Six-month jail term for Sonoma County project grad embezzler

A Santa Rosa woman who embezzled nearly $50,000 from the Cotati-Rohnert Park Project Graduation while serving as treasurer for the nonprofit organization has been sentenced to six months of county jail time after pleading no contest earlier this year.

Mary Katherine David, 38, also will serve four years of formal probation, including an additional three-month jail term that can be served through jail alternatives, such as electronic monitoring, the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office said.

David served four years on the board of the organization that sponsors safe and sober graduation parties for the district’s high schools, authorities said. She was made treasurer in 2014 and began forging herself checks in amounts from $200 to $1,000 that her attorney said were spent on clothes. Over three years she took almost $50,000, prosecutors said, falsifying records to cover her tracks until a check written by the nonprofit in April 2017 bounced due to insufficient funds, exposing her scheme, authorities said.

Her attorney later gave a check for $40,000 cobbled together by David’s family to the Project Grad board.

In January, she pleaded no contest to felony grand theft and three counts of felony forgery.

-Mary Callahan