Athena Harven, 56, pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud in a plea agreement filed Friday in federal court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Harven, of Vallejo, was the operations director of Together, United, Recommitted, Forever, a nonprofit known as TURF, which provided academic support and job training to students in Sunnydale and Visitacion Valley and received funding from San Francisco and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.<\/p>\n
According to her plea agreement, Harven wrote at least 102 checks to herself totaling at least $241,192.34 from April 2015 to December 2018.\u00a0 Harven admitted to forging the signature of TURF\u2019s executive director, indicating in many of the checks\u2019 memo lines that the payments were for \u201cpayroll taxes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI spent the TURF funds I misappropriated on, among other things, groceries, gas, rent, utilities and clothing, and at restaurants, online, and on travel expenses, including at casinos in Las Vegas,\u201d Harven said in her plea agreement. \u201cI also used TURF funds to pay business expenses for my bakery\u00a0\u2014 including to fund a trip I took to the SoFlo Cake & Candy Expo in Miami, Florida in 2017, and to pay business rent in August 2018.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harven also admitted to deceiving the nonprofit\u2019s outside accountants after they asked for records to substantiate her claim that TURF had paid its payroll taxes, and she acknowledged intercepting and concealing \u201cdozens of communications\u201d from the state of California regarding the nonprofit\u2019s unpaid payroll taxes.<\/p>\n
When the nonprofit\u2019s leadership confronted Harven with evidence of her fraud, she tried to blame the executive director, Kim Mitchell, claiming that he had instructed her to embezzle the funds and send them to him, according to the plea agreement. Mitchell was not available for comment Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
In the wake of Harven\u2019s fraud, the nonprofit was forced to permanently close.<\/p>\n
Harven\u2019s public defender did not respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you have to write a story?\u201d Harven replied to a request for comment. \u201cIt\u2019s my personal business. It\u2019s not news, it\u2019s my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harven faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 and will be required to pay restitution of at least $241,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Athena Harven, 56, pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud in a plea agreement filed Friday in federal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[184,7,1312,723,13,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-1988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","15":"tag-san-francisco-news","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-headlines","18":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}