Florida AG Uthmeier talks Kissimmee mayor's arrest | FULL

Hello everybody, good afternoon. It's good to be here in Orlando. I'm joined today by CFO Blaise Ngole here, FDLE Commissioner Larry Keefe, and our special counsel from our Attorney General, Public Corruption Unit, Rich Manti. I think by now you've seen the news that today we are announcing charges against Eva Espinoza, Kissimmee Mayor, charges of grand theft and organized scheme to defraud. These are first and second degree felonies. Last week we were in Fort Pierce where we announced a conviction, a public corruption conviction against the city manager. The theme here is we hold corrupt public officials accountable. if you are going to abuse your office, if you are going to abuse the public trust to enrich yourself or family members, we are going to find you and we are going to hold you accountable. Today we're talking about the Kissimmee Business Boost 2.0 program. This was a program to try to help small businesses get back up on their feet after the COVID pandemic. It was not designed to help government officials enrich themselves unfortunately Miss Espinoza who both supported and voted to approve this business assistance fund the day applications opened in September 2025 she applied there were three different applications seeking assistance for her and family members and a total of fifty thousand dollars the evidence makes very clear that there was intent to engage in this conflict of interest that ultimately abused her office to enrich herself. Mayor Espinosa demonstrated an intent to create, streamline, and simplify, reduce oversight of, and more easily enable a process whereby herself and immediate family could apply for and receive city funds to which she was not entitled. Again, everybody here in the community has a duty to engage in good civility with others in the public. But government officials, public servants are held to an even higher standard. It is up to them to do right in serving the people, not act in corrupt fashion, enriching themselves, breaking the law. Since we created the Public Integrity Unit about a year ago, we've launched dozens of investigations. A couple of those are now public, and there will be more to come very soon. But again, let this be a message for everybody out there that there is zero tolerance when it comes to public corruption. We will hold violators accountable. I want to thank a couple people here. This case originally was referred to us by Eric Soskin, who ran the Doge operation for the governor, working hand-in-hand with the CFO here, who's gone county-by-county highlighting waste, fraud, and abuse. He's done a fantastic job being a bulldog for the taxpayers, for the citizens, showing that ultimately there is more money that needs to return to the taxpayers, money that should not be ending up in the pockets of politicians. Thanks to their investigation, we were able to build a case. I want to thank Commissioner Keefe and FDLE here for being poignant in the law enforcement effort and the support of the DFS investigators for helping too. So I'll turn it over to the CFO here, and then we'll hear from our other guests. Thank you very much. Thank you, General. Good morning. My name is Blaise Ngole. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of the State of Florida. When I took office, I made a promise to the people of Florida that I was going to look out for them and root out waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption every chance I could get and holding bad actors accountable. That is a promise that I have been taking seriously and over the last 15 months my investigators have arrested nearly 1,400, almost 1,400 people that have been stealing and committing financial crimes including public assistance fraud, insurance fraud, arson, and other financial crimes. A few months ago, in response to my directive to our office and our investigators to make sure that we have a hyper-awareness of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption, my office conducted a routine audit of several different local governments and their COVID-19 related grant programs. One of those governments was the city of Kissimmee. As my team conducted the audit they noticed irregularities concerning the awarding of grants through the city's business boost 2.0 program that led my criminal investigators to dig further and determine that Jackie Espinosa may have used her official position as mayor to improperly influence the award awarding of funds and that were distributed through this business boost 2.0 grant seven businesses located in properties owned or managed by Jackie Espinosa's family received a combined total of $90,000 in grant funds. $50,000 went to Espinosa's businesses, while $40,000 went to tenants in Espinosa's businesses. So $50,000 directly, $40,000 indirectly. During the course of the DFS investigation, we found that Jackie Espinosa herself applied for the grants on behalf of her family's businesses. From there, we made a referral to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Office of Executive Investigations, the Florida Commission on Ethics, and the Special prosecutor appointed by the city of Kissimmee for further investigation. Since then, my office has worked hand in glove with FDLE to investigate this case and ensure that if there was any corruption in the city of Kissimmee, that we would find it. Public service means that you work for the public. It is about public service, not self-service. Today, I am proud to stand here and say that Jackie Espinosa has been arrested on charges of grand theft, a second-degree felony, and scheme to defraud a first-degree felony. With these charges, she could be facing up to 30 years in prison. This is the local government equivalent of insider congressional stock trading. But this scheme today was uncovered, and that scheme may eventually land Jackie Espinosa in prison. As CFO, I have made it abundantly clear, and I will continue to make it abundantly clear, that corruption has no place in the state of Florida. I do not care if you are a Democrat. I do not care if you are a Republican. If you steal from the taxpayers, we will find you. We will investigate you. We will gather the evidence and we will put you in prison. I want to thank my investigators who have worked extremely hard. Our audit team, who was very thorough. I want to thank General Uthmeyer for helping bring these charges along with the statewide prosecutor. I want to thank FDLE Commissioner. Thank you for all of your hard work to ensure that we are rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. Thank you for being here today. And just know this. I know that a pot of money seems to be an easy grab for elected officials. Don't do it. We will find you and we're going to put on the handcuffs. