LOS ANGELES — A judge ordered bank accounts of Viet America Society and its affiliates be frozen following a hearing Friday in Orange County’s civil lawsuit against the nonprofit alleging millions in COVID relief funding was embezzled for personal benefit.

Ahead of the hearing, the group’s attorney, Mark Rosen, argued the county’s civil suit should be put on hold while a federal investigation plays out. Rosen said in a court filing there is an “active criminal investigation” underway, and the U.S. attorney’s office has convened a federal grand jury. He also said the nonprofit’s leaders have received subpoenas.

“Each of the individual defendants in this case have obtained criminal attorneys and are exercising their Fifth Amendment privilege,” he said in the filing.

More than $10 million in federal COVID funds were granted to the nonprofit Viet America Society, mostly at the direction of Supervisor Andrew Do from his 1st District discretionary funds, starting in 2020 to provide meals to the county’s elderly and people with disabilities.

After the nonprofit missed several deadlines to produce a federally required audit of the spending on the meals program and other requested documentation, the county filed its lawsuit in August accusing Viet America Society and some of its leadership of embezzling the funds provided for the meals program and a Vietnam War memorial. The county alleges the money bought properties and other lavish purchases.

Do is not named in the lawsuit.

A San Diego Superior Court judge decided Friday that at least $4.2 million granted to Viet America Society for the county’s meals program will be frozen. The county had asked the courts to prohibit the organization and its leaders from spending, transferring or hiding any funds received from the county.

Rosen previously said federal authorities had frozen the accounts of Viet America Society and some of its officers, but the county sought a court order that would do the same during the duration of its civil lawsuit.

The county, Rosen wrote in the filing, is basing its case on the group’s minimal accounting and incorrectly asking for all funds to be returned.

“The county belatedly discovered the accounting requirements in late 2023, three years after the services began,” Rosen said, later adding that an accounting, “which said that at most, $25,000 was not tracked,” had been delivered in August to the county. “If the county were to get $10,000,000 when only $25,000 was shown unaccounted for ... that would be unjust enrichment.”

Viet American Society at most had “sloppy accounting,” he said, but the services had been provided.

Another hearing will be scheduled for January.

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