California Highway Patrol (CHP) arrested a financial employee for the state controller’s office Wednesday on suspicion of grand theft.
Miguel Espinosa, a 58-year-old employee for the State’s Controller’s Disbursement Bureau, was arrested by the CHP Office of Protective Intelligence, Sacramento County Jail records show.
State Controller Malia Cohen said that as part of an ongoing investigation by her office, CHP served a warrant on Espinosa, and he was arrested on suspicion of grand theft as a result.
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“I have ordered his immediate termination,” Cohen, the chief fiscal officer of California, said in a statement Wednesday. “I want to thank CHP Commissioner Sean Duryee and the CHP Capitol Protection Section, Special Investigations Unit for responding swiftly to my request regarding this matter. Their prompt action resulted in the recovery of property that might otherwise have been lost. In light of the fact that this is an active investigation, I have no further comments at this time.”
The California state Capitol on Feb. 1, 2023, in Sacramento. State Controller Malia Cohen on Wednesday announced grand theft charges against a Disbursement Bureau employee. (Justin Sullivan/Justin Sullivan)
He was booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail on five felony counts of grand theft and five felony counts of buying or receiving stolen property.
Jail records say Espinosa is not eligible for bail and is scheduled to appear in Sacramento Superior Court Friday at 3 p.m. local time.
More details about the case against Espinosa were not immediately available.
The arrest comes on the heels of the recent collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank last month.
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Security guards and FDIC representatives open a Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) branch for customers in Santa Clara, California, on March 13, 2023. (Noah Berger/AFP via Getty Images)
Cohen was sworn in by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom as the first Black woman and first African American to serve as California’s state controller in January.
In remarks after taking her oath of office, Cohen vowed, “The work to create a more equitable California has already begun. I look forward to ensuring fiscal accountability, with an eye toward transparency and innovation,” The Sacramento Observer previously reported. She previously served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Just an hour’s drive from the state’s capital of Sacramento, San Francisco, and namely its crime problem, has also been thrust again into the national spotlight in the wake of the deadly stabbing of Cash App founder and tech executive Bob Lee.
State Controller Malia Cohen speaks at the 2020 San Francisco Women’s March. (HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Don Carmignani, San Francisco’s former fire commissioner, also was recently reportedly slashed and brutally beaten with a pipe by a group of homeless people outside his home in the city’s Marina District, though he managed to survive the brutal attack.
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Carmignani’s mother reportedly had previously called police on a group of homeless drug users outside her front door, but no officers arrived, so the woman shooed them away.
