###

After recently approving Arcata House Partnership (AHP)’s grant application to fund the conversion of the Days Inn & Suites in Valley West into permanent supportive housing for homeless people, the Arcata City Council will hold a special meeting on Friday to consider approving a request from the non-profit organization to increase the grant proposal to nearly double the initial amount.

The project is a part of a plan to convert two Valley West motels – the Days Inn and the Redroof Inn – into homeless housing, brought before the city by AHP and local development company Danco. During a meeting on Dec. 15, the city council approved the necessary zoning changes to allow for permanent supportive housing to be developed on both sites. The council also approved a joint grant application with the City and AHP for $10,787,000 in state Homekey funds to cover the cost. According to the staff report, Arcata House has since updated the project’s budget to $12 million.

“Subsequent to the December 15 approval, AHP updated the preliminary project development budget to $12 million,” the staff report states. “During the week of January 17 AHP consulted with the CA Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), which recommended the application be increased to $19 million to cover potential additional costs.”

Darleen Spoor, executive director of AHP, told the Outpost that the change is primarily due to an oversight on the part of the non-profit. Spoor said that the projected budget for the project has always been $12 million, that the application amount was incorrect and the new application is meant to correct that error. Because HCD recommends applying for more funding that you need, Spoor said, AHP is requesting $15 million for development costs. The non-profit is additionally applying for $4 million in operating subsidies, Spoor said, which would help fund the operating costs for five years.

The council will vote on two resolutions on Friday – one that will replace the grant application amount and another that will repeal and replace the amount of a loan agreement between the City and AHP. The City will loan AHP the $19 million, to be paid back (with three percent interest) by the grant funding. Due to some concerns brought up by members of both the council and the planning commission that there may not have been enough public engagement prior to the council’s approval of the zoning changes, the loan agreement has also been updated to include a requirement that the housing project “shall include a plan for ongoing outreach to and input from neighbors and residents.”

After hearing some public concerns about the project, Spoor said that AHP has also made a change to the project proposal. Initially, AHP planned to allot all 60 units of the Days Inn building for chronically homeless individuals – folks who have been homeless for at least one year and suffer from some sort of disability. Spoor said that AHP now plans to reserve 40 of the units for the chronically homeless and make 20 units available to other types of homeless people — those who have become unhoused more recently or do not suffer from any disabilities. Spoor hopes that this will help alleviate some community member’s concerns that the project may attract a certain type of homeless population. And Spoor says that listening to the community is something AHP will continue to do moving forward.

“We’re going to work really hard to let the community know we’re there and we’re going to help,” Spoor told the Outpost. “We are going to be part of the solution in Valley West.”

The Arcata City Council special meeting will be held over Zoom on Friday, Jan. 28 at noon. You can view the agenda and directions on how to participate here.

###

###

A Manila woman is headed to federal prison next week after pleading guilty to bank fraud committed while working as the fiscal director of the Wiyot Tribe. 

Brandy Cogburn, 44, has been sentenced to a 21-month prison term, plus three years of supervised release, and ordered to repay the tribe $95,001. According to court documents, she executed a multi-pronged embezzlement scheme over a period of about five months in 2013 by overpaying herself, cashing out unearned vacation hours and using tribe-issued checks and a debit card for personal gain. She has been ordered to surrender herself on Tuesday, Feb. 1, to begin serving her sentence.

Hired by the Wiyot Tribe in 2012, Cogburn’s employment there ended in 2015, shortly after the Wiyot Tribal Council launched an internal investigation into the tribe’s own fiscal department. 

“The primary issue was the failure to complete audits,” Wiyot Tribal Administrator Michelle Vassel told the Outpost in an email. “During that time, it was hard to determine what exactly was going on. Brandy was good at shifting blame and creating an adversary environment which made it hard to see the whole picture.”

She was placed on leave and quit via text message not long afterward, according to court documents. After its internal investigation, the tribe wound up referring the matter to the U.S. Office of Inspector General, whose own investigation would take four years to complete, according Vassel.

