Ex-Sacramento councilman Sean Loloee pleads guilty, agrees to pay $2.4 million
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- Loloee pleaded guilty to seven federal charges.
- He agreed to pay $1.4 million in restitution and forfeit about $1 million.
- He admitted maintaining hidden payrolls and in‑house checks to pay undocumented workers.
Former Sacramento City Councilmember Shahriar “Sean” Loloee pleaded guilty to federal charges Thursday, admitting in a plea agreement that he obstructed U.S. Department of Labor investigations, underreported taxes tied to off-the-books pay at his Viva Supermarket stores, and fraudulently obtained nearly $1.2 million in COVID-19 relief funds.
Loloee, owner of the Viva Supermarket chain in the Sacramento region since about 2008, served on the Sacramento City Council from 2020 until he resigned in January 2024 amid federal charges.
Loloee could face up to 59 years in prison, the combined statutory maximum for the seven counts to which he pleaded guilty, according to the plea agreement signed April 13 and made public Thursday. As part of the deal, according to the court filing, prosecutors will recommend a sentence at the low end of the guideline range.
He also agreed to pay $1.4 million in restitution and forfeit about $1 million, along with personnel files containing counterfeit immigration documents.
Loloee pleaded guilty Thursday morning before U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 15.
Possible prison sentence: ‘Life must go on’
The former council member appeared in court wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt and a pink and blue striped tie. When asked by Nunley whether he was in fact guilty of the seven federal charges against him, he paused and cocked his head before replying.
“Yes, your honor,” he said.
The plea marked the first time Loloee publicly admitted to the allegations, including those that took place while he was a sitting council member from 2020 to 2023. Although the government first ordered him to pay back wages in 2008, the matter did not become public until a 2022 U.S. Department of Labor civil suit. That was followed by a federal criminal indictment in 2023, prompting him to resign weeks later.
Even after resigning, he maintained that the charges were false. In an interview after his hearing Thursday, he defended the labor practices at his stores and said he does not employ undocumented workers.
“We look forward to showing the court Mr. Loloee’s life history, contributions to his community and stores,” Tom Johnson, his attorney, said in a text after the proceedings.
Loloee said he decided to plead guilty because it was time for the case to come to an end.
“I’m not concerned about it,” Loloee said of the possibility of going to prison. “Life must go on.”
Plea agreement details
Under the plea agreement, Loloee agreed to repay $1.2 million to the U.S. Small Business Administration for defrauding the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, the agreement states. On his May 2021 application for the pandemic funding, Loloee listed 2020 gross receipts for one of his supermarkets at about $5.2 million, when they were actually about $7.7 million, according to the agreement.
He received about $1.2 million in pandemic relief funds and later moved about $949,000 through a trust account in the name of a family member, other business accounts and a personal bank account, according to the agreement.
Loloee also admits in the agreement to maintaining a hidden payroll system — checks that could only be redeemed at the Viva stores — used to pay undocumented workers and others off the books, partly to avoid taxes. He agreed to pay about $240,000 in restitution to the IRS. The plea agreement also states he avoided about $32,000 in personal income tax liability by failing to report wages he paid himself off the books.
“Loloee, together with co-conspirators, maintained two sets of books — one official that was used to submit filings to the Internal Revenue Service, and one used only internally that was dubbed ‘Excess Payroll,’” the agreement states. “Through the ‘Excess Payroll’ set of books, Loloee tracked hidden payments to undocumented workers ... Over time, the form of these hidden payments included cash, and an in-house check system called ‘Green Checks’ that were redeemable only at the Viva stores.”
When U.S. Department of Labor officials began investigating the stores in 2008, Loloee told employees to lie to them, he admits in the agreement.
“Loloee and a co-conspirator asked some employees who had received back wages in an earlier investigation to return those wages to Loloee,” the agreement says. “Loloee gave false statements to the Department of Labor about Viva Supermarket’s history of paying employees off the books. These actions had the effect of obstructing the Department of Labor’s ability to learn the true number of Viva Supermarket employees that would possibly have been entitled to back wages. Loloee also directed others to obstruct the DOL investigations.”
Former store manager Karla Montoya as well as former employees Ahmad Shams and Mirwais Shams are also named as defendants in the criminal case. They are not scheduled to plead guilty. The trial is set for September.
The U.S. Department of Labor filed a federal civil suit against Loloee over similar allegations in April 2022, about two years after Loloee was sworn into the council. The federal indictment was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in December 2023.
Former workers told The Sacramento Bee they faced intimidation and discrimination, accounts that aligned with allegations later detailed in the plea agreement. The stores, located in Del Paso Heights, North Sacramento, and Rancho Cordova, primarily serve Latino communities.
The indictment was filed about a year and a half after The Bee reported Loloee did not live in the North Sacramento district he was elected to represent. Loloee remained on the council for over a year after that report, then resigned shortly after the indictment.
When it filed the indictment, the Department of Justice confirmed The Bee’s reporting that Loloee did not live in North Sacramento, but instead lived with his family in his wife’s $1.4 million home in Granite Bay. As of Wednesday, he still owns the North Sacramento house, where a yellow excavator still sits outdoors near the front door. He claimed a $7,000 homeowner’s exemption on his 2025 tax bill.
This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 11:37 AM.
