Sonoma Valley felon gets two years in jail

Daniel Broin has been convicted of embezzling $100,000 from Sonoma Valley’s Finnish American Home Association.|

The former executive director of the nonprofit Finnish American Home Association, Daniel Broin, was sentenced on March 21 to two years in prison.

FAHA provides affordable housing to seniors and operates two facilties on West Verano Avenue.

Following a three-week trial, Broin, 57, was convicted in January of embezzling $139,000 from the organization over a five-year period.

Jurors found Broin guilty of grand theft by embezzlement but acquitted him of a second charge of theft from an elder. He was also cleared of a special white-collar crime allegation.

Broin was hired as FAHA executive director in November 2010 and almost immediately began embezzling funds by writing checks from a business account to pay his personal rent. He also used FAHA funds to pay for an attorney who represented him in a civil suit, and for the purchase of a camper. He also made large cash withdrawals from FAHA’s business accounts and then used that money to create money orders made payable to himself or his bank accounts.

He was arrested in March 2016 following a seven-month investigation by the Sonoma County District Attorney’s office, which was initiated following the discovery of “financial irregularities,” according to FAHA’s board of directors president, Steve Rowe.

Charges against his domestic partner, Ayrick Broin, 44, were dismissed.

In a message from her office, District Attorney Jill Ravitch stated, “As executive director of a nonprofit organization, Mr. Broin was in a position of trust which he abused from the beginning for his personal gain. This type of theft impacts not only the victim organization but the community as a whole.”

State law requires the sentence be served in the Sonoma County Jail. With time off for good behavior, he could serve just over a year, according to Deputy District Attorney Amy Ariyoshi, who prosecuted the case before Judge Shelly Averill.

Email lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.

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