While jurors in the Oakland corruption trial have heard about the alleged bribery scheme for weeks already, it’s only been described to them by prosecutors and alluded to through complex lines of questioning and displays of evidence.
On Friday, as the trial wrapped up its third week, the jury finally got to hear directly from a participant in the alleged conspiracy.
Dressed in jeans, a suit jacket, and no tie, Mario Juarez strode into a silent and packed courtroom a little after 9 a.m. Juarez has pleaded guilty in the case and has been cooperating with the government for two years.
On the stand, he described forging close relationships with the defendants. As an ambitious mover and shaker in Alameda County politics, Juarez met Sheng Thao and her romantic partner Andre Jones when they both worked for Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan and built a friendly relationship with both of them, he said.
Juarez also recounted how over a decade ago he became a lobbyist and fixer for the Duong family and their recycling company, California Waste Solutions. He told the jury he proved his loyalty to them by fighting a signature gatherer who was participating in a campaign to undo their multimillion-dollar recycling city contract. And Juarez lobbed jaw-dropping allegations of corruption, saying he helped David and Andy Duong give out cash to elected officials after the Oakland City Council approved a lucrative 20-year contract with CWS.
“If anybody fucks with CWS, I have stepped up to the plate,” Juarez said in a video shown to the jury.
A sketch of Mario Juarez being questioned by prosecutor Abraham Fine on Friday, October. 30, 2026 in the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Oakland. Credit: Vicki Behringer for The Oaklandside.
Throughout the day, he described the quid-pro-quo agreement that he claims Thao and Jones made with him and the Duongs, to steer contracts to their businesses in exchange for money and a mailer that attacked Thao’s chief opponent in the 2022 election.
“Nothing is free,” Juarez said. “We didn’t invest talent, money, hits, took time out of our days, because we liked Sheng Thao. We invested money in her because she was going to give us money in return.”
As an informant, Juarez’s testimony now threatens to send his former friends to prison.
His first day on the stand was entirely taken up by the prosecution’s questions.
But the defense team has telegraphed their likely approach to Juarez when, next week, they may get to cross-examine him. Thao, Jones, and the Duongs’ attorneys have repeatedly argued that Juarez is untrustworthy as a witness. He has an extensive history of legal conflicts, including accusations of fraud.
The four defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, watched silently as Juarez, at the court’s direction, identified each of them before he began his testimony.
Juarez repeatedly strayed from the questions asked of him, offering racy anecdotes frequently cut short by objections from the defense team. “Listen to the question and answer it,” the judge admonished him.
‘Gym bags full of cash’
Mario Juarez at a meeting at California Waste Solutions in late 2022. Credit: Government exhibit.
Juarez briefly sketched his life. Immigrating to the United States from Honduras when he was about 12, he lived with his family in New York City before moving to Oakland as a teen. In Fruitvale, Juarez became involved with local nonprofits, and, as a young adult, dipped his toes in politics.
He ran unsuccessfully for Oakland City Council in 2008 and 2012. But he ascended the ranks of the Alameda County Democratic Party, where he had influence over the flow of endorsements and money to candidates.
On the stand, he told a story from early in his partnership with the Duongs, depicting a family that valued loyalty — and didn’t always play by the rules.
In 2014, when the Duongs’ company sought the city’s curbside trash, recycling, and compost contracts, Juarez lobbied for them. He was “ecstatic” when CWS won. Lots of people celebrated at the family’s Oakland office the next day.
“Some people were happy, congratulating [David],” Juarez said. “Some people were there to do other things.”
That “other thing,” Juarez claimed, was picking up gym bags filled with huge amounts of cash — $300,000 in one case. The recipients of these alleged payments, he said, included one councilmember and a representative for another “councilwoman.” He didn’t offer their names, and the prosecution didn’t probe further.
Not long after this, the Duongs learned that Waste Management, a much bigger corporate rival, was collecting signatures for a ballot measure to overturn the City Council’s decision to award the deal to CWS. According to Juarez, David and Andy instructed him to interfere with paid signature gatherers around Oakland.
“I hit the streets,” Juarez told the jury. Outside the Lakeshore Trader Joe’s, Juarez got into a “pushing match” with a signature collector.