In the meantime, Cogburn was hired as the financial controller for the North Coast Co-op. During her tenure there, the Co-op was in a state of upheaval, mired in internal squabbles and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy due to a variety of internal and external factors. A few employees tried to blow the whistle on “financial malfeasance” they’d observed, including irregular accounting methods and a lack of transparency, but management stood behind Cogburn — for a while, anyway.

The North Coast Co-op wound up firing Cogburn in late 2018 for “incompetence” and later sued her in small claims court. The case accused her of embezzlement and theft, saying she racked up $1,366 in unauthorized personal charges on the company’s credit card, wrote the Co-op a check that bounced and absconded with a company-issued laptop.

The Outpost published a couple of stories in late 2018 about the Co-op’s internal strife and financial troubles. The general manager and board president at the time said they had investigated the allegations of embezzlement, with help from the Co-op’s auditor and legal counsel, and found no evidence to support them. 

However, the case records on file at the county courthouse include copies of letters that Co-op managers and a hired attorney sent to Cogburn in the summer and fall of 2018. The letters demanded the return of the company laptop and threatened legal action if she failed to reimburse the Co-op for her fraudulent credit card charges. 

Calls and emails to the North Coast Co-op’s current board and management this week have not been returned.

As for Cogburn’s Wiyot-related shenanigans, the chickens came home to roost, so to speak, on March 12, 2019, when a grand jury from the U.S. District Court’s northern California division indicted Cogburn on six counts of bank fraud.

According to the indictment, Cogburn wrote a series of unauthorized checks on behalf of the tribe and deposited them into a Redwood Capital Bank account that she controlled. She also used a debit card to withdraw funds from a tribe-owned checking account, falsely telling merchants that she had tribal authorization, and she manipulated the payroll system to give herself an unauthorized raise, issue herself double paychecks, rack up unearned vacation hours and take excessive holiday bonuses.

In interviews with federal authorities, Cogburn’s former colleagues describe her as a rodeo enthusiast who was often aggressive and confrontational. They say she had trouble completing basic bookkeeping tasks and often failed or refused to turn over documents they requested. When she did turn them over they were often riddled with errors or filled with suspicious, seemingly random figures. She’d spent a decade working at Mid-City Motor World before coming to the tribe, and in 2012, shortly after she was hired, she earned a degree in accounting and finance from Humboldt State University. 

Cogburn used tribal accounts to purchase “a lot of horse equipment,” “cowboy stuff” and “farm stuff” such as livestock feed, according to employees interviewed by federal investigators. The tribe’s then-environmental director, Stephen Kullman, found such purchases suspicious since the tribe didn’t own any horses or livestock.

Cogburn’s case was assigned to Senior District Court Judge William Alsup and began wending its way through the judicial process. Cogburn initially pleaded not guilty but after a series of preliminary hearings and status conferences throughout 2019, a change of plea hearing was scheduled for early 2020. After a series of delays — some related to the COVID-19 pandemic — Cogburn, through her attorney, submitted an application in October 2020 to change her plea to guilty.

Prior to sentencing, Cogburn’s appointed attorney, San Rafael-based Karen McConville, submitted to the court a memorandum quibbling with some of the dollar figures involved in her client’s fraud and asking the judge for leniency. The U.S. government, as plaintiff, had recommended a sentence of 21 months in prison, but McConville said Cogburn should instead receive six months of home confinement followed by five years’ probation and 500 hours of community service.

“Needless to say the power and authority given to Ms. Cogburn lead [sic] her to abuse it for herself and for that she is guilty of criminal misconduct,” the attorney wrote, but she argued that her client wasn’t entirely to blame. “She inherited a broken fiscal system in [the] process of being upgraded and [was] abandoned by her predecessors. She didn’t have the experience or the ability to do the job she was hired to do and should have resigned when that became clear to her, but she needed the job, and the Tribe was happy that she acquiesced to requests that they benefited from personally too.”

Cogburn is repentant, McConville told the court.

