Updated November 13, 2025 – Expanded with forensic mapping of the 2018 Sea Breeze guilty plea, Levine Act violations, donor-network laundering trails, and Hahn’s unindicted role as the syndicate’s Teflon linchpin
Los Angeles County corruption isn’t a glitch, it’s a syndicate. A hardened alliance forged between Janice Hahn, deep-pocketed developers, and the taxpayer-funded unions and agencies that shield them from accountability. For seventeen years, Hahn has been the unbreakable keystone of this political cartel, vacuuming up over $280,000 in laundered checks, greenlighting fire-trap sprawl, and handing out $154 million in no-bid County leases like stock tips at a backroom poker game.
Zero scrutiny. Zero indictments. Zero repercussions, for her.
Developers like Samuel Leung get probation and fines. Politicians like Mitchell Englander plead guilty. José Huizar was sentenced to fourteen years in federal prison. But Janice Hahn? She glides through every scandal untouched, the recurring common thread in Los Angeles’s endless pay-to-play carousel. The difference is simple: the machine she helped construct, union power, redacted ethics records, and a willfully blind District Attorney, protects her like a monarch.
Last week, we dissected Majestic Realty’s influence pipeline. This week, we bolt on the 2018 guilty plea that sealed the Sea Breeze money-laundering empire – where Leung’s $600,000 straw-donor network funneled directly into Hahn’s political war chest. Same playbook, same choreography: fake donors, phantom checks, bought approvals. Only the names changed. The structure didn’t.
The Sea Breeze Laundromat – Hahn’s Proven Playbook, Certified by a Felony Plea
It began in 2008 when 70-year-old developer Samuel Leung schemed to build a $72 million, 352-unit residential complex in Harbor Gateway, a zone restricted to industrial use. City planners rejected it. Garcetti’s Planning Commission shut it down 7-0. Then came Janice Hahn, her campaign coffers suddenly flush with synchronized contributions.
From January 2009 through February 2015, Leung executed a reimbursement racket involving more than a hundred straw donors, employees, relatives, and low-income tenants, all reimbursed for funneling over $600,000 into the campaigns of eight Los Angeles politicians. State law calls that felony conspiracy to launder campaign money. Leung called it business as usual.
And Hahn was the jackpot. She hauled in $203,500, by far the largest share, while representing the Council district that controlled the project site. The trail reads like an organized crime ledger: twenty-two Leung-tied donors, all cutting $500 checks on December 29, 2008, the same day, totaling $11,000. During her 2009 reelection, another $15,500 hit in one week. Between 2009 and 2011, contributions continued to flood in across her state and federal campaigns, another $155,500 stacked in identical handwriting, with signatures redacted by the Ethics Commission. One tenant living in a Leung-owned property, surrounded by broken windows and a flat-tired truck, supposedly donated over $20,000. Another worker admitted he was reimbursed for “donations” equal to twenty days of pay. The cover stories were absurd; the pattern undeniable.
The denials followed on cue. Eleven donors claimed amnesia or said they didn’t remember donating. A repairman admitted reimbursement, an automatic felony. The handwriting matched, the contributions mirrored. Leung’s secretary, who helped coordinate the scheme, disappeared before sentencing and remains a fugitive.
On December 3rd, 2020, in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Samuel Leung pled guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit campaign money laundering. The bribery charges were dropped. He received five years of probation, 500 hours of community service, and a $2.5 million fine held in escrow for restitution to the city’s Ethics Commission. He could have served nearly five years behind bars. Instead, he walked free.
And Janice Hahn, the politician who collected more of Leung’s dirty cash than anyone, kept every cent.
During the 2016 Los Angeles Times investigation that exposed the Sea Breeze scheme, Hahn promised she would return the money “if, after an investigation, the funds are found to be questionable.” Two years later, the funds weren’t questionable – they were legally proven to be criminal proceeds. Yet Hahn returned nothing. Her only public statement following Leung’s guilty plea was a single line: “I hope he is held accountable.”
He was. She wasn’t.
