Sacramento City Hall. (Photo: cityofsacramento.org)
DOJ Indicts Sacramento City Councilman Sean Loloee Over Hiring Illegal Immigrants
Is he low-hanging fruit for the DOJ, or the victim of local deep state politicians?
By Katy Grimes, January 10, 2024 7:54 am
Recently resigned Sacramento City Councilman Sean Loloee could face over 100 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines for hiring illegal immigrants at the Sacramento-area grocery stores he owns, Fox 40 reported, based on the details contained in a federal grand jury’s indictment. “The U.S. Department of Justice said Loloee hired employees who lacked authorization to work in the United States in part because they were easier to control and allowed him to pay lower wages. Their questionable legal status allowed Loloee to pay the workers in “irregular ways and off the books” and avoid paying overtime because he knew they lacked negotiating leverage.”
Yet the Biden admin is flooding the border and big cities with illegal immigrants, filling hotels, and now canceling schools so illegals can stay in the gymnasiums.
Am I missing something here? In California, it is highly likely that nearly every business has illegal immigrants on the payroll, whether owners know it or not. Some owners may be deliberately gaming the system, but most just need warm bodies to fill the jobs.
The DOJ said Loloee and Viva Supermarket General Manager Karla Montoya, who they say is also allegedly “undocumented,” instructed employees to obtain false documents to facilitate their hiring, and then they intimidated the employees.
The Justice Department claims Loloee and Montoya conspired to defraud the government and accepted fraudulent Social Security cards. They also claim Loloee schemed to defraud the Small Business Administration of COVID American Rescue Plan of 2021 emergency funds.
The Department of Justice is now interested in employers who hire employees who are in the country illegally, and took COVID emergency funds?
The Globe was contacted by many businesses during COVID which had applied for the emergency funds and never received the help. And we reported on how many already well-off California businesses did receive the funds, including Governor Gavin Newsom’s own business which received nearly $3 million in federal loans/grants.
The waste, fraud and abuse of the “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” – a $1.9 trillion emergency aid package to help America recover from the coronavirus pandemic, was widespread:
“The Wall Street Journal editorial board estimated that only $825 billion was directly related to Covid-19 relief and $1 trillion was “expansions of progressive programs, pork, and unrelated policy changes.”
Adam Andrzejewski at Open the Books reported on some of the ARP fund recipients:
$50 million for “family planning” – going to non-profits, i.e. Planned Parenthood
$852 million for AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps Vista, and the National Senior Service Corps
$470 million in the bill doubles the budgets of The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment of the Arts and the Humanities.
A quick spotlight on agencies and entities receiving “coronavirus recovery” money in the bill includes:
$350 billion to bailout the 50 States and the District of Columbia.
$128.5 billion to fund K-12 education.
$86 billion to save nearly 200 pension plans insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
$50 billion goes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
$39.6 billion to higher education. This amount is three times the money – $12.5 billion – that higher ed received with the massive CARES Act funding from last March.
$1.5 billion for Amtrak
The DOJ says Loloee applied for and accepted $1.2 million in ARP/RRF funds (Restaurant Revitalization Funds) for one of his entities.
It’s not a stretch to ask what and who is really behind the Loloee indictment. This feels like a lot of theater for a small business owner and local councilman.
Who did Loloee run up against as City Councilman? Loloee has been the target of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Steinberg’s flunky, the Marxist community organizer Councilwomen Katie Valenzuela.
The Globe interviewed Loloee in October 2021. We learned Loloee was born in Iran. He opened his first grocery stores in Southern California in the 1990s, and then moved north, taking over an old abandoned market in a rough part of Oakland. In Sacramento, Loloee started the Viva Supermarket chain of stores in 2009.
We also discussed the issues afflicting the City of Sacramento – most notably Loloee said his district and one other within the city are the most overrun with homeless, and also have the highest cultural disparities. And Loloee said his district is being targeted for the most marijuana dispensaries – an issue not unique to Sacramento, as marijuana dispensaries targeting low income neighborhoods across the country is well documented, despite what drugs do in the low-income minority communities.