“She is not inclined to repeat the mistakes of her past, including those at North Coast Co-Op, a position she took on after she left the Tribe,” McConville argued. “Ms. Cogburn is atoning for her past misconduct by giving back to her community through ‘Horses That Settle’ which she also opened in 2018. This program allows for children and adults to be with animals on her property free of charge. She also has a program for suicide prevention.”

In response to this plea for mercy, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristina Green submitted a memo of her own, arguing that Cogburn deserved no such thing. Not only did she commit premeditated and complex fraud, Green argued, she had also submitted a fabricated letter of support in one of her prior sentencing memos.

Cogburn had given the court an undated letter signed only by “a Tribal member, employee and friend” who claimed to have worked with Cogburn from 2012-2015. Cogburn said the author was reluctant to reveal their identity for fear of retribution.

Questioned about the letter’s authenticity, Cogburn initially said it had been written by Fawn Lopez, an administrative assistant with the tribe. However, Lopez later testified that she wasn’t the author. Under further questioning, Cogburn claimed the letter had actually been written by a man named John Richardson, who, it turned out, lived in Reno and had never been a member or employee of the Wiyot Tribe.

Prosecutors called Cogburn’s claims about the letter “preposterous” and “nonsensical.” Since the letter was clearly fake, they argued, Cogburn should be subjected to a “two-level enhancement” to federal sentencing guidelines.

As for the argument that Cogburn had inherited “a broken financial system” and was not alone in benefiting from her corruption, federal prosecutors weren’t swayed.

“Cogburn’s shirking of responsibility and pointing the finger at others sidesteps a key point, which is that she was the fiscal director,” Green argued [emphasis in the original]. 

She continued:

As fiscal director, it was her duty to lead by example and ensure the finances were managed appropriately. She not only failed in these responsibilities but used her role to steal and now tries to blame her fraudulent behavior on other circumstances.

The manner in which the defendant executed her fraud, far from demonstrating financial inexperience, reflects her criminal sophistication. She used any and every means available to embezzle. She used the Tribe’s debit card to pay for personal items; she called Citibank to pay off her personal credit card expenses using the Tribe’s account information; she manipulated the payroll system to increase her salary payments without authorization; and she took unauthorized leave cash outs.

Judge Alsup sided with the prosecution, sentencing Cogburn to the full 21-month sentence they’d sought. 

Vassel, the Wiyot tribal administrator, said she was told by the U.S. Attorney’s Office that Cogburn was given a severe sentence “due to the sophisticated nature of the criminal activity.”

Vassel believes that’s appropriate because the impact to the tribe has also been severe. As a small, non-gaming tribe with no economic development of its own, the Wiyot Tribe relies heavily on grants, Vassel said, and Cogburn’s actions made it harder for the tribe to be competitive.

“[T]he amount of her embezzlement is nowhere near the cost of the ordeal for the Tribe,” Vassel said. “There were additional costs such as penalties and interest of payroll taxes and accounting cleanup which took a team of forensic accountants, and specialized contractual accountants [to fix].” 

The tribe had to pay twice for financial audits for several years because Cogburn’s submissions had been incomplete and non-compliant. The tribe has taken a lot longer than 21 months to recover from Cogburn’s misdeeds, and Vassel said the damage wasn’t all financial.

“Her actions caused real harm to the Wiyot Community and the Tribe continues to recover from that,” she said. “You cannot put a dollar amount on loss of public trust, moral injury, staff attrition or [the] long-term costs of the divisions in the community she created to hide her activities.”

The Outpost attempted to reach Cogburn for comment, leaving a voicemail on a phone number found in the small claims court case file. The message was not returned.

Eureka Police Department press release: 

On January 27, 2022, Detectives with the Eureka Police Department’s Problem Oriented Policing Team (POP) and Special Agents with the Humboldt County Drug Task Force, responded to a residence on the 1400 block of 11th Street in Eureka to serve a search warrant after receiving numerous complaints that 42-year-old Jonah Keef Taylor was selling narcotics and was in possession of firearms. Taylor is a convicted felon and is prohibited from owning or possessing firearms and ammunition.

