Two leaders of a fire safety nonprofit in a rural Northern California community have been arrested after prosecutors say they engaged in a pattern of illegal activity including the “flagrant misuse of taxpayer funds for personal enrichment,” according to a news release from the Nevada County District Attorney’s Office.
The executive director and field operations director of the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County, a nonprofit focused on wildfire prevention and education in the county west of Lake Tahoe, are facing a slew of felony charges after a years-long investigation into the nonprofit’s finances. Prosecutors say the crimes resulted in the misuse of more than $100,000.
Jamie Jones and Christopher Wackerly, who are listed as the council’s top executive and operations director, respectively, were charged last week by a grand jury on suspicion of embezzlement, grand theft, money laundering, mortgage fraud, insurance fraud, perjury and forgery. According to the Union newspaper in Nevada County, Jones and Wackerly were recently married. Both have been arrested and are being held in jail, according to the newspaper.
The Fire Safe Council of Nevada County, as well as the state’s umbrella organization, the California Fire Safe Council, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
“The evidence presented to the grand jury indicates a flagrant misuse of taxpayer funds for personal enrichment and the use of organizational accounts as if they were personal accounts,” Jesse Wilson, Nevada County district attorney, said in a statement.
Jones and Wackerly “engaged in a significant misappropriation of taxpayer funds” over a six-year period, according to the news release.
“The funds were entrusted to the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County for critical fire prevention and community safety purposes, as well as other publicly funded programs and services,” prosecutors said in the release. They are also accused of misusing public benefits, presenting fraudulent documentation to government agencies and making financial transactions “to conceal proceeds of criminal activity.”
Prosecutors said the charges followed an investigation that began in 2024 into allegations of misappropriated funds, but the probe was “expanded significantly as investigators uncovered additional alleged criminal conduct, including complex financial activity involving multiple public funding sources.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if they were linked, but the nonprofit had been the subject of at least two previous grand jury investigative reports related to the group’s finances, in 2022 and 2024.
After those reports, the Fire Safe Council issued a statement calling the findings “meritless and misleading.”
The council “and its board of directors have multiple layers of financial and management protocols in place based on sound, legal, transparent, and professional practices,” the council said in a 2024 statement.
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