Arraignment on theft charges postponed for former Healdsburg Youth Soccer League president

The former president and treasurer of the Healdsburg Youth Soccer League, who stands accused of embezzling more than $50,000 from the organization by directly appropriating funds and writing fictitious checks, appeared in court Monday morning for his scheduled arraignment on felony theft charges.

However, the arraignment proceedings for Kyle Joseph Hoffman, 37, were postponed to April 18 to give Hoffman time to obtain an attorney. Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch's office is charging Hoffman with six felonies: three counts of grand theft and three counts of writing fictitious checks.

Presiding Judge Ken Gnoss told Hoffman on Monday that, because he appeared in court on his own recognizance, he would be released until his next scheduled hearing. Gnoss ordered Hoffman “to be of good conduct” and not to possess any checks, debit cards or other payment instruments not bearing his name, but attached no other conditions to his release.

According to Ravitch, prosecutors believe Hoffman embezzled between $53,000 and $58,000 during his tenure as president of the Youth Soccer League. She said he was served with a summons to appear in court but was never arrested.

“We look at the nature of the crime, the defendant's criminal history, and whether he poses a flight risk or a public safety risk (in deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant),” Ravitch said. “We determined in this case that he would not be a flight risk or a public safety risk if we proceeded in this fashion.”

Over the course of an investigation stretching back to last fall, uncovered evidence of financial “improprieties” during Hoffman's tenure as the president and treasurer of the Youth Soccer League, according to Healdsburg Police Lt. Kevin Young.

Young said police were notified of suspicious activity by the Youth Soccer League's Board of Directors on August 12, 2010, and thereupon launched their investigation. He said Hoffman is the only suspect in the case.

Young said the investigation was complex and painstaking because police had to sift through financial records that were themselves suspect or incomplete because they'd been overseen by Hoffman.

“With an embezzlement case there are two types,” Young said. “One is an employee from a firm secretes money and accounting discovers the problem – they have the paperwork and they notice it.

“The second type is the person in charge of accounting is accused of improprieties, and then it gets difficult," Young said. "The records are not all available, and that's what we were faced with here.

"We didn't have certain records, so we had to rebuild all of those account transactions," Young added. "We didn't have what you'd normally expect to have for accounting records – things like invoices, receipts, payments. All we had were checking account records.”

Young said police sorted through the soccer league's financial records dating back about a year-and-a-half, finding transactions that “did not appear to be legitimate business expenses.” He would not elaborate on the specific methods police allege Hoffman used to steal money from the organization.

“What we look for is diversion of funds for a different purpose (than what they're meant for),” Young said.