San Francisco, CA – The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office announced today the arrest of Kyra Worthy (49) of Richmond, the former executive director of the nonprofit SF SAFE, on 34 felony charges related to misappropriation of public money, submitting fraudulent invoices to a City department, theft from SF SAFE, wage theft from its employees and failing to pay withheld employee taxes, and writing checks with insufficient funds to defraud a bank. In total, Ms. Worthy is accused of illegally misusing over $700,000 during her tenure with SF SAFE. Ms. Worthy was arrested today by SFDA’s Office District Attorney Investigators.

SF SAFE was a long-standing nonprofit that partnered with the San Francisco Police Department. Because of SF SAFE’s relationship with SFPD, SFPD asked the District Attorney’s Office to undertake this investigation. In furtherance of its investigation, the District Attorney’s Office executed 25 search warrants, obtained hundreds of thousands of pages of financial and business records, and interviewed more than two dozen witnesses.

During the course of this investigation, District Attorney Investigators determined that at least some of the money allegedly stolen by Ms. Worthy was derived from a substantial donation to SF SAFE made by a person with a professional relationship with District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. Accordingly, out of an abundance of caution and to avoid the appearance of impropriety, DA Jenkins recused herself from the investigation and potential prosecution of this matter in February of this year. [1]

First, the complaint alleges two counts of misappropriation of public moneys in that she received more than a half a million dollars from the City’s Office of Employment and Workforce Development (OEWD) pursuant to a contract and failed to pay it over to the contract’s subgrantees, Bay Area Community Resources (BACR) and the Calle 24 Latino District (Calle 24). This contract was for a “Mission Safe Streets” program in which SF SAFE partnered with BACR and Calle 24, both of which are members of the Latino Task Force. Additionally, Ms. Worthy is charged in the complaint with four counts of submitting fraudulent invoices to OEWD relating to this contract.

The complaint also alleges that Ms. Worthy committed one count of grand theft by embezzlement in that she unlawfully and fraudulently used more than $100,000 of SF SAFE funds for her own use. In addition, the complaint alleges that Worthy committed one felony count of failing to pay withheld taxes and 24 felony counts of wage theft against employees of SF SAFE between September of 2023 and January of 2024. Finally, the complaint alleges that Ms. Worthy committed two counts of “check kiting” in that she willfully, unlawfully, and with the intent to defraud, wrote checks on SF SAFE bank accounts knowing the account did not contain sufficient funds.

An affidavit filed with the Court in support of an arrest warrant describes a pattern of activity over several years in which Ms. Worthy both stole and grossly misspent the nonprofit’s funds, culminating with a series of crimes in 2023 when SF SAFE was unable to meet its financial obligations. The affidavit states that when Ms. Worthy was hired at the beginning of 2018, SF SAFE had cash reserves in excess of three hundred thousand dollars. Despite SF SAFE receiving millions of dollars in public and private funds over the next five years, Ms. Worthy’s theft and mismanagement resulted in the 48-year-old charity having no assets and ceasing operations in January of 2024.

According to the affidavit, in 2018, Ms. Worthy paid her landlord with three SF SAFE cashier’s checks totaling $8,000. She told accountants the funds were for “community meetings” and Chinatown National Night Out. In 2019 and 2020, Ms. Worthy spent more than $90,000 of SF SAFE funds on a home healthcare worker for her parents in North Carolina. She created bare-bones invoices that stated the healthcare worker was providing services “Per scope of work and agreement,” and she categorized these payments in the SF SAFE general ledger as community meeting expenses and part of a safety project for Supervisorial District 10.

The affidavit also describes the “Mission Safe Streets” contract between SF SAFE and OEWD, in which SF SAFE received $400,000 from OEWD for services that were to be completed by BACR and $112,500 for services already completed by Calle 24. The affidavit references numerous emails between representatives from the Latino Task Force and Calle 24, OEWD employees, and Ms. Worthy, in which she was repeatedly instructed to pay the funds due to Calle 24. She made excuses, then for several months claimed the payment was on the way, first as an electronic funds transfer, then as a check, then as a payment on a billpay website. The affidavit states that SF SAFE bank records show that Worthy actually spent all the money SF SAFE owed to the other organizations on SF SAFE expenses and never paid BACR and Calle 24 the City funds she was entrusted to hold for them.

According to the affidavit, Ms. Worthy stopped withholding and paying payroll taxes for 27 employees in September of 2023 through January 2024 when SF SAFE ceased operations. Employees continued to receive their typical net paycheck amounts, leading them to believe SF SAFE was paying their withheld state and federal income taxes as it previously had. Over the course of four months, the affidavit explains, Ms. Worthy committed wage theft totaling about $80,000. The affidavit also states that when she submitted four months’ worth of invoices to OEWD for payment on the “Mission Safe Streets” contract, she falsely represented that she had paid full wages and taxes for all the employees on the contract and sought full reimbursement.

The affidavit further details how Ms. Worthy lavishly spent SF SAFE’s funds on parties, events, furniture, interior designers, and travel, even as SF SAFE was running out of money and she had stopped paying employees’ taxes. According to the affidavit, she spent more than $350,000 of SF SAFE’s money on luxury gift boxes in 2022 and 2023. The affidavit describes an event in October of 2023 called “Candy Explosion” for which Worthy paid more than $98,000 of SF Safe’s money, including the following expenses: $20,000 for desserts and ice cream; $15,000 for a taco truck; $19,000 for a petting zoo, face painting, bouncy houses, carnival games, and a climbing wall; $20,000 for event planners; and $7,000 for “mobile luxury restrooms.” The affidavit also describes an SF SAFE holiday party – which was not a fundraiser – for which she spent $6,000 on an event planner and nearly $50,000 on catering. The event featured a champagne greeting, open bar, and prime rib carving station.

The affidavit also describes that in July of 2023, Worthy handwrote two checks from an SF SAFE Police Credit Union bank account containing only about $600 and deposited them into SF SAFE accounts at Wells Fargo, where SF SAFE’s combined balance in three accounts at the time was below $6,500. One check was for $12,000 and the other was for $65,000. She then made transfers between the Wells Fargo accounts, in a manner designed to defraud the bank into believing that the accounts contained inflated balances. Worthy then made a necessary wire transfer of more than $17,000, obtained $3,000 in cashier’s checks, and paid several SF SAFE bills using the artificially inflated Wells Fargo accounts before both checks bounced a few days later.

These charges are a result of an on-going investigation by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office Public Integrity Task Force. Anyone with information is asked to call the Public Integrity Task Force tip line at 628-652-4444. You may remain anonymous