LOS ANGELES — Republican politician Omar Navarro, 37, a South Bay resident who ran multiple times for Congress against Rep. Maxine Waters, has been sentenced to prison for wire fraud and embezzlement.
On Feb. 23, Navarro, who lives in Torrance, was sentenced to four years in prison. He pleaded guilty last June to one count of embezzling $250,000 from his Congressional campaign.
Navarro unsuccessfully campaigned in the four election cycles from 2016 to 2022 to represent south Los Angeles County in California’s 43rd Congressional District in the House of Representatives.
According to court documents, from July 2017 to February 2021, Navarro defrauded his campaign committee by illicitly funneling campaign cash to himself.
“Navarro conspired with his co-defendants – his mother, Dora Asghari, 61, of Torrance, and his friend, Zacharias Diamantides-Abel, 37, of Long Beach – to convert campaign donations to personal use,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a statement.
Asghari pleaded guilty in June 2025 to one count of making false statements for lying to the FBI in September 2020 when she said she never received any money from her son’s congressional campaign and that she never provided her son any money from the campaign checks she accepted as the owner of Brava Consulting. She faces up to five years in federal prison at her April 13 sentencing hearing.
Abel pleaded guilty in May 2025 to one count of conspiracy and awaits sentencing.