San Jose police sergeant running for council candidate placed on leave

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A San Jose police sergeant and City Council candidate, Tam Truong, has been placed on administrative leave at the department amid allegations of mortgage fraud.

Truong, who's worked in law enforcement for two decades and is running against incumbent Domingo Candelas for the District 8 San Jose City Council seat in November, was sued last year for allegedly defrauding an escrow officer with the Orange Coast Title Company, which allowed him to ditch his mortgage and collect nearly $540,000 from the sale of a home.

"The employee has been placed on administrative leave for a personnel matter," a spokesperson for the department told San Jose Spotlight.   

Truong did not respond to requests for comment.   

Sean Webby, spokesperson for the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, declined to comment on a potential criminal complaint. 

Officials with the Santa Clara County Superior Court didn't respond to requests for comment.   

The insurance company's lawsuit claimed Truong "used his position of trust and authority as a SJPD Police Officer to fraudulently convince" an escrow officer that a lien on his property could be removed from a preliminary title document, according to court documents from last year.   

The complaint filed against Truong in Santa Clara County Superior Court in September 2022 said he showed the escrow officer documents from his 2015 Chapter 7 bankruptcy to help convince her the lien was eliminated from his home on Plumstead Way in San Jose. 

After defrauding the escrow officer in January 2021, the complaint alleges Truong conspired with two others to sell the Plumstead home in July 2021.   

Troung's actions resulted in the sale going through as if he owned the title of the home outright, without any liens, the complaint said. Rather than pay back his mortgage with the money from the sale, he is alleged to have pocketed the cash and later reinvested it in another home.    

San Jose Spotlight last year also reported that Truong at one point owed more than $30,000 to a former employee of his private security company, Training and Protective Services, which he started in 2012 to offer private patrols for neighborhoods just as the city's police force was hemorrhaging officers due to Measure B, a 2012 ballot measure that slashed retirement benefits for police officers. 

Truong supported the controversial measure in his 2012 council run.   

In a wage theft case filed with the state labor commissioner in 2014, one of Truong's employees, Kevin Halverson, claimed he worked nearly 1,700 hours in the first half of 2013, but was paid for only a little more than 500 hours.   

Following a hearing and testimony from Halverson and some of his coworkers in early 2015, the labor commissioner ordered Truong to pay Halverson $34,071 in wages, damages, interest and penalties. 

Truong's company dissolved a short time later.   

In early 2015, the San Jose Police Department suspended Truong's department-issued outside work permit, which the department uses to monitor officers' business interests separate from police work, while police leaders considered whether it was a conflict for him to profit from the department's short staffing problems.   

Truong is once again running for the same seat he sought through an appointment process in 2023.   

Candelas, who was ahead of Troung in the March primaries, said he's reserving judgement on his November challenger. 

 "I'm going to let the process run its course. My focus as councilmember for District 8 remains the same: keeping our community safe, cleaning our streets and parks and creating stronger neighborhoods," he told San Jose Spotlight.