole that needs to be closed. One bill was approved unanimously in the Senate, the other in the Assembly.
Auditors flagged ‘significant’ risks
Viet America Society eventually hired the accounting firm The Pun Group in early April for the audit, according to a copy of the audit contract, which LAist obtained from the county. The contract states that the audit was expected to be completed by June 30.
The auditors wrote in the contract that while planning for the audit, they found “significant” risks of inaccurate information in the nonprofit’s own records.
“We have identified the following significant risk(s) of material misstatement as part of our audit planning,” the auditors wrote.
Those misstatement risks were listed as “Management override of controls” and “Revenue recognition.”
Pun Group representatives did not return phone calls and emails from LAist this week asking about their work on the audit.
What happened with money paid to subcontractors?
Records show Viet America Society passed on most of the county money for meals to subcontractors in 2021 and 2022. The nonprofit submitted “incomplete” documentation of what happened with those funds, according to a public records response to LAist from the county department that oversees the contracts.
The county had asked for the details as part of its fiscal monitoring of contractors the county paid with federal coronavirus dollars.
County officials, in response to LAist’s public records response, wrote that Viet America Society “rescinded” — or took back — financial documents it had provided the county on May 8 because they were "incomplete” and did not document the performance of all of Viet America Society's subcontractors.
Do’s daughter was listed in leading roles
LAist has obtained nine different public records listing Rhiannon Do as one of the group’s top leaders, including instances of her signatures as VAS’s president on county-funded subcontracts.
Rhiannon Do told LAist in April that she’s no longer affiliated with the group, and had no involvement in the county meals funding Viet America Society received. She said her role was limited to mental health services and a different meals program. She said she was not connected to the millions in coronavirus relief dollars that her father directed to the group.
Public records obtained by LAist show Rhiannon Do signed as the group’s president and represented herself as its executive director, and signed another contract as its president, while the group was still receiving county meals money under one of the contracts currently under scrutiny by the county. Winchell and Rhiannon Do have both disputed that she ever was an officer or director at the nonprofit. Rhiannon has not responded to questions about why multiple records showed otherwise, while Winchell previously has said the documents were not accurate due to apparent “sloppiness” and negligence. He did not say who was responsible.
County seeks answers over six-figure ‘donation’ of taxpayer funds
There’s another set of funding for Viet America Society that the county has been calling into question.
Back in 2020, Supervisor Do provided pandemic meals money for his district to a nonprofit called Hand to Hand Relief Organization, according to county records LAist obtained.
Hand to Hand, in turn, forwarded much of that $1 million to Viet America Society, according to a county review and a financial ledger Hand to Hand submitted to the county. The ledger, which LAist obtained through a public records request, shows Hand to Hand paid Viet America Society $626,667 that year. It was labeled as “Donation” and “Program Services,” with no other description.
In February, county staff issued demand letters to Hand to Hand finding that it failed to submit a required audit and to document the services it was paid to provide. It also found Hand to Hand failed to follow requirements to document what Viet America Society was doing for the payments it received as the subcontractor.
The county demanded a plan to fix these issues by mid March, warning that the group could have to repay the money if it didn’t account for what happened with it.
Hand to Hand still has not provided any of those required documents, according to Pratt, the county department spokesperson, in an emailed response to LAist’s questions this week.
Hand to Hand’s leader, Thanh Huong Nguyen, didn’t return a voicemail message Wednesday asking about it.
After Do directed the initial $1 million to Hand to Hand in 2020, he went on to direct an additional $2 million in meals money to the group in late 2022. Both rounds of money were funded by federal coronavirus dollars that came to the county.
Asked what county officials now plan to do, given Hand to Hand’s noncompliance, Pratt said the county “is considering next steps.”
