The former treasurer of an Orange County high school football booster club faces federal charges after allegedly using about $400,000 of the nonprofit fundraising group’s money to pay for personal expenses, including her home mortgage and credit card bills.<\/p>\n
Julie Hanway Molina, 56, was arrested Thursday at her Aliso Viejo home and charged with four counts of wire fraud. Her initial court appearance was scheduled for later Thursday in Santa Ana.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear whether she has an attorney who could speak on her behalf. <\/p>\n
A federal indictment returned earlier this month accused Molina diverting about $400,000 from the booster club to pay for her home mortgage, credit card bills and other personal expenses from 2023 to November 2025. The transactions included one in June 2023 that totaled about $131,500 from the booster club bank account in Laguna Hills through Federal Reserve facilities in New Jersey and Texas to an account in Santa Ana.<\/p>\n
Molina sent emails to the booster club’s board members that included false treasurer reports that did not disclose the misappropriated funds in an attempt to cover up the unauthorized payments, federal prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Molina faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each count, if convicted.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Wolverine Football Club said it is cooperating with the investigation.<\/p>\n
“The Wolverine Football Club is aware of the recent developments regarding the former treasurer,” the club said. “We have been cooperating fully with law enforcement throughout this process and will continue to do so. Because this is an active legal matter, we are unable to comment on the details at this time. Our current board remains focused on supporting our student-athletes and moving the football program forward. We appreciate the continued support of our families, sponsors and community.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former treasurer of an Orange County high school football booster club faces federal charges after allegedly using…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,3552,13784,611],"class_list":["post-461391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-crime-and-courts","tag-mission-viejo","tag-orange-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461391","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=461391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}