On Wednesday, a federal court in San Francisco indicted former Fortuna councilmember Kris Mobley for defrauding her employer of over $500,000 by allegedly writing herself checks from business accounts, sending automatic payments from the company to her own accounts, and using a business credit card for “cash advances at casinos, airfare and hotel expenses for personal travel.”

The indictment, first published by the North Coast Journal, refers to the Fortuna construction company she worked for only as “Victim Company.” According to a LinkedIn page, she is a business manager for Beacom Construction Co. in Fortuna, and is listed as a point of contact for the company in a couple of government construction documents online.

According to the indictment, between January 2022 and November 2024, Mobley allegedly operated a scheme to funnel company money into her own accounts.

In one allegation, “this scheme took the form of writing checks from the Victim’s company account at Umpqua Bank and sending them through the United States mail to Capital One. Instead of having those checks applied to the Victim Company’s business credit card account at Capital One, Mobley directed Capital One to apply those checks to one or both of her personal credit card accounts at Capital One,” the indictment states.

She allegedly used Automated Clearing House electronic payments from the company’s bank account to her personal credit card accounts — 107 payments totaling approximately $299,700 over about a year and a half. She allegedly used blank checks and issued them to herself, sent herself duplicate, inaccurate and unrelated payroll checks, and issued herself bonus payments, unauthorized.The indictment includes a combined 10 counts of mail fraud and wire fraud, each a felony. The counts come with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine (or twice the amount of gain or loss), and three years of supervised release, according to the indictment.

The indictment says she worked for the company from the 1990s until 2025. The bookkeeper retired in 2019 or 2020, when Mobley assumed the bookkeeper’s responsibilities. She was in charge of preparing and entering accounting entries into the firm’s accounting software, and assisted with bill payments, payroll taxes, employee health benefits and government contracts, the indictment states.

“(Mobley) was a trusted employee of the Victim Company, and she was considered a valuable member of the team running the company,” the incident said.

Mobley resigned from her seat on the city council last week, announced by city officials who stated that she was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Two city officials said they believe no city funds were embezzled.

A call to Beacom Construction by the Times-Standard were not returned by the print deadline and attempts to reach Mobley have not been successful.

On Monday, the Fortuna City Council decided to fill the position for the remaining two years of her term with an application process. The filing deadline is March 4, and a special meeting is set for March 10.

Sage Alexander can be reached at 707-441-0504.