Smooth black granite covers two 20-foot-long walls and a 6 ½-foot high column in Orange County’s Mile Square Regional Park . The half-finished monument — with an initial $1 million price tag — is meant to honor U.S. soldiers from O.C. and their anti-communist Vietnamese allies who died in the Vietnam War. Instead, the construction site is a physical representation of an unfolding corruption probe.
County officials last month sued the nonprofit Viet America Society (VAS) saying it has failed to complete the memorial as required under a county agreement .
Supervisor Andrew Do had directed the $1 million in taxpayer funds to VAS in 2023 to design, build and maintain the memorial — without publicly disclosing his daughter Rhiannon Do’s role as an officer of the group. The lack of disclosure was not illegal, but has led state lawmakers to pursue transparency reforms .
The money was part of a larger pot of federal COVID relief funds at his discretion to give out. The county’s lawsuit alleges funds Supervisor Do awarded to VAS were diverted to help purchase properties worth millions for the organization’s leaders, including Rhiannon Do. Federal agents searched her home in Tustin , her parents’ nearby home (her mother is Orange County Superior Court Assistant Presiding Judge Cheri Pham), and the homes of others named as defendants in the county lawsuit filed late last month. Andrew Do and Cheri Pham are not named in the county lawsuit.