The Sea Breeze donor chart tells the story: Hahn ($203,500), Buscaino ($94,700), Englander ($65,800), Garcetti ($60,000), Huizar ($30,400), Martinez ($7,700). Two of those politicians – Mitchell Englander and José Huizar – would later fall in separate federal corruption prosecutions. The same network of developer-linked contributions that bought votes for Leung helped propel two felons into City Hall, while Janice Hahn, the largest beneficiary of all, faced no charges, no ethics penalties, and no repayment orders.
Her final act before heading to Congress was to sign a “conditional support” letter for Sea Breeze, used for years by developers to force approval. Garcetti then intervened, invoking an obscure mayoral authority to lower the vote threshold. The Council passed it unanimously. Construction began. The money was laundered. The public trust wasn’t just broken, it was sold wholesale.
The Tejon Ranch Rerun – Hahn’s Levine Act Violation Still Unpunished
Fast forward to 2019. Hahn, now a Los Angeles County Supervisor, was no longer operating in the shadows of City Hall – she was the power. The next project to cross her desk: Majestic Realty’s Tejon Ranch, a sprawling plan for 19,333 homes in a wildfire corridor north of L.A.
In June 2019, Majestic donated $1,500 to Hahn’s campaign. Just weeks later, she voted to approve the project without disclosing the conflict or recusing herself. The California Levine Act makes this a textbook violation, explicitly barring public officials from voting on any matter involving a donor who contributed more than $250 in the previous twelve months. Hahn’s vote wasn’t a gray area – it was illegal.
But in Los Angeles County, illegality doesn’t equal accountability. County Counsel ignored the breach. The District Attorney declined to investigate. The FPPC went silent.
The Court of Appeal ultimately overturned the Tejon Ranch approval in 2025, citing environmental and wildfire safety violations, but the damage was already done. Majestic had secured the political goodwill it needed. Since 2007, the company and its affiliates had poured over $340,000 into the campaigns of County officials. Hahn personally took more than $80,000. By 2023, the donations abruptly stopped – the investment had matured.
The $154 Million Syndicate Sweetener
On January 14, 2025, the Board of Supervisors, Hahn presiding, unanimously approved $154 million in County leases to Majestic Realty’s Crossroads Parkway properties. The leases are locked through 2043, guaranteeing seventeen years of payments from taxpayers straight into Majestic’s accounts.
Sea Breeze money in, project approvals out. Tejon contributions in, lease payoffs out. Hahn’s pattern is clockwork precision: every dollar leads to a vote, and every vote leads to another payday for her political partners.
The Shield Wall – Unions, Redactions, and Selective Blindness
Hahn’s invincibility isn’t accidental. The syndicate around her is designed to absorb scandal. Public-sector unions like SEIU and AFSCME bankroll her campaigns and crush any hint of reform. Deputy unions keep internal critics quiet. The Ethics Commission redacted donor signatures from the Sea Breeze files, blocking handwriting analysis that could tie the checks back to Leung’s office. County Counsel whitewashed the Levine Act violations. The District Attorney and FPPC looked the other way. And the mainstream media, content to chase yesterday’s headlines, never followed up on the 2018 plea, the unreturned $203,500, or the $154 million County lease Hahn quietly approved for Majestic.
Sea Breeze thrives. Majestic collects rent checks for decades. Hahn gears up for a 2026 reelection campaign wrapped in buzzwords like “housing” and “equity.” But what she’s really built is neither. It’s a syndicate sustained by silence, protected by labor money, and camouflaged by the same rhetoric she uses to justify it.
Housing for donors. Equity for insiders. Justice for no one.
Break the Union or Watch It Consume the County
Janice Hahn isn’t supervising Los Angeles County. She’s brokering it. The Sea Breeze money-laundering ring proved it. The Tejon Ranch vote confirmed it. The $154 million Majestic lease cemented it. And her refusal to return $203,500 in verified illegal contributions, despite the developer’s felony plea, seals the indictment that prosecutors refuse to file.
The call for accountability is long past due. The DA must revisit the Sea Breeze felony trail and Hahn’s unprosecuted role. The County Auditor must dissect every Majestic lease payment. And voters must decide whether Los Angeles County’s government belongs to the people, or to the syndicate that has ruled it unchecked for nearly two decades.
Seventeen years of corruption cloaked as “public service” ends here. Peel it. Prosecute it. Dismantle it.
We’re not done. More intel drops soon.
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