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. I'm Larry Keefe. I am here on behalf of the men and women who are the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. They are investigators. They develop and follow leads. We have a very elaborate intelligence collection apparatus. So we find cases. This case being a bit different, and I'll comment on that in a moment with our Chief Financial Officer, Blaise Angolia, and his auditors and investigators, without whom we would not be here today. And we'll talk more about that in a moment, about the future and what this portends and what this message is. But we find and develop leads, we collect facts, and then we present the truth to our prosecutors, our top prosecutor, Attorney General James Uthmeyer, the Office of Statewide Prosecutions, and the 20 state prosecutors in this case. That's how it works. We investigate, we present the truth to them, they file charges, and then they prosecute. In this case, it's very important to note, because this is presaging the future here, The chief financial officer in Golia, his auditors, what they were doing in the DOJ work ahead of time, have a very unique set of specialized financial skills. They are our curators and custodians of our financial wherewithal here in the state, but they're also a law enforcement agency. There's a very bright future ahead of days like this to come where we'll be standing up here talking about accountability, not just for public officials but otherwise. But turning to the case at hand here and maybe speaking, you know, a bit beyond it to the future in the mindset of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the men and women who make it happen in that mission is the way we look at public corruption is this, you know, not to have too much of a civics lesson in our 250 years. the government exists. It exists with the consent of the people. As part of that covenant, the people empower. They empower government officials with the power, control, and authority to honestly conduct the public's business, to not be corrupt, to have the people's backs. A lot of times we come and have these press conferences. It's in situations where there's a violent crime, There's human trafficking, there's child exploitation, and those types of settings where there's a threat to the community, an external threat to the people from the criminal element. But you might say to yourself in instances like this where you deal with a public official over money, you know, why the big deal? Why is it so important? The reason is this, is that if you don't hold public officials accountable in these public corruption cases, then the whole system really unravels. And that's not an exaggeration. There has to be accountability. When public officials betray the public trust, it's not just limited to them and their discreet circumstances. It diminishes the trust and credibility that the public has in all of the other public officials who are honest, who are doing a great job, who are giving their life to a noble career. And because of the bad acts of one, it diminishes trust in others. And we see that in other areas. Election security is very important to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. and you have a couple of bad actors that do some bad things in the course of election, then it creates distrust in the outcomes of the election. So that's why it's such an important thing, and that's why we at FDLE are very glad to know that we have leaders like Attorney General Uthmeyer, like Chief Financial Officer Ngolea, that we know where their priorities are. There's the creation of the Public Integrity Unit in the Attorney General's office. There's a very active hotline or portal on the website to present leads to us because they're not going to let this devolvement, this unraveling of our social fabric occur. And so the last thing I have to say is a message that I'll look into those cameras out there is that this has been, public corruption has been declared a very high, if not the highest priority. All of the resources and attention are focused to it. And as profoundly and directly and slowly as I can say, no one is too important. No one is too powerful. Geography is not an issue, whether it's the halls of government in Tallahassee, Key West, Pensacola, Jacksonville, anywhere in between. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is here to present you facts to bring prosecutions. Thank you, Larry. And Rich Mantilla will be lead on this case. I'll let him say a few words. Thanks for your work, Rich. Thank you, General. And I also want to extend my thanks to the investigations conducted both at the CFO's office as well as by Florida Department of Law Enforcement's personnel. They've been thorough. They've been meticulous. They've been really wonderful to work with, and they produce a great product. There isn't a whole lot to say other than, you know, I've been doing cases like this for a little over 25 years now, and it is rare. I encountered a statement from the defendant's attorney today essentially saying, and it is rare for me to hear something like this, but her defense to being a criminal is that she's just unethical. It is unusual that I run into something like that, but I'm here to tell you that, yes, in fact, you can, and she tried