City of Los Angeles, California
Outcome
Former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Raymond She Wah Chan was convicted on all 12 felony counts and sentenced to 144 months (12 years) in federal prison for soliciting and accepting more than $750,000 in bribes and facilitating over $1 million in additional bribes from real estate developers seeking city approvals.
Details
City of Los Angeles — Deputy Mayor Racketeering Conspiracy (2013–2020)
Outcome: Raymond She Wah Chan, former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor, was convicted on all 12 felony counts and sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for operating a pay-to-play scheme that extracted bribes from real estate developers seeking city approvals.
Raymond She Wah Chan, 68, of Monterey Park, California, served as a senior official in the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety before being elevated to Deputy Mayor. Together with then-Los Angeles City Councilmember José Huizar, Chan helped conceive, lead, and operate the "CD-14 Enterprise," a criminal racketeering enterprise that exploited the city approval process for large real estate development projects to exact bribes from developers.
Chan solicited and accepted more than $750,000 in bribe money for himself, while also facilitating over $1 million in additional bribes paid directly to Huizar. He played a critical role in guiding and ensuring the CD-14 Enterprise's success, managing the conspiracy through both the powerful public offices he occupied and the private relationships he held with wealthy foreign developers seeking to build in the city.
A jury convicted Chan on all 12 felony counts following a 12-day trial in March 2024: one count of RICO conspiracy, seven counts of honest services wire fraud, three counts of federal program bribery, and one count of making false statements to a federal agency. United States District Judge John F. Walter sentenced Chan to 144 months in October 2024 and ordered him to pay $752,457 in restitution to the City of Los Angeles.
Primary Source: Former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison for Racketeering Conspiracy that Corrupted City Real Estate Projects
How Crucible Prevents This
A Crucible conflict-of-interest disclosure hook would have flagged Chan's undisclosed relationships with foreign developers. An anomaly detector on planning approvals correlated with official travel or personal finance activity would have surfaced the pattern. Crucible's vendor-relationship audit protocol would require documented recusal any time an approving official has a private-side relationship with a project applicant.
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