Jury Convicts SF Building Inspector on Family Project OKs

A former San Francisco building inspector was found guilty of approving construction projects connected to his father.

A jury convicted Van Zeng, 36, of two misdemeanor charges for breaking conflict-of-interest rules, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Zeng faces up to 12 months in jail, though his attorney expects he’ll serve no time. Zeng is scheduled for sentencing on April 23.

Zeng was fired from the Department of Building Inspection in November 2023 after the San Francisco Standard reported he’d conducted ethically questionable inspections on properties owned or under construction by his family.

The news led District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to charge Van Zeng with three misdemeanors over inspections he conducted on a duplex he owned with his parents in the Sunset District, as well as remodeling projects done by his father’s construction company.

His father, Kelvin Zeng, wasn’t charged with any crimes. The elder Zeng is a building contractor who allegedly arranged illegal payments for Bernie Curran, a disgraced former building inspector at the center of a public corruption scandal, according to court documents.

Zeng’s parents flip houses; his sister is a real estate agent.

Jurors this week acquitted the younger Zeng of the charge of inspecting his own home, but convicted him for the two other inspections.

“San Franciscans entrust public employees to do their jobs responsibly with integrity and not engage in self-serving behavior,” Jenkins said in a statement. “When public employees engage in this kind of behavior they erode the public’s trust and confidence in government and must be held accountable.”

Until the city hired him as a building inspector in March 2020, Zeng had worked for his father’s firm, Mutual Seiko Construction.

In April 2020, Zeng inspected construction on a duplex, which he would later share with his sister. The following September and November, he inspected other remodeling jobs performed by his father.

San Francisco law bars employees from making decisions in which they have a financial conflict of interest, including those benefiting their recent past employers.

Randy Knox, Zeng’s attorney, argued at trial that his client should be acquitted for the inspection on his own home because he disclosed to his supervisor that his father was working on the project and because his supervisor ordered him to inspect it.

Knox plans to ask a judge to sentence Zeng to community service and ethics training, even though Zeng no longer works for the city. He said Zeng, whom he described as a “stellar” inspector, was devastated by his firing and the criminal case against him.

“That was his dream job,” Knox told the Chronicle. “He wanted to show that he could make it on his own without his dad.”

— Dana Bartholomew