‘Pretty Vengeful’: Star Witness in Thao Trial to Resume Testimony

The star witness in Sheng Thao’s Oakland corruption trial will face tough questions about his “decades-long” history of fraud and years of doing his business partners’ “dirty work” when he returns to the stand Thursday. 

Mario Juarez, an Oakland businessman and political operative, who has pleaded guilty to participating in the alleged pay-to-play scheme to bribe the ex-mayor, began his highly anticipated testimony last week, unloading bombshell allegations about courting city officials with drugs, girls and gym bags of cash to elevate various business ventures over the years.

Defense attorneys on Thursday could begin their cross-examination of Juarez, who they described in opening statements as a “consummate hustler” with a tendency to tell “half truths.” They’ve called into question his credibility as a witness, describing a pattern of Juarez falsely accusing other people when his own business ventures sour, pointing to numerous lawsuits he has been involved in — 33 between 1992 and 2022 — including fraud cases involving former business partners.

Juarez told the jury last week that he engaged in an alleged quid pro quo with Thao, her longtime romantic partner Andre Jones, recycling executive David Duong and his son, Andy Duong, before and during Thao’s mayoral administration from 2022 to 2024. 

He testified that he and the Duongs agreed to provide financial support for Thao’s 2022 mayoral run and give Jones a $300,000 no-show job at their housing start-up, Evolutionary Homes, which sought to convert shipping containers into homes for people exiting homelessness.

In return, prosecutors say Thao allegedly agreed to help elevate city staffers to director-level positions in Oakland City Hall at the Duongs’ and Juarez’s request, help them win a city contract for Evolutionary Homes and aid the Duongs’ other business, California Waste Solutions, with various deals before the city.

The four co-defendants are facing conspiracy, bribery and fraud charges for the alleged deal. Juarez has agreed to testify on behalf of the government in hopes of a lighter sentence.

In addition to laying out the broad strokes of the scheme, Juarez’s testimony last week also shed light on what Assistant U.S. Attorney Abraham Fine called his “history of doing dirty work” for the Duongs, whose company, California Waste Solutions, holds Oakland’s curbside recycling contract.

Juarez alleged that in 2014, after the City Council awarded California Waste Solutions a controversial recycling contract, he helped David Duong pack and distribute “gym bags of cash” to a number of people, including a sitting council member and another council member’s staffer.

He also made allegations about a night out wooing a city staffer with drugs and scantily clad girls. Prosecutors allege the former staffer, Larry Gallegos, is one of the candidates Juarez and the Duongs wanted Thao to appoint to a director-level position.

Prosecutors have said Juarez’s testimony gives the jury “an insider’s view” of the bribery scheme, connecting the dots between thousands of text messages, photos, videos, taped phone calls, Apple notes and other records they’ve admitted as evidence of the illegal dealings. 

Juarez will continue that testimony Thursday before defense attorneys get a chance to ask him tough questions about his track record with the legal system and his motivations for cooperating with U.S. prosecutors. Throughout the trial, defense attorneys have suggested Juarez’s story is pure fiction, designed to save himself from a harsher sentence and retaliate against his co-conspirators. 

Juarez agreed to testify as part of a plea deal he signed with prosecutors in January 2025, about six months after the FBI first approached him following an explosive falling out with the Duongs.

Defense attorneys have painted Juarez as untruthful and “vengeful” — a moniker he gave himself in a recorded Evolutionary Homes board meeting with the Duongs in 2023.

“I have a long memory, and I’m pretty vengeful,” Juarez said on the tape. Speaking of Thao, he added, “There are consequences to not keeping your end of the bargain, but that’s her decision.”

In his opening statement, Winston Chan, a defense attorney for Andy Duong, said Juarez constantly presented prospective business partners with a new pitch and “some reason he needs your money right now.” 

“The evidence will show he was and is the consummate hustler,” Chan said, adding that there was only one thing he wanted just as much as other people’s money: “political relevance and power in Oakland.”

He continued, “[It was] only when he realized he was losing that he manufactured his latest rebranding: to headline this trial as the prosecution’s star witness.”

In pre-trial filings, defense attorneys have laid out what they say is a history of Juarez alleging misconduct by people who have made accusations or lodged lawsuits against him. 

Juarez, they said, is known to “counterattack” when deals appear to be falling through. He has “repeatedly falsely accused business partners of crimes and other wrongdoing in efforts to escape liability for his own actions — just as he has done here,” David Duong’s legal team wrote in an earlier court filing.

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In the spring of 2024, they suggested Juarez had an ulterior motive. By the time he sat down for his first interview with the FBI in June 2024, his relationship with the Duongs had been fraying for months.

Despite the deal they allegedly struck with Thao and Jones more than a year prior, the city of Oakland still had not signed a contract to purchase housing units from the company, and Evolutionary Homes did not have units ready for market. 

That year, Andy Duong told an inspector in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office that he and his father had invested $800,000 in a business venture with Juarez and were victims of what Andy Duong said was a theft of their investment. Andy Duong alleged Juarez had promised to deliver 50 Evolutionary Homes container units, but had produced just two. 

In court filings, prosecutors say Juarez, upset that he had not been reimbursed for funding he said he put into the company, asked the Duongs to dissolve their partnership. At that point, prosecutors allege Juarez threatened to go to the police.

“It got messy, and then it got really messy,” Fine told the jury during his opening statement.

On May 3, 2024, Juarez arrived at the Evolutionary Homes’ office to find that he was locked out, spurring an altercation between him and the Duongs that turned violent. In an audio recording capturing part of the confrontation, David Duong can be heard saying, “We want our $800,000 back.”

Juarez said he needs to get inside the office, and multiple voices respond, offering to bring out his things.

The “business is gone,” David Duong can be heard saying.

Later that day, Juarez called 911 to report what he described as an alleged assault by 10 people, “organized by California Waste Solutions management.” He told the dispatcher the Duongs were involved in “racketeering and organized crime.” Asked previously about those allegations, attorneys for the company and the Duongs did not respond to KQED’s request for comment. 

According to Fine, that was the first time Juarez had talked to law enforcement about the family.

At the time, the FBI had already launched an investigation into a possible bribery scheme involving Juarez and the co-defendants, FBI Special Agent Katherine Barclay testified earlier in the trial. She told the court that when the agency heard of Juarez’s allegations, they approached him for an interview.

During previous witness testimony, defense attorneys have also sought to highlight Juarez’s history of thwarted business ventures, including with his former romantic partner, Cecilia Mendez, who testified on the witness stand that she was convicted of grand theft and operating as a broker without a real estate license in 2019. That same year, Juarez surrendered his real estate license. 

Defense attorneys have also hinted at his tendency to drink heavily — and have a hot temper. 

“The Justice Department’s case is built around this person named Mario Juarez,” Thao’s defense attorney Jeffrey Tsai said during his opening statement. “He’s who the Justice Department simply calls a witness. But as the evidence will show in this trial, Juarez can be called many things, but a simple witness is not one of them.”