Over the last five years, the U.S. Federal Court has convicted 12 San Francisco city department officials and employees of crimes, including conspiracy to commit money laundering, conflict-of-interest violations, wire fraud and more. 

This chain of events sparked criticism of certain city departments’ structures and policies. Now, San Franciscans are calling for these departments to make institutional changes. 

San Francisco Public Works (SFPW) is responsible for designing and managing the construction of streets and civic buildings, maintaining and greening public spaces, and ensuring civic buildings are clean and functional. SFPW also removes hazards from public areas, paves streets, repairs bridges and public stairways, and improves accessibility to public utilities. 

In recent years, the U.S. Federal Court has found many city department officials guilty of fraud, accepting bribes and other corrupt activities. Most notably, the court sentenced former SFPW director Mohammed Nuru to seven years in prison on Aug. 25, 2022 for receiving over $1 million of bribes in cash and goods from contractors. 

Exposing Nuru’s corruption marked the first of a series of arrests of city department officials. As the director of SFPW, Nuru was responsible for overseeing and facilitating SFPW’s operations. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Nuru admitted to accepting bribes and gifts in exchange for preemptively issuing city contracts — namely building permits, which could help expedite construction for private contracting companies who profit from a faster construction process. 

The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI) is also involved in the process of providing and approving building permits. According to SF.gov, the DBI is responsible for ensuring code-compliant construction, building safe, resilient and habitable buildings, as well as supporting economic development in San Francisco. Similarly to SFPW, the DBI also had a high-ranking department official convicted for corruption: senior building inspector Bernard Curran.

On July 17, 2023, the Northern California U.S. District Court sentenced Curran to one year in prison for accepting and attempting to conceal bribes from developers and contractors. As a senior building inspector, Curran’s responsibility was to verify the completion of buildings or construction work according to permits and plans. However, according to the Department of Justice, Curran received improper financial benefits because of his position in the DBI. These included cash payments and donations from developers and property owners whose projects he had jurisdiction over.

Curran also accepted illegal gifts — worth nearly $10,000 total — from civil engineer Rodrigo Santos. Santos was also the founder and principal of the engineering firm Santos & Urrutia Structural Engineers Inc., which provided engineering services and helped clients manage building permits. In exchange for Santos’ bribes, Curran performed biased and improper inspections on buildings to expedite approval of plans and permits. 

After Curran admitted to violating conflict-of-interest laws — shortly after the U.S. District Court convicted Nuru — San Franciscans became wary of city departments’ ability to complete their responsibilities with integrity.

In 2022, Reddit user u/ispeakdatruf questioned what Curran’s arrest indicated about the DBI as a whole. “When corruption is done by long-term employees like [Curran], you can bet your last dollar that it’s reaching the top,” they wrote in a thread on the r/sanfrancisco subreddit. “Internally people know who’s corrupt and who’s not. If the upper management turns a blind eye to it, it’s because they’re in on [it].”

Although this claim lacks concrete evidence, many agree there is not enough oversight in city departments to prevent corruption. The Urban Legend reached out to DBI director of communications Patrick Hannan, who declined to comment about the department’s failure to deter corruption. 

History teacher Josie Rodberg believes that some corruption may be unavoidable. “The San Francisco city government is so complex, with so many different boards and commissions and committees,” Rodberg said. “It’s inevitable that … things fall through the cracks.”

City departments have attempted to rebuild public trust by creating policy reforms that aim to prevent corruption. “Over the past five-plus years, we have enacted a series of good government measures to safeguard against illegal and unethical activity,” SFPW policy and communications director Rachel Gordon wrote in an email to The Urban Legend. “We have zero tolerance for unlawful and unethical behavior and will take immediate action to hold the offending employee accountable through the City’s administrative process.”

According to Gordon, part of the SFPW policy reform requires all employees and officials to take an online ethics training course. Ajay Haddad ’26, a member of SFPW-affiliated nonprofit Refuse Refuse, questioned the course’s effectiveness. “As someone who has worked multiple jobs requiring ethics training, I would say that an online course is the worst way to go about anything,” he said. “Ask literally anyone who has ever taken an unsupervised [or] unproctored online exam. I guarantee at least half did not follow the rules given.”

On May 19, 2021, the DBI also implemented reforms to their ethics policies and departmental code of conduct. “The department has focused on ensuring transparency, efficiency and accountability,” said Patrick Hannan, DBI communications director, in an interview with The Urban Legend. “[We’ve] streamlined the permit review process, codifying policies and procedures and implementing a comprehensive reform package to ensure the integrity of our services.”

