Former Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu, who resigned to maintain the Angels baseball franchise in town, was sentenced to two months in federal prison on Friday for conduct related to a collapsed deal to sell the team’s stadium and other crimes.
“[The] The defendant betrayed the city of Anaheim while serving as mayor, but he removed evidence of that betrayal,” said US District Judge John Holcomb, who had imposed a sentence.
Sidhu, 67, pleaded guilty in 2023 to deleting an email with the intent to interfere with federal investigations into stadium transactions and making false statements about FBI and tax fraud related to the purchase of helicopters.
At Friday’s sentencing hearing, the judge issued a $55,000 fine along with his prison term. Sidhu is to surrender himself by September 2nd.
Sidhu won offices on the board in 2018 to maintain Anaheim’s Angels. There, the team leased a city-owned stadium surrounded by car parks from the 1960s era. To ensure the team’s continued presence, he defended an agreement to sell the stadium to Angels owner Arte Moreno’s Development Company for $325 million.
Sidhu sent an email to Todd Ament, who ran the city’s chamber of commerce and an unknown Angels consultant, containing confidential information regarding the city’s terms of negotiation. Sidhu then voted for a stadium deal without revealing that he was sharing sensitive information.
“The defendant was using an angels consultant. [the former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce president] To allow Angels to use that information to the Angels to purchase the Angel Stadium on terms beneficial to the Angels, so that the Angels can use that information in negotiations with the city,” Sidhu’s legal agreement stated.
Pleading guilty to wire fraud and other charges, Ement began working with the FBI and agreed to wear the wire. In January 2022, he secretly recorded Sidhu and said he hopes to make a campaign contribution from the angels. “I want to get at least 1 million,” Sidhu said.
When the FBI approached Sidhu a few months later, he said he had no expectations of the angels and did not remember giving the team any secret information.
Sidhu never actually asked angels for such a donation, his lawyer argued. And he deleted the emails related to the stadium deal, but his lawyers argued that this “did not actually interfere or interfere with the federal investigation” as the agent received the email from Emento anyway.
In May 2022, the Anaheim City Council voted for the deal for torpedoes as FBI investigation into stadium trades reached an announcement, and Sidhu resigned as mayor eight months before his four-year term ended.
In a letter to the judge, Sidhu said he was “embarrassed and deeply regretful” about the harm he inflicted on the trust of the people, describing his lifelong hard work and public service.
In the letter, he spoke of his immigration from India to the US in 1974, with a bit of English at just $6 in his pocket. He said he paid Philadelphia’s community college for cleaning the toilet for $2.89 an hour on a night shift at the Holiday Inn.
Sidhu received a degree in mechanical engineering, worked for General Dynamics and Hughes Aircraft, and purchased a series of Burger King and Papa John’s restaurants in Southern California. He served two terms on the Anaheim City Council, and when he won the mayoral job, he focused on keeping the angels in Anaheim.
“Losing an angel would have been devastating for the city,” he wrote to the judge. “I was trying to close the stadium deal because I believed it was important to keep the Angels in Anaheim.”
Sidhu has admitted to sending an email summarizing the city’s confidential trading points and removing them to avoid political embarrassment. He admitted that he was “prideful and bragged” about hoping for a donation from the Angels, but he said he never actually asked the Angels to give. When the FBI agent approached him and asked him about the email, he said, “I panicked and lied because I knew it would make me look bad in my rerect campaign.”
Sidhu also admitted to submitting false documents professing his profession when he lived in Arizona to avoid paying $16,000 in California sales tax when he purchased the helicopter.
“I learned harsh lessons from this experience, such as shameful family and destroying my career and reputation,” he writes.
Sidhu’s lawyers Paul Meyer and Craig Wilke argued that Sidhu should be on probation and a $40,000 fine. In a memo in the verdict, the lawyer said he shared confidential information “so that angels could buy the stadium on useful terms for the angels,” but did not compromise the city’s position in doing so.
“Mr. Sidhu exercised a very bad judgment, believing that his political opponent would use information against him in his reelection campaign,” his lawyer argued, but argued that his actions were not corrupted.
The angels were not involved in Sidhu’s legal agreement. “There are no pending lawsuits against the angels regarding this act,” said assistant Atty. Melissa Rabani said Friday. The team continued to play at Angel Stadium, and in January they extended their lease and promised to stay in Anaheim until 2032.
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