Taylor and four other subjects were detained on the property. During a search of the residence, detectives located a loaded 9mm pistol and an unloaded .357 Magnum pistol. Detectives also located a recently disassembled Butane Honey Oil lab, approximately sixty-five pounds of marijuana and two large butane tanks.

One of the additional subjects detained on the property was identified as 53-year-old Charles Steven Flinn of Eureka. Flinn is on active parole and was found to be in possession of a small amount of methamphetamine.

Taylor was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for felon in possession of a firearm, felon in possession of ammunition and manufacturing a controlled substance. Flinn was arrested and booked for possession of a controlled substance and violation of parole.

Anyone with information about ongoing nuisance properties and/or drug activity is encouraged to contact the Eureka Police POP Team at (707) 441-4373.

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Jan. 26, 2022, at about 8:37 p.m., a Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputy on patrol in the Eureka area observed a motorcycle traveling on 5^th Street at a high rate of speed.

When the deputy attempted to conduct a traffic stop on the motorcycle, the driver failed to yield and a pursuit ensued. The deputy pursued the motorcycle for approximately one-half mile onto 13^th street, where the driver eventually yielded.

The driver of the motorcycle, identified as 26-year-old Nathaniel Shane Murner, was taken into custody without incident following the deputy’s investigation.

Murner was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of evading a peace officer (VC 2800.1(a)), driving without a license (VC 12500(b)), driving under the influence of alcohol (VC 23152(A)), driving with a suspended license – prior conviction (VC 14601.2(A)) and violation of probation (PC 1203.2(A)(2)).

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Jan. 26, 2022, at about 6:39 p.m., a Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputy on patrol in the Eureka area observed a vehicle that had been reported stolen out of McKinleyville traveling on Broadway Street.

Deputies conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle and detained the driver without incident. As part of their investigation, deputies deployed HCSO K9 Yahtzee to perform a free air sniff around the stolen vehicle. During this procedure, K9 Yahtzee alerted deputies to the presence of a narcotic.

During a search of the vehicle deputies located drug paraphernalia and a key commonly used to bypass vehicle ignition locks.

The driver of the vehicle, 34-year-old John Burton Cole III, was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of possession of stolen property (PC 496(a)), possession of burglary tools (PC 466), possession of a controlled substance paraphernalia (HS 11364(a)), driving with a suspended/revoked license (VC 14601.1(a)) and violation of probation (PC 1203.2(a)(2)).

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Jan. 25, 2022, at about 7:30 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a residence on the 1500 block of Giuntoli Lane for the report of a burglary.

According to residents of the home, a male suspect unknown to the residents forced entry into the home earlier that evening and stole electronics. The suspect was captured on surveillance video at the residence. Through further investigation, the suspect was identified as 43-year-old Jesse David Machin and a warrant for his arrest was requested.

On the evening of January 26, officers with the Arcata Police Department located Machin and took him into custody. Machin was found to be in possession of property that had been stolen from the residence.

Machin was booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of burglary (PC 459/461(a)) and vandalism (PC 594(b)(1)).

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office would like to thank the Arcata Police Department for their assistance and apprehension of Machin.

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

From the Humboldt County Drug Task Force:

Since early January 2022 the Humboldt County Drug Task Force (HCDTF) had been investigating Maximo Espitia (61 years old from Eureka) for methamphetamine sales. As a result of their investigation agents received a search warrant for Espitia.

On January 26th, 2022 HCDTF agents contacted Espitia as he exited his vehicle at a business on Bear Paws Ln. in Loleta. Espitia was detained without incident. Agents served the search warrant on the vehicle at which time agents located 1 pound of methamphetamine in the driver’s side door panel.

Espitia was transported to the Humboldt County Jail and booked for the following charges:

• H&S 11378 Possession of methamphetamine for sale

• H&S 11379 Transportation of methamphetamine for sale

Anyone with information related to this investigation or other narcotics related crimes are encouraged to call the Humboldt County Drug Task Force at 707-267-9976.