Harry Sidhu, the former mayor of Anaheim who took office keeping the Angels baseball franchise in town, was sentenced to two months in federal prison on Friday for driving linked to a collapsed agreement to sell the team stadium and other crimes.
“(The) defendant betrayed the city of Anaheim while he was mayor, and he deleted proof of this betrayal,” said US district judge John Holcomb, imposing the sentence.
Sidhu, 67, pleaded guilty in 2023 to remove emails with the intention of hindering a federal investigation into the stadium agreement, making false statements to FBI and tax fraud linked to his purchase of a helicopter.
During the condemnation hearing on Friday, the judge issued a fine of $ 55,000 with the prison sentence. Sidhu must go by September 2.
Sidhu won the office in 2018 on a board to keep the angels in Anaheim, where the team rents a stadium belonging to the city surrounded by outdated parking lots of the 1960s. To ensure the continuous presence of the team, he defended an agreement to sell the stadium to the development company of the owner of the Angels, Arte Moreno, for 325 million dollars, with the promise of Moreno to build an urban village stores and restaurants in the surrounding area.
Sidhu sent e-mails containing confidential information on the city’s negotiation conditions in Todd Ament, who headed the city’s chamber of commerce and an unnamed angel consultant. Sidhu then voted for the stadium agreement without revealing that he had shared sensitive information.
“The defendant used the Angels consultant and (the former president of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce) to provide this confidential information in the angels, so that the angels can use this information in the negotiations with the city to buy the Angel stadium on beneficial conditions for the angels,” said the Sidhu advocacy agreement.
Which, which pleaded guilty of wire fraud and other accusations, began to cooperate with the FBI and agreed to wear a thread. In January 2022, he secretly recorded Sidhu saying that he expected a campaign contribution from the Angels. “I hope to get at least a million,” said Sidhu.
When the FBI approached Sidhu a few months later, he said that he did not expect anything from the angels and that he did not remember having given the team confidential information.
Sidhu never asked the angels such a donation, explained his lawyers. And although he deleted the e-mails linked to the stadium agreement, his lawyers argued that this “did not actually hindered or obstructed the federal investigation” since the agents made the emails of award anyway.
In May 2022, while the FBI investigation into the stadium agreement reached a public opinion, the Municipal Council of Anaheim voted to torpedo the agreement and Sidhu resigned from his post as mayor, eight months before the end of his four -year term.
In a letter to the judge, Sidhu said that he was “ashamed and deeply regrettable” for the evil he had made to the confidence of the public, and described a hard work life and public service.
In the letter, he told the emigrant of India to the United States in 1974 with only $ 6 in his pocket and his little scope of English. He said he had paid the community college in Philadelphia by cleaning the toilet during the night quarter in a Holiday Inn for $ 2.89 per hour.
Sidhu obtained a diploma in mechanical engineering, worked at General Dynamics and Hughes Aircraft and bought a series of Burger King and Papa John restaurants in southern California. He served two mandates to the Anaheim municipal council, and when he won the mayor’s post, he focused on maintaining the angels in town.
“The loss of angels would have been devastating for the city,” he wrote to the judge. “I was trying to conclude a stadium agreement because I thought it was essential to keep the angels in Anaheim.”
Sidhu admitted to having sent emails summarizing the confidential points of the city and removing them to avoid political embarrassment. He conceded that he “boasted proudly” to expect a donation from the angels, but said that he had never asked Angels a gift. When an FBI agent approached him and asked questions about emails, “I panicked and lied, because I knew it would make me look bad in my re-election campaign,” he said.
Sidhu has also admitted that he had submitted fake documents that he lived in Arizona to avoid paying $ 16,000 in sales tax in California when he bought a helicopter.
“I learned difficult lessons from this experience, especially by dishonoring my family and destroying my career and my reputation,” he wrote.
Sidhu’s lawyers, Paul Meyer and Craig Wilke argued that Sidhu should receive a probation and a fine of $ 40,000. In a memo of determining the sentence, the lawyers said that although he shared confidential information “so that the angels could buy the stadium to beneficial terms for the angels”, he did not compromise the city’s position by doing so.
“Mr. Sidhu exercised an extraordinarily bad believer judgment that his political opponents would use information against him in his re -election campaign,” said his lawyers, but argued that his behavior did not constitute corruption.
The angels were not involved in the Sidhu advocacy agreement. “There is no pending case against the angels for this driving,” he assistant US Atty. Melissa Rabbani said on Friday. The team continues to play Angel Stadium and, in January, extended the lease, committing to stay until 2032.
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