Former San Leandro councilmember Bryan Azevedo pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from the Duong family for housing-company votes

On February 11, 2026, Bryan Azevedo, a member of the San Leandro City Council, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and one count of making false statements to federal investigators. Azevedo admitted that in 2023 he accepted an all-expenses-paid trip to Vietnam, sponsored by a business association led by David Trung Duong, in exchange for agreeing to use his council seat to advocate for Evolutionary Homes, a modular- and container-home company owned by David and Andy Hung Duong — including casting votes benefiting the company, working to secure a city purchase of its housing units, and touring model units with city officials. To conceal the payments, Azevedo said, the Duongs instructed him to open an LLC and bank account in his wife's name, which received $2,000 in cash toward funding it; the city ultimately never purchased units from the company.

Azevedo was charged in October 2025 and pleaded not guilty at his arraignment that November before reversing course; he resigned from the council on February 10, 2026, the day before entering his guilty plea, and has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. His case is directly connected to the separate federal bribery prosecution of then-Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, in which David and Andy Duong are also charged with bribing Thao and her partner with a negative-mailer campaign and a no-show job in exchange for city contracts and appointments; Azevedo is expected to testify in that case. He faces up to 20 years on the fraud count and up to five years on the false-statements count, though cooperation is expected to reduce any sentence; a status hearing is scheduled for December 3, 2026.