{"id":16907,"date":"2025-10-22T01:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/16907\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T01:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:06:07","slug":"federal-judge-drops-key-charge-against-ex-anaheim-chamber-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/16907\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal judge drops key charge against ex-Anaheim Chamber CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha has denied a push by federal prosecutors to drop a cannabis-related wire fraud charge<\/a> against a former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce president.<\/p>\n

The decision comes ahead of a scheduled Nov. 14 sentencing hearing for Todd Ament, a longtime leader of the chamber who resigned months before facing charges in connection with an FBI investigation into a self-described \u201ccabal\u201d that ran Anaheim<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In a five-page order issued Monday, Aenlle-Rocha described prosecutors\u2019 move to dismiss the charge as \u201cprocedurally deficient,\u201d as the U.S. Atty.\u2019s Office did not file any supporting legal arguments that the judge said were required by law.<\/p>\n

As part of a plea deal, Ament had already admitted guilt<\/a> to four felonies in July 2022, including a wire fraud charge that claimed he defrauded a cannabis company that allegedly sought an inside track on chamber-led efforts to legalize retail cannabis in Anaheim.<\/p>\n

He cooperated with the FBI investigation and surreptitiously recorded a conversation in which former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu told him he expected $1 million in campaign support from Los Angeles Angels executives in exchange for his work negotiating the now-defunct $320-million stadium deal.<\/p>\n

The Angels have not been accused of wrongdoing in the probe.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors asked Aenlle-Rocha to drop the cannabis-related charge in a Sept. 11 filing \u201cin the interests of justice\u201d without Ament having to withdraw his guilty plea.<\/p>\n

Ament\u2019s attorneys followed with a Sept. 19 filing in support of the charge\u2019s dismissal. <\/p>\n

They argued in court documents that definitions of wire fraud have tightened since the plea deal and no longer apply to Ament\u2019s conduct in the case, which amounted to a mere omission that he would pocket a portion of a cannabis company\u2019s $225,000 payment.<\/p>\n

Aenlle-Rocha dismissed the argument, calling it \u201cpure speculation\u201d as to the government\u2019s reasons for seeking the charge\u2019s dismissal.<\/p>\n

Ament\u2019s attorneys declined to comment on the decision. <\/p>\n

\"Former <\/p>\n

Former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce President\/CEO Todd Ament speaks at a city event in 2018.<\/p>\n

(Gabriel San Roman)<\/p>\n

Aenlle-Rocha\u2019s order further determined the arguments did not align with what Asst. U.S. Atty. Melissa Rabbani said about the wire fraud charge during an Aug. 22 hearing. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to say that it\u2019s not sustainable, or not a case that we could win,\u201d Rabbani argued, \u201cbut \u2026 looking at these facts now, it\u2019s perhaps not a claim that we would bring right now, given the state of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the government failing to \u201cexpressly\u201d state that the charge was unsustainable or unwinnable, either at the hearing or in a memo, Aenlle-Rocha denied the motion.<\/p>\n

The judge also vacated a scheduled Oct. 22 hearing, since Ament did not seek to withdraw his guilty plea, as was previously expected before the government\u2019s move to dismiss the charge without the filing. <\/p>\n

This week\u2019s decision comes two months after another ruling by Aenlle-Rocha in a case connected to the corruption probe, in which Melahat Rafiei, a former Democratic Party official and cannabis consultant, was sentenced to six months<\/a> in prison for attempted wire fraud over federal prosecutors\u2019 recommendation that she receive probation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Had Aenlle-Rocha agreed to dismiss the wire fraud charge against Ament, it could have potentially reduced the ex-CEO\u2019s sentence.<\/p>\n

Instead, the plea deal, which includes another count of wire fraud, lying to a mortgage lender and filing a false tax return, remains intact.<\/p>\n

Dean Steward, an attorney representing the chamber, welcomed Monday\u2019s decision, as he is seeking victim status<\/a> for the organization that Ament previously led. The ruling does not confer such status to the chamber, but the wire fraud charge is central to Steward\u2019s argument that it deserves restitution in Ament\u2019s criminal case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe attempt to dismiss [the count] is nothing but an added reward for a cooperator,\u201d he said. \u201cThis Department of Justice does not care about victims.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha has denied a push by federal prosecutors to drop a cannabis-related wire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1052,14633,14626,1436,14632,6848,5782,14627,14630,405,14629,3906,14631,14628,14625],"class_list":["post-16907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-attorney","tag-campaign-support","tag-cannabis-related-wire-fraud-charge","tag-case","tag-chamber","tag-decision","tag-federal-judge","tag-federal-prosecutor","tag-filing","tag-government","tag-legal-argument","tag-month","tag-plea-deal","tag-sentencing-hearing","tag-todd-ament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}