Kissimmee Mayor Jackie Espinosa faces grand theft and fraud charges after $50,000 in city COVID grants allegedly flowed to family businesses, Florida’s AG says.

Kissimmee Mayor Jackie Espinosa was arrested this week on grand theft and organized scheme to defraud charges after state officials said $50,000 in COVID-era small business relief money went to firms tied to her and her immediate family.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia described the case as a conflict of interest that abused public office. Espinosa, 58, was booked into the Osceola County Jail on Wednesday morning under the name Eva Jacqulyn Espinosa. A not guilty plea was entered on her behalf Thursday, and bond was set at $70,000.

ABC News reported that an arrest warrant accuses her of improperly appropriating funds through the city’s Business Boost 2.0 program. If convicted as charged, she faces up to 30 years in prison, officials said.

The case lands in a long line of pandemic-era relief cases in which prosecutors say public money became a private windfall. Taxpayers were told the grants would stabilize small businesses. Prosecutors now say the mayor’s own circle collected a share.

Similar accountability fights have followed other local leaders, including a Lawrence mayor arrested on federal COVID fraud charges in a separate case involving diverted relief funds.

State audit traced $50,000 to three family-linked firms

Ingoglia’s office audited COVID-related grant programs and found that three businesses owned or controlled by Espinosa or members of her immediate family allegedly received $50,000 total through Kissimmee’s Business Boost 2.0 program, according to the warrant described by reporters.

The businesses included a dance production studio, a diner, and a real estate company. State officials said Espinosa and family members applied on the day applications opened in September 2025.

At a Wednesday press briefing, Ingoglia framed the conduct in blunt terms.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia said:

"This is the local government equivalent of insider congressional stock trading,"

Uthmeier went further on intent. He said the evidence showed Espinosa moved to shape a process that favored her own household.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier stated:

"The evidence makes very clear that there was intent to engage in this conflict of interest that ultimately abused her office to enrich herself,"

He added that she showed intent to create, streamline, and simplify the process, reduce oversight, and more easily enable herself and immediate family to apply for and receive city funds to which she was not entitled.

Prosecutors say she pushed the program, then collected

Just The News reported that Business Boost 2.0 used American Rescue Plan Act money and that Espinosa advocated for the program after becoming mayor in November 2024. The outlet said the grants were approved and deposited, and that she allegedly refused to return the funds after a city attorney warned of a prohibited conflict of interest.

Uthmeier’s message was direct: public officials do not get to draft the rules and then pen themselves a check. He said the mayor used her position to push a COVID relief grant program, then took $50,000 from it for her family’s businesses after being warned it was prohibited.

Florida has already seen major pandemic-fraud enforcement, including an alleged $32 million COVID fraud fugitive captured in Jamaica and returned to face charges in the state.

Espinosa has served as mayor since November 2024. Her term runs through 2028. A 2023 photo caption noted she owns Matador Tacos & Tapas Bar in Kissimmee; the warrant summary did not state whether that restaurant was one of the three grant recipients.

Defense draws a line between ethics trouble and crime

Espinosa’s attorney, Migdalia Perez, told reporters the mayor maintains her innocence and plans to challenge the allegations vigorously in court. Perez cast the matter as a publicly approved grant program run by city staff, not a secret theft scheme.

Migdalia Perez said in a statement:

"This case involves a publicly approved grant program administered by City staff, not a secret scheme to steal taxpayer money,"

She also argued prosecutors must prove criminal intent and that an alleged ethics problem is not automatically a crime.

Perez stated:

"The prosecution must establish that the mayor acted with criminal intent. We firmly maintain that she did not,"

In another passage, she said there is a fundamental difference between an alleged ethics violation and a criminal offense, and that the state cannot transform one into the other without proving every element beyond a reasonable doubt.

That defense will matter in court. For voters and taxpayers, the core dispute is simpler: who got the money, who set the rules, and whether officeholders treated relief funds like a family account.

City leaves her in office while it opens its own review

The City of Kissimmee said an arrested mayor remains in the seat until suspension, removal, or resignation. Vice Mayor Angela Eady will handle mayoral duties at City Commission meetings and ceremonial events in Espinosa’s absence.

City manager Mike Steigerwald authorized an internal investigation of Business Boost 2.0 after the arrest. The city said the review will examine how the program was designed, administered, and overseen, whether grant policies were followed, and whether those policies are adequate.

Charges listed by the attorney general are grand theft, a second-degree felony, and organized scheme to defraud, a first-degree felony. Court filings beyond the warrant summary were not detailed in the initial reporting, and the legal names of the three businesses were not released in the accounts cited here.

National fraud enforcement has kept expanding as agencies chase people accused of draining public and private funds, a trend reflected when the FBI expanded its fraud most wanted list with new names tied to taxpayer and investor losses.

Open questions remain. Reporting did not name the specific family members tied to the applications, did not publish full statutory citations or a case number, and did not show whether any suspension process has started. What is on the record is the arrest, the dollar figure, the family-linked businesses, the same-day applications, the bond, the not guilty plea, and the state’s claim of intentional self-dealing.

COVID relief was sold as emergency help for struggling firms. When a sitting mayor’s own circle ends up on the receiving end of a program she helped advance, the public is right to demand a full accounting, and a court test of whether that conduct was merely sloppy ethics or a crime.