When he told David about this experience, David “reacted with pride that someone would stand up for him,” Juarez recalled. “He’s someone who rewards people who are loyal… I think he saw that in me, and saw that I was someone that would stand up physically and go defend CWS.”
The Duongs offered Juarez cash, too, after the 2014 contract was finalized, he said. But he declined.
“I think it was more valuable to have a friendship than to have the money,” he said, seeing David as “someone who could help in the future.”
Juarez pitched Thao on a deal – but he says she hit him with a ‘curveball’
Mario Juarez and Andy Duong standing in front of one of the model units manufactured by their company Evolutionary Homes. Credit: Government exhibit.
By October 2022, Juarez and the Duongs had become business partners in a new venture, a company called Evolutionary Homes. They planned to build homeless housing units out of shipping containers, manufacturing them in Mexico and selling them to cities and counties. That month, Juarez set up a meeting with Thao, at the time a councilmember locked in a tight race for mayor, to pitch her on the company’s product.
At the October meeting, Juarez asked Thao to commit to buying 100 homes for Oakland if elected mayor. She was on board, he claimed on the stand.
But then, “she threw a curveball.”
In exchange for helping him snag a city contract, Thao wanted $300,000, Juarez said. But she didn’t want to be associated with the payment, so they would have to funnel the money to her romantic partner, Jones. In court, Thao appeared to smile in disbelief.
The jury also viewed text messages Juarez and Andy exchanged after this meeting. In one, Juarez tells Andy about “a catch” — a reference to Thao’s demand for money, he said in court. In texts, Juarez says they will get a $30 million contract to deliver 100 units. The units would sell for $300,000 apiece.
Prosecutor Abraham Fine walked Juarez through a schematic of the deal that he allegedly drew on a whiteboard in the CWS office in late 2022 to show David how the payments and benefits would work. The photo, like much of the evidence in the case, was seized from Andy’s phone.
Juarez describes helping Thao with a toxic mailer
A copy of the mailer that Mario Juarez commissioned attacking then Councilmember Loren Taylor in the 2022 mayoral election. Credit: Government exhibit.
Before Juarez and the Duongs could land a deal for Evolutionary Homes, Juarez explained, they had to agree to help Thao win her election for mayor.
A day after Juarez’s October meeting with Thao, he began texting with her then-partner Jones about creating a political attack ad.
Thao and her campaign team weren’t legally allowed to coordinate with independent expenditure committees like the one Juarez was setting up. “But in reality we talk to each other,” Juarez said. Prosecutors showed the jury texts between Juarez and Jones where the two discussed mailers.
Jones had an envelope of opposition research for him to use to create the mailers, Juarez said. The material was focused on Loren Taylor, Thao’s main opponent.
Juarez’s idea for the mailers? The messaging would be “very, very, very bad.”
In a phone call a few weeks before the election, Jones told Juarez he was fine with the attacks on Taylor, but begged him not to attack a different candidate, Ignacio De La Fuente, Juarez testified.
The pair also texted to discuss a draft of the mailer. Juarez told Jones he had purchased a domain name to amplify the mailer message called “taylorfraud.com.” He also solicited Jones’ feedback on pictures for the mailers. Jones pushed back, saying if he helped with this it would be illegally coordinating with an independent expenditure committee.
Juarez said he interpreted that statement as Jones avoiding a “paper trail” — since they had already coordinated.
Juarez then reached out to a local print shop to commission the mailers and instructed a graphic designer to find the “most menacing picture available” of Taylor, and to use red letters. The designer also altered Taylor’s face, darkening his skin and adding a red tinge to his eyes.
Juarez described recruiting Julie Wedge, another former Kaplan staffer, to provide data on mailer recipients.
To pay for the attack ads, Andy agreed to put up $75,000, with David’s approval, said Juarez. The jury reviewed an invoice Juarez sent Andy for $75,000, for “report on process improvements for company.” Juarez said that description was a lie; “We wanted to make it look like a legitimate payment for services.”
He and Andy also often wrote checks with slightly inaccurate dates, Juarez revealed, “to create confusion for what those really were for.”
Fine asked Juarez about an infamous text exchange with Andy about the 2022 election results.
