Noodoe CEO Hosts Campaign Fundraiser for Tammy Kim After Securing Lucrative City Contract

From left: Ann Hwu (Noodoe’s Public Relations Officer), Jennifer Chang (Noodoe CEO) and Tammy Kim at Campaign Fundraiser hosted by Hwu and Chang. (Photo Credit: U.S. News Express)

In December 2021, Irvine Councilmember Tammy Kim steered a lucrative deal for electric vehicle (EV) chargers in the Great Park to Casco Construction and its supplier, Noodoe. After a number of delays, the Noodoe chargers were installed in the Great Park in spring and early summer of 2023.

Then, in the first week of October 2023, Jennifer Chang, Noodoe’s CEO, and Ann Hwu, Noodoe’s Public Relations Officer, hosted a campaign fundraiser for Kim’s mayoral campaign.
 
Back in December 2021, Tammy Kim joined with Councilmember Mike Carroll to insist that Casco be awarded the multi-million-dollar EV chargers contract, despite the fact that City staff recommended two other companies following a formal bid process. (The formal bid process is known as a Request for Proposal, or RFP.)

In making the motion to skip the staff-recommended companies, Kim and Carroll noted that Casco was based in Irvine and the City was being promised up to 10 times more revenue from the charging stations than any other bidder: $2 million annually. Kim added a requirement that Casco purchase Noodoe chargers because Noodoe was also based in Irvine and this would create a dramatic boost in Irvine manufacturing jobs.

The motion passed 3-2, with Mayor Farrah Khan and Vice Mayor Larry Agran voting against it after expressing concerns about the Council acting in haste and compromising the integrity of the City’s RFP process.
 
In subsequent weeks and months, it became clear that major misrepresentations helped secure the deal:

• Within weeks, Noodoe announced its U.S. headquarters was moving from Irvine to Houston. Former employees said they had been laid off and the Irvine office closed in December 2021 — the same time that Kim was touting Irvine manufacturing jobs.

• It was then discovered that Noodoe has no manufacturing operations in North America. Instead, its equipment, including the chargers bound for Irvine, were made overseas and assembled in Taiwan, where its corporate headquarters is located.

• In July 2022, City Manager Oliver Chi told Councilmembers that Casco’s original $2 million-per-year estimate of City revenue was being revised downward to just 10% to 20% of that amount.

By March 2023, no chargers had been installed so the Council decided to only install 166 chargers, which had already been purchased from Noodoe.

The 166 chargers are among the slowest charging stations available and are rarely used. The City’s total revenue from the EV chargers for the first six months of 2024 was about $6,000, Chi said last week.

Noodoe charging stations sit unused in three large parking lots at the Great Park.

Meanwhile, the campaign finance report of Kim’s mayoral campaign committee showed a spike in donations just after the fundraiser hosted by Noodoe’s executives — including a $600 donation from Ann Hwu (Noodoe’s Public Relations Officer).

A source with knowledge of the Casco/Noodoe proposal and the companies’ effort to obtain the City’s electric chargers contract reached out via email, stating that the October 2023 fundraiser was a “Thank you and payment” to Kim for “throwing out the RFP and endorsing Casco, the middleman.” The source continued: “This was [a] brazen and in-your-face type of fraud. Noodoe and Casco knew from the get-go that there was no way the City of Irvine could generate any revenue close to what was presented. It was intentional to commit fraud on a government contract.”