We reported:
Loloee is open, frank and honest discussing issues that make most elected officials wince. Describing his district as “low-income, low information, black and brown,” he has rebuffed loading up his district with the bulk of the marijuana dispensaries. “In the name of ‘equity,’ we’re going to normalize marijuana for black and brown kids,” Loloee ironically said. “It’s all about making money, but they don’t see themselves as capitalists,” he said of the minorities being encouraged and coached by the city in the Cannabis Opportunity Reinvestment and Equity (CORE) program, to go in to the marijuana business.
“The CORE Program is a program created to assist individuals and communities who are facing barriers to starting cannabis businesses due to the historical disparate enforcement of cannabis crimes,” the City website says. Ironically, most small cannabis dispensary operators require investors who tend to own the majority shares.
Loloee also expressed concern with the affordable housing issue. He acknowledged that there is a shortage of affordable homes and apartments in the region, but was profoundly concerned with what the city is spending. “Now it is $600,000 per unit,” Loloee said. “One hundred units at $600,000 per unit is $60 million. And the developer gets 10%.”
So Loloee clearly touched some nerves on some really hot issues in the City of Sacramento – the affordable housing scheme, and the burgeoning cannabis industry in particular.
Loloee dared to complain that his low-income district and its low-income residents were being targeted by the Mayor for the bulk of cannabis dispensaries.
In 2021 the Globe reported on the dodgy cannabis business in California:
California’s legal recreational and medicinal cannabis industry is not only “the biggest government-sanctioned market in the nation,” but also the “biggest legal marijuana market in the world,” a new report issued by the Governmental Accountability Institute says.
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- Individual cannabis permits in the state have sold for as much as $17 million.
- There were more than 7,500 active cannabis licenses in California in 2020, including 910 retail dispensaries.
However, the reach of the unregulated market remains a major concern as estimates have revealed about $8.7 billion in black market sales. Thus, taking legal and illegal sales into account, the California market sold a whopping $12.0 billion in cannabis and related products in 2019.
This makes the legal cannabis market in California about $3.3 billion in sales.
The GAI says, “evidence suggests that the current California framework allows for increased corruption in a system where ‘money talks.’”
Where California’s pot industry gets dodgy is how many politicians and dozens of former government officials are involved. GAI found many left government to work for cannabis companies and the lobbying firms representing them. And the tangled web of state and local regulations has only boosted corruption.
While the FBI has successfully taken down elected politicians in several California cities for “questionable business practices, which included paying as much as $250,000 cash in a brown paper bag to city officials,” the state’s capital, GAI found that Sacramento, is ground zero for dubious public-private interactions between local and state regulators and the industry. “Sacramento has even attracted national headlines because of its connection to a scheme that violated federal election laws.”
We have more questions than answers. Given the huge amounts of money issued during the COVID pandemic, as well as the $31 billion in unemployment fraud the State of California facilitated under Labor Secretary Julie Su (who should be under indictment), is Sean Loloee just low-hanging fruit for the DOJ, or is he the victim of local deep state politicians who found him rather inconvenient to their careers, and needed him out of the way? Or is there something much bigger going on?
Did I say we have more questions than answers? More to come…
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There’s a good possibility that you’re on the right track here, Ms. Grimes. Please stay with it.
A quick scan of headlines shows a lot of this sort of thing happening lately. I thought it popped up enough to be noteworthy, anyway. Attempts by the real criminal politicians to take down reasonable politicians —- who are not saints but who are typically earnest and reasonable —- over small potatoes stuff that has been energetically dug up from somewhere. Small potatoes by comparison, that is. An especially energetic effort is seen if their targets happen to be fellow Dems. Looks like a trend, their new tack for 2024.
Have we indicated before just how completely fed up and DONE we are with these petty little people, these clowns, these schoolyard idiot bully vandals? Uh, I think so.
