{"id":457901,"date":"2026-09-09T04:18:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/457901\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T04:18:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:18:17","slug":"fresno-arts-council-restitution-city-seeks-repayment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/457901\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresno Arts Council restitution: City seeks repayment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img width=\"1140\" height=\"449\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/suliana-caldwell-city-of-fresno-embezzlement.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"woman leaves a building\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"  \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"attach_desc\">Suliana Caldwell leaves federal court in Fresno in August 2026. Courtesy of City of Fresno<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tpublished on September 8, 2026 &#8211; 2:58 PM<br \/>Written by <a href=\"https:\/\/thebusinessjournal.com\/byline\/ben-hensley\/\" rel=\"tag nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Hensley<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A federal judge ordered former Fresno Arts Council operations manager Suliana Caldwell to repay approximately $1.1 million Tuesday, but questions remain about how money recovered through PayPal will be allocated.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Jennifer L. Thurston issued the restitution order Sept. 8. PayPal had reversed $901,844 in fraudulent charges, but city officials said Fresno had not received repayment from the nonprofit.<\/p>\n<p>A Sept. 2 federal court filing provides a breakdown of the losses. According to the government\u2019s memorandum regarding restitution, the FBI traced $1.82 million in stolen money, determining that $1.17 million came from Measure P funds owned and controlled by Fresno.<\/p>\n<p>The remaining $642,086 belonged to the Arts Council and came from sources the memorandum did not identify, prosecutors wrote.<\/p>\n<p>At the time of that filing, the Arts Council had confirmed receiving $576,800 in PayPal reimbursements. Prosecutors consequently sought $65,286.08 for the nonprofit, along with the city\u2019s full loss.<\/p>\n<p>The Munro Review <a href=\"https:\/\/munroreview.com\/2026\/09\/07\/the-fresno-arts-council-employee-who-embezzled-almost-2-million-was-convicted-and-faces-a-restitution-hearing-before-going-to-federal-prison-you-might-think-the-story-is-over-sorry-it-just-got-w\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">reported Monday<\/a> that subsequent reimbursements exceeded the nonprofit\u2019s separately identified losses, prompting prosecutors to stop seeking restitution for the Arts Council while continuing to pursue repayment for the city.<\/p>\n<p>The Sept. 2 filing also said PayPal had declined to submit its own restitution request despite repeated FBI requests to do so.<\/p>\n<p>The $901,844 in reversals reported at Tuesday\u2019s hearing exceeds the Arts Council\u2019s separately identified losses by nearly $260,000. That difference does not establish that the excess represents recovered city funds.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suliana Caldwell leaves federal court in Fresno in August 2026. Courtesy of City of Fresno published on September&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[53107,112,80880,114,113,25390,131423,84367,114802],"class_list":["post-457901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-embezzlement","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-arts-council","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-measure-p","tag-paypal","tag-restitution","tag-suliana-caldwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457901","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=457901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}