“So we may go to jail… but we’re $100 million richer,” Juarez texted Andy, who responded “lmfao” and “money buys everything.”
“I was making light of the fact that we had just committed a crime,” Juarez said in court under questioning by the prosecution. “By funding the election and mayor is now elected. And we may go to jail by doing this crime, but we’re going to have $100 million in the bank account.”
The defense has pointed out that those texts were sent when the results of the district attorney’s race was called — before the mayor’s race was decided. Their argument: They weren’t talking about Thao.
Juarez admitted that he deliberately stiffed the print shop that created and sent out the attack ads by passing a bad check. Of the $75,000 given to him for the mailers, Juarez said “most of the money I kept for myself.”
This decision drew attention from law enforcement, kickstarting the corruption investigation.
Wining and dining a favored city staffer
Andy Duong, Stewart Chen, Larry Gallegos, and Mario Juarez at a sushi restaurant in February 2023. Credit: Government exhibit.
Thao won the election and several months later successfully pushed for the promotion of a Duong-friendly staffer to a high-up city job, the government claims.
On the stand, Juarez recounted courting Larry Gallegos, at the time a manager in the city’s Economic and Workforce Development Department, taking him to nice restaurants and out partying. Juarez had a long relationship with Gallegos, who he said helped him navigate city issues.
The jury was shown a February 2023 photo of Gallegos out to dinner with Juarez, Andy, and Stewart Chen, a chiropractor and Chinatown businessman. In texts with Andy before the dinner, Juarez said they should take Gallegos out on the town. “He is a devoted Christian-think of his sins while he parties.”
“It’s important that Larry was shown a good time,” Juarez explained to the jury on Friday. “Andy Duong is in charge of doing that — he would own karaoke bars under different names.”
Gallegos was taken to a bar where Andy “ordered about 20 girls” to come and perform dances, Juarez said. Juarez also suggested some people in the room used controlled substances, prompting loud objections from the defendants’ attorneys.
Stewart Chen, Mario Juarez, and Larry Gallegos at a bar that Juarez claims was owned by Andy Duong in February 2023. Credit: Government exhibit.
Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers joked to the jury that there’s nothing wrong with karaoke, generally speaking, “unless you hear me sing.”
After the jury left, Rogers said she “threw myself under the bus” with the singing comment to distract from Juarez’s claims. Lawyers have argued about what he’s allowed to describe on the stand.
At a Berkeley restaurant, Juarez seethed over the mayor not keeping her word
Andre Jones and Sheng Thao at Skates on the Bay. They were having dinner with Mario Juarez, David Duong, and Andy Duong in March 2023. Credit: Government exhibit.
In March 2023, all four defendants had dinner at Skates on the Bay in Berkeley with Juarez and Gallegos, he said.
“We wanted to bring in the big guns,” said Juarez, referring to David. “To talk to the mayor, to move this forward.”
Juarez was silently frustrated during the meeting because, he claimed, Jones was now asking for $3 million for his role in the alleged conspiracy. According to Juarez, the defendants again hammered out the terms of their deal, which included Thao agreeing to extend CWS’ recycling contract, making sure Gallegos got appointed to a high position in city government, and figuring out how to direct a contract to Evolutionary Homes.
But a couple weeks later, Juarez became angry when he heard that Jones had reached out to David.
“Our job is to protect David, to make sure he can have [plausible] deniability of anything, and now this guy is calling him,” Juarez said in court. He was upset that the terms of their deal appeared to be changing.
Part of a memo that Mario Juarez drafted to reflect the deal points of the alleged bribery scheme with Sheng Thao, Andre Jones, and David and Andy Duong. Credit: Government exhibit.
In politics, Juarez explained, “You don’t write a contract. You make a promise. If you miss that promise, that’s a big deal.”
Ironically, Juarez ended up violating his own practice. One of the prosecution’s key pieces of evidence is a “deal points” memo that Juarez wrote on his phone and shared with Andy. The memo describes the alleged conspiracy, including the political attack ads, bribes, and inside deals for Evolutionary Homes and CWS.
Court resumes next Thursday. Juarez, who said today he’s now driving for Uber and working for AT&T, will continue to testify, eventually facing cross-examination by the defense team.
“*” indicates required fields