Director of now-defunct SF youth nonprofit accused of embezzling $250,000
SAN FRANCISCO – A Vallejo woman faces charges alleging that she embezzled more than $250,000 from a nonprofit that was providing assistance to students in San Francisco, according to a joint announcement from federal authorities.
Athena Harven, 53, was charged Wednesday in a San Francisco federal courtroom with four counts of wire fraud in connection with a scheme she ran from 2015 to 2018, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.
She was the director of operations at a now-defunct nonprofit that provided academic support and employment assistance to students in the Sunnydale and Visitacion Valley neighborhoods of San Francisco, prosecutors said.
The organization was funded in part by the city and county of San Francisco as well as the federal Housing and Urban Development Office of the Inspector General.
The indictment alleges that Harven wrote herself 119 checks on the nonprofit's bank account and prepared paperwork to suggest that the funds from many of those checks would be used to pay the nonprofit's payroll taxes, but she allegedly deposited the checks into bank accounts she controlled and spent the funds to enrich herself.
The indictment further alleges that Harven took several steps to conceal her fraud from the nonprofit, allowing the fraud to continue.