The former chief operating officer of a nonprofit that the county once relied on to deploy life-saving overdose reversal drugs across San Diego was jailed last week for allegedly taking more than $134,000 in public funds from the organization.
Amy Knox, who had managed the Harm Reduction Coalition of San Diego’s finances, was arrested Thursday and charged with three felony counts of misappropriation of public money and three felony counts of fraudulent appropriation. She is set to appear Wednesday before a Superior Court judge.
Knox’s arrest comes months after the county last June cancelled contracts with the nonprofit led by CEO Tara Stamos that called for the organization to distribute overdose reversal drug Narcan and test street drugs in a bid to prevent fentanyl deaths.
At the time, a county spokesperson said the county was terminating both contracts for convenience, which means it was ending them without citing a specific breach of contract. Knox had served as the administrator of both county contracts. Until that point, the Harm Reduction Coalition served as the contractor leading regional efforts to ramp up the approach meant to reduce the negative consequences of drug use by providing tools to reduce the risk of deadly overdoses.
Around the same time, Stamos approached the District Attorney’s Office after noticing suspicious withdrawals from the nonprofit’s checking account including payments for plastic surgeries and to Knox and her husband. Knox had left the Harm Reduction Coalition in late May as Stamos started to raise questions.
A District Attorney’s Office investigation revealed Harm Reduction Coalition funds – backed almost entirely by county and philanthropic funds – covered $30,000 for breast implants and a lift, arm and thigh lifts and a tummy tuck. Investigators also allege in an arrest warrant filed in San Diego Superior Court last week that Knox used the nonprofit’s bank account to cover more than $10,200 in San Diego Gas & Electric bills and nearly $94,000 in credit card bills.
In the arrest warrant filed last Wednesday, DA’s Office investigator Mark Kelley wrote that all the credit card payments appeared to cover Knox’s personal expenses.
“The expenses included trips to Hawaii and Disneyland, high-end women’s clothing and cosmetics, various streaming service subscriptions, home improvement expenses, purebred dogs and dog training services and martial arts training,” Kelley wrote.
Kelley also argued in the finding that Knox’s substantial alleged theft, a past embezzlement conviction and likelihood that she could use stolen funds to post bail should increase her bail amount to $250,000 – far more than the typical bail for that offense.
Indeed, Knox was convicted and sentenced to four years in state prison in 2014 on embezzlement charges.
Past Superior Court records show Knox, who then worked as chief financial officer at a National City construction company, used company credit cards to make unauthorized purchases and opened credit cards in her name without the owner’s permission. Investigators found the company lost more than $500,000 over three years starting in 2011.
Then the owner of an electric contracting company that Knox went to work for contacted police to allege Knox, whom he had just terminated, had fraudulently used the company’s American Express credit card. The loss totaled $3,256 over six months.
Knox pleaded guilty in July 2015 to two counts of felony grand theft.
Years later, Kelley wrote in the arrest warrant filed last week, Knox had “complete control of the Harm Reduction Coalition of San Diego’s finances” – managing its county contracts, payroll, tax filings and more.
In July, Voice of San Diego asked the county how it vets high-level staff of county contractors and whether it provides training and assistance to grassroots nonprofits like the Harm Reduction Coalition, which was founded only in 2020 before receiving major county contracts. At the time, Voice flagged Knox’s past conviction.
A county spokesperson wrote that the county’s contract officers ensure providers have criminal background check procedures in place. He also wrote that the county refers grassroots nonprofits it partners with free training opportunities and provides orientations and regular check-ins to all contractors.
“The contractor is required to have a criminal background check policy in place for contractor employees, subcontractors, consultants, and volunteers,” spokesperson Tim McClain wrote at the time. “It is the responsibility of the contractor, in this case Harm Reduction Coalition, to follow their internal policy and procedure for conducting criminal background checks and making hiring decisions for their organization.”
Stamos told Voice that Knox’s criminal history didn’t come up in her organization’s background checks and that she only learned of the gravity of the past embezzlement charges last summer.
McClain also said the county was continuing to dole out naloxone, often sold under the brand Narcan.
“Naloxone is still widely available in the community through an array of county-funded programs and other community providers, much more so than it was in the recent past,” spokesperson Tim McClain wrote. “We have been working rapidly to operationalize additional pathways to distribute naloxone to the community.”
A couple days later, the District Attorney’s Office announced it was investigating what had happened with the county contractor.
The county soon inked new contracts with organizations that previously worked with the Harm Reduction Coalition to distribute Narcan.
“I am extremely grateful to the San Diego County district attorney and their team for thoroughly carrying out this investigation and seeking to hold accountable the individual responsible for the actions that have led to these charges,” Stamos said. “To be clear, these actions have hurt our community, particularly our most vulnerable members and their actions have caused our organization to lose critical funding. This has impeded the ability of HRCSD to do the important work of addressing the overdose crisis and in the supporting of individuals with substance use disorder, whether that is by preventing overdose death with education, Naloxone distribution and drug checking services or by helping them to find appropriate treatment for substance use disorder or by preventing the spread of HIV and viral hepatitis in our community.”