One day after CapRadio’s former general manager was arrested and charged with felony theft and embezzlement, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho said he does not expect to level charges against anyone else in the years-long financial scandal that crippled the public media station.
Fidias “Jun” Reina, who served as CapRadio’s GM from 2020 until his resignation in 2023, surrendered himself at the Sacramento County Main Jail Thursday. He was released that same day