The San Francisco Chinatown Grift: 29 LLCs, Political Power, and Too Few New Homes

Malcolm Yeung runs the Chinatown Community Development Center. He controls 18 LLCs tied to the organization. He didn’t disclose a single one on his financial filings for six years. His nonprofit sits on $163 million in assets and tens of millions of dollars in city contracts. Twenty-nine LLCs for a housing nonprofit. That resembles structures seen in money laundering investigations, not community development.

CCDC isn’t an isolated case. It’s one node in a network that includes TODCO, ballot harvesting operations in elderly housing, and politicians who trade city contracts for political loyalty. These organizations claim to represent Asian Americans in San Francisco. They represent their own pocketbooks.

29 LLCs, One Man, No Disclosures

Each of CCDC’s 29 LLCs likely holds a single property, standard practice in affordable housing for liability purposes. The structure is normal. What Yeung does with it is the scandal.

According to an investigation by Susan Dyer Reynolds, Yeung is sole manager-member of 18 and the agent for service on 10 of the remaining 11. Effective control over 28 of 29 entities tied to a single nonprofit. His FPPC Form 700s, the financial disclosures every public official must file, don’t mention any of them. Six years. Eighteen entities. Zero disclosures.

The 2024 audit also found inter-company transactions “eliminated in the consolidated totals.” Money moves through the LLCs and is eliminated from consolidated books.“ An ethics complaint was filed with the SF Ethics Commission on March 19, 2025. No public response from Yeung or CCDC.

CCDC’s own IRS filings show no direct campaign spending, but the organization sits atop tens of millions in city contracts and a web of 29 affiliated LLCs that give it enormous leverage in San Francisco politics, from budget fights to ballot measures — influence that is effectively underwritten by taxpayers.

The Lawsuit That Names Names

Former CCDC supervisor Danishia Davis filed suit in 2022 naming Yeung, Fady Zoubi, and Cindy Louie individually. The suit alleges they operated at least 10 "alter ego entities” through CCDC, allegedly diverting “income, revenue, and profits” to themselves. It accuses them of using those entities “to perpetrate a fraud, circumvent a statute, or accomplish some other wrongful or inequitable purpose.” Two wrongful discharge complaints have been filed under Yeung’s leadership. The 2024 independent audit found exactly the kind of inter-entity financial opacity the lawsuit describes.

Follow the Money

Yeung earns $262,100 plus $50,667 in “other compensation,” totaling $312,767. The top 12 CCDC employees pull nearly $2.5 million combined. For a nonprofit that posted a $6.7 million loss in 2023: $26.8 million in revenue against $33.5 million in expenses. You’re spending $6.7 million more than you take in while your executive director controls 18 undisclosed LLCs. Where is the money going?

Yeung sits on the SF Airport Commission, appointed by former Mayor London Breed through 2026. He served as senior housing advisor to Mayor Ed Lee. He sits on the board of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the API Council steering committee. The political connections are the business model. Nonprofits launder the reputations of politicians who plow our tax dollars back into the alleged grift. Asian Americans in San Francisco are the big losers. The politicians and nonprofits win.

TODCO: The Template

CCDC isn’t operating alone. The SF Standard investigation of TODCO proves this is a model, not an accident.

Despite “Development” in its name, TODCO hasn’t developed a single property in roughly 20 years. Executive pay quadrupled. Spending on tenants declined by 17 percentage points. Lobbying exploded 95x, from $5,000 to $470,000 between 2012 and 2020.

TODCO plowed at least $2.6 million into local elections while top executive salaries ballooned past $777,000. Fifteen people died from drug overdoses in TODCO buildings since 2020. Tenants deal with rats and infestations. One Hotel Isabel resident described waking in the middle of the night with a mouse on his chest.

Sam Moss of Mission Housing put it simply: “I think for how little work TODCO actually does, the increase for salaries year over year is egregious.” Sonja Trauss of YIMBY Law: “Here is this guy who has all this money, and instead of using it to reinvest in his properties or continue on the mission of his organization, he uses it basically to buy political influence.”

Same playbook. Different address.

Alleged Ballot Harvesting

The reported grift isn’t just financial. It’s democratic.

SFGate reported that at least 25 Chinese voters in CCDC buildings alleged women coming to their doors, asking to see their absentee ballots, filling them out for Aaron Peskin, or taking the ballots away entirely. Tom Hsieh of the Asian Pacific Democratic Club called it “systematic organization of harvesting ballots in these nonprofit buildings.”

Archived tweet

Chinatown Community Development Center has a long history of allegations of vote harvesting of the elderly Chinese community, all to support hard left political machine mastermind Aaron Peskin Talk about preying upon the community you claim to protect https://t.co/4J1x8XFMx3

Garry Tan @garrytan April 09, 2023

CCDC is accused of harvesting ballots for politicians like Peskin. Those politicians direct city contracts back to CCDC. CCDC uses city money through 29 LLCs that aren’t disclosed to the public. The same network awarded “Legislator of the Year” to Connie Chan, who as budget committee chair protects nonprofit funding every cycle. They allegedly harvest grandma’s ballot to elect politicians who make grandma’s neighborhood less safe.

The $5.8 Billion Machine

Houston, a city 2.5x larger, runs on a total budget of $5.7 billion. San Francisco spent $5.8 billion on private contracts alone in 2022. Half the population, spending more on outside contractors than a metropolis two and a half times its size spends on everything.

And it’s not unique to Chinatown. The City Attorney debarred Collective Impact in March 2025 after $27M+ in city grants were diverted to benefit former HRC Director Sheryl Davis. Providence Foundation employees were charged with stealing $115,000 from homeless families through fake invoices. Federal prosecutors led by First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli are now targeting California’s nonprofit fraud machine. The state auditor found over $70 billion in lost taxpayer funds statewide.

Taxpayer dollars fund nonprofits. Nonprofits fund political campaigns. Politicians block oversight. The cycle feeds itself.

The audit is public. The 990s are public. The LLC filings are public. FPPC disclosure requirements aren’t suggestions. They’re the law. Demand the Ethics Commission investigate CCDC’s 29 LLCs. Demand Yeung’s FPPC filings be corrected. Demand the Board of Supervisors audit every nonprofit housing contract.

The Ethics Commission can enforce the law, or it can explain to the elderly residents of CCDC’s 38 buildings why the man controlling their housing gets to operate 18 LLCs in the dark. Stop selling out our elders.