However, these reforms have not been entirely successful in preventing corruption within the DBI. On March 4, 2025, a federal court decision convicted former DBI inspector Van Zeng of two counts of financial conflict of interest. Zeng’s misdemeanors included providing expedited permit approval for upgrades to his own home and multiple properties his parents owned. Zeng’s corruption lasted more than four years despite policy reforms, continuing until March 2025.

Hannan stated that the DBI worked promptly to address Zeng’s actions after discovering his exploitation of the system. “We took immediate action when Van Zeng’s inappropriate actions were brought to light,” Hannan wrote in an email to The Urban Legend. “Those inappropriate actions preceded the current management — not a single member of our executive team was in their current position at that time. In fact, just two of our five executives were even employed by DBI at that time in 2020.”

Hannan did not mention that current DBI director Patrick O’Riordan was in his current position during Zeng’s violation of conflict-of-interest laws.

There have been other instances of corruption in the DBI, including one instance of construction executives issuing bribes to DBI employees, according to Mission Local. On Jan. 5, 2024, Siavash Tahbazof, SST Investments developer and SIA Consulting founder, pleaded guilty to bribing Curran, as well as DBI plan-checkers Cyril Yu and Rodolfo Pada.

Some feel that the dishonesty in city departments — especially the DBI — has led to an inefficiency in the departments’ work. “I’ve seen a lot of poorly built sewer structures [and] underground infrastructure, [such as] leaking trenches, overflow with little rainfall and exposed infrastructure to the public,” Haddad said. “I have also explored [abandoned areas] with people that work for SFPUC (San Francisco Public Utilities Commission), [which] I believe is connected to the DBI. … It’s possible the corruption has affected SFPUC because obviously it is not allowed for a worker to exert their status to bring me places I shouldn’t be.”

In an effort to resolve issues that Curran and other corrupt employees caused, the DBI created an amnesty plan that would benefit those affected by its corruption. The plan involves relieving property owners of any fees or fines that would have come as a result of unpermitted building work. However, some believe that the auditing performed in the amnesty plan is insufficient. 

In a May 2025 article, Mission Local reported that, out of the 15,281 properties linked to Curran, only 5,445 were listed on the DBI’s audit. An audited property marks a property as eligibility for compensation. The DBI only audited properties that Curran inspected unscheduled. However, this does not necessarily include all improperly inspected properties.

Of the audited properties, a mere 140 underwent physical inspections. As a result, the amnesty plan deemed many properties ineligible for compensation. This caused many thousands of homeowners or property owners to go uncompensated for issues Curran caused. 

The DBI completed its own auditing process, enabling the department to decide which properties were eligible for compensation. By rendering fewer homes eligible for compensation, the DBI reduced the amount of money it would need to pay in fines and fees.

However, the DBI’s internal audit might not have been corrupt. “As a historian, I always try to think about, like, there are individual people behind these,” Rodberg said. “There’s so much riding on who the individual people are. … I would say, most people who devote their lives to public service and city government — they’re not in it for the money and the glory. They’re in it because they think it’s good, important work to do.”

The DBI has made other efforts to deter corruption recently. “The DBI has also been deeply involved in the PermitSF initiative since it was started by Mayor Lurie earlier this year,” Hannan said. According to the PermitSF website, this reform is focused on developing new permit technology — making the process of acquiring a building or construction permit faster, easier and more fair.

The DBI has also made recent changes to staffing. “We have created a new data analysis group … [helping] divisions improve management and accountability. … [We also] met DBI objectives for the Housing for All Initiative,” Hannan said.

The DBI is looking to the future with their Five Year Strategic Plan, which ensures code-compliant construction. “We updated our Five Year Strategic Plan and put together strategic plan action teams to implement it. The strategic action teams meet regularly and provide updates to the executive team to ensure accountability and progress on the goals,” Hannan said. 

The DBI found both success and failure in its processes, but Rodberg argues that more media attention could help deter the DBI from further corruption and hold it accountable. “These city agencies have often been … hotbeds of corruption, because they’re a little bit hidden from the public. … It doesn’t get the same kind of public attention, and yet it really impacts people’s lives,” she said. “I think in general, having more public attention and media coverage of what city agencies do and how they help or hurt people is another way [to] … shed light onto something that’s usually kind of in the background, [and] might also be a way to prevent corruption.”