her hardest to be both. It appears to be the case. And I want to point out that this is not just all of our conclusion. For those of you who do remember the ethics investigation that resulted in this case, here their money went and the return of those monies. I would point out that all the months that this has been public in knowledge, this defendant has not repaid those funds, pocketed it proudly. And so with that, again, I appreciate everybody's participation in this case. They put together a wonderful case, and we look forward to trying it. Thank you. Thanks, Rich. So we will be prosecuting this. We prosecute to the fullest. I think by now in Florida you see our prosecutors are not messing around. We've got the lowest crime rates in history, and it's not a coincidence. We've doubled our prosecution caseload in a little over a year. Our conviction rate is up over 50%. We've launched several new initiatives focused on protecting kids from child predators. We've got over 2,100 child predators behind bars as part of these efforts. The public integrity unit that Rich steers, we're going to be pursuing further cases. We'll have more announcements to come, but at the end of the day, we're going to do what's right and just and protect our citizens. So thanks to all involved. Thanks to the law enforcement for their hard work, the investigators, the CFO, Commissioner Keefe, and everybody else for ensuring that we are doing our best to honor the public trust. So I'll take a few questions. Yeah, look, when you're, I'll just, I'll be a little bit concise here. When you are part of a government program to hand out money and you then fill out multiple applications to take said money, it's pretty hard to say you didn't know what you were doing. Speaking of that statement in which Mayor Espinosa's lawyer defends her, saying she's innocent or maintains her innocence, says there's a fundamental difference between alleged ethics violation and a criminal offense. So can you talk about how the evidence you've collected in this investigation goes beyond just an alleged ethics violation and constitutes a criminal offense? Sure. Well, you'll get to see the charging documents. I think they all should be made public at this point. You'll see there's multiple applications that she herself signed. She did receive the money. I think that's pretty clearly laid out in the evidence and the bank account information. Evidence will further show that she engaged in various policy decisions in this program to streamline and make it more easy for herself to go apply and receive funds. So we're not going to prosecute the whole case here today. I'll let you read the charging documents. You know, Rich is going to put it together in the courtroom, but I think you can tell by his tone that we're not too worried about this one. I have not spoken to him since the arrest was made. I I know he's been traveling through the state today, but we will link up. He typically takes any actions needed pretty quickly. It was mentioned by your office that you found troubling irregularities. Obviously, you mentioned today that money was sent to the tenants who received money, as well as the rest of the family. Could you speak more about what those troubling irregularities were and why it led to this criminal investigation? Sure, and some of the information, if there's any gaps, I'm sure they can fill in. So when our teams went in, we started pulling all these documents. we did notice um some things that were sort of troubling one was that she had signed the uh application right so when they created the program they created the program in an open date and when that opening to apply there was the first day i want to say that she had put in the applications um in advance of everyone else so this was the window open she did the application she signed the applications and she was like one of the first ones in line and then when they started digging they started realizing that there were people within her own office that said this is not a good idea you should not do it this is potentially illegal she neglected that very good information she chose to ignore it and as we started pulling the strings we found more and the the units that she owns and the other applicants were tenants of hers so that those were some of the ones so we so we realized at the time that there was something here that was in our opinion illegal and that's when we sent it over to uh FDLE and they had concluded along with the the uh the public integrity unit that yes it indeed was a crime the city like the city even has told us from in the beginning that nothing in their application process went apart. I don't know if an official from applying for these COVID relief funds. Why did your office feel it was important to investigate specifically how this was being used in your sending? I think it boils down to a matter of control. She was the person who actually controlled the process. She controlled her own applications, and she was part of the control mechanism that approved the applications. Typically, ahead of arrests, those arrests are not made public with the understanding that it can endanger law enforcement it can warn the person who could be arrested who could then flee that happened in this case where there were people who knew ahead of time any insight as to how and why that happened yeah i don't know the answer to that it did leak that this arrest was going to take place um we don't like that we're going to get to the bottom of how that happened it certainly endangers the the security the safety of law enforcement that are going and carrying out the arrest and also can you know at times have problems with evidence so we'll look into that i do know she's obviously had some ethics issues we've had the special prosecutor stuff so i think the public uh was on alert waiting uh for some accountability to come down which did come down today but it does appear that the press knew about the arrest which we'll get to the bottom of all right thanks everybody i appreciate it we'll see you