Former San Francisco Non-Profit Head Arrested On 34 Felony Counts

The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office announced on Tuesday that the former Director of the non-profit group SF SAFE, Kyra Worthy, was arrested and charged with 34 felony counts for misusing more than $700,000 of the charities funds and causing the charity to fold earlier this year.

According to the DA’s office, Worthy was hired on to lead SF SAFE, a group that “engages, educates, and empowers San Franciscans to build safer neighborhoods through crime prevention, education, and public safety services that result in stronger, more vibrant and resilient communities” in early 2018. At the time, the group had over $300,000 in funds at various banks.

However, over the next 6 years, she began using charity funds for herself. This began in 2018, when she gave her landlord over $9,000 in cashier’s checks from the charities to pay rent, and then claiming that the money instead went to “community events”. However, she quickly worked her way up the embezzling scale, as she paid around $90,000 to a home healthcare company in North Carolina for her parents, with the funds coming directly from the charity.

Money was also quickly drained for many luxury items. This included $350,000 going towards luxury gift boxes, $50,000 going towards a holiday party, and $100,000 going to an event simply known as “Candy Explosion.” The latter was especially egregious, as $20,000 of that was paid only for desserts and ice cream.

By 2023, SF SAFE only had around $5,000 in their bank account. Employees saw a huge change, as paychecks were no longer being paid through check or direct deposit, but through services like Venmo instead. Contractors began reporting that checks were bouncing. At the same time, Worthy continued using SF SAFE funds for personal use, including flights, ride hailing services, and out-of-state restaurants and car rental services.

Over $700,000 in misappropriated funds

When it became apparent that Worthy had embezzled money and used the charity as her own bank account, and proof of forged invoices and checks surfaced, she was fired in January of this year. SF SAFE would wind up shuttering shortly afterwards. The District Attorney’s office immediately began investigating them, with DA Brooke Jenkins recusing herself from the case as some of the stolen funds came from a donation that Jenkins had professionally known. 25 search warrants were issued and executed in the subsequent months, with dozens of witnesses interviewed. The felonies began racking up, with crimes such as misappropriation of public money, failure to pay taxes on employee payments, grand theft, wage theft from employees, writing checks with insufficient funds began to surface, and others.

This all culminated on Tuesday when Worthy was arrested in San Francisco.

“Because of SF SAFE’s relationship with SFPD, SFPD asked the District Attorney’s Office to undertake this investigation,” said the DA’s office on Tuesday. “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. By the late spring of 2023, the only money left in the SFPCU accounts was a $5,000 monthly transfer from the SF SAFE Wells Fargo account. Worthy spent nearly this full amount every month.”

While a trial is likely to come soon, legal experts noted that many of Worthy’s charges would be hard to negotiate around.

“Worthy spent a lot of money that wasn’t hers and embezzled money and screwed over employees,” said lawyer Gloria Banks to the Globe on Tuesday. “But the non-profit worked with the SFPD. Tangentially, she went after the SFPD, and that is something you never do. So they kind of led the charge against her after everything came to light. If a deal is made, many of the charges will be difficult to drop because of how close they are to the police. And that’s not to mention how much they hurt employees and any of the efforts made with crime prevention.

“This is not going to end well for her.”