Potentially 100 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines, my eye. I can think of several politicians off the top of my head that deserve THAT kind of punishment for their nonsense, and it’s not THIS guy, this Sac City Councilman they’ve targeted. SIGH
Maybe he was the victim of local deep state Democrats who found him rather inconvenient to their criminal enterprises or maybe he failed to provide enough payoffs to them and the rest of the Democrat mafia? The Department of JustUs mostly functions as the Democrat mafia’s hitmen?
“Dept of JustUs” —- no kidding. Ha ha
We are witnessing relentless smear activities against the few remaining conservatives on locally elected boards in our country too. As if the local political powers (DCC and the unions) want 100% total control over everything. and they now have the well-oiled machine behind them to slowly accomplish this.
I first saw this take no prisoners Democrat go into action when voter initiatives for public pension reform were showing up on state-wide ballots (around 2010?). Just a coincidence, right. Now they attack opponents preemptively, trying to get them off the ballot in the first place. California being the trend-setter yet again, well before Colorado or Maine et al.
Then if someone had been previously elected, the effort is now to build a negative public record against them for use in upcoming re-election campaigns – such as votes of no confidence or sanctions decided by their own internal star chambers. Our local assembly person proudly stated his Democrat party had “vanquished” the GOP in his county, to general applause and acclaim. As if even more mono-party at every level of our government is a good thing.
It will be interesting to see the upcoming food fights over the state budget deficit. 50% automatically going to K-12 via Prop 98 off the top of the general funds, but how will the rest of the overall revenues get divided. Will K-12 invade any remaining general funds, for even more than their guaranteed 50%?
You’re so right, Jaye, that this stuff isn’t new. In the old days of my first rather naive observations, the Dem/Lefty city councils and school boards seemingly couldn’t STAND to hear criticism of any kind so they made a rule that the citizen-criticizer would lose their place at the podium if they criticized anyone. Which is crazy, misses the point, and is actually unacceptable, as you know. But they got away with it. Seemed like they were just appallingly thin-skinned. But then it recently progressed to these same types attempting to change law to ARREST anyone who speaks critically or is known to be critical in their opposition activities elsewhere. Doesn’t this show a panicky desperation? These people cannot stand to have a sensible person or Repub in their midst at all, as you pointed out. And they think that’s a good thing. Now the question seems to be: Does their desperation indicate the implosion of their reign or the beginning of a new phase of control? Or neither? — just more bumbling along and repeats?
Re your K-12 point, it’s bad enough that so much of the budget is promised and goes to what has become a mostly corrupt and harmful-to-students state system in the first place. To be awarded more $$$ would be obscenely wasteful and damaging. Guess we’ll see how the “food fights” play out, as you said.
It may be good to take a step back and ask yourself this: Is it more likely that “deep state” local politicians somehow got the wheels of justice in DC moving, or is it MORE likely that Mr. Loloee, who has been investigated and found guilty of labor violations multiple times over the last 10-15 years, was on the radar of the feds as someone to be watched. It’s true that there is an effort underway to re-make the city council in a more progressive way, but is that not true of any and all legislative bodies in America? Folks like Katie V have had good success advancing this agenda at the ballot box, and Mr. Loloee’s re-election viability has been questionable for a long time. Why not just support candidates that align with her views and can easily beat Loloee (something she has been doing in D2 by the way). On the cannabis issue, Sean really had no idea how to effectively attack what was a valid issue, and he did not listen to anyone who was giving him counsel on the matter. More politically savvy CMs than Sean had written the regs so that there was almost no chance that a cannabis business could exist outside of 2-3 districts. Seans attempts at moratoriums, etc were doomed to fail. The answer was to lean on his free-market ideals and to create a coalition of CMs that would be willing to loosen those restrictions, allowing cannabis to spread to other areas organically. In that effort, he would have found partners in the more progressive camp at council. In the end, Sean never learned what branch of government he was in. He came in trying to be the CEO of D2. He never learned the most important rule of being a council member: How to count to 5.
Folks like Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela? Voters in District 4 are fed up with her radical leftist agenda that has resulted in the area becoming a hellhole with homelessness and crime completely out of control. Unless there is voter fraud, hopefully Katie the rotund Marxist will be ejected by District 4 voters in the next election and she’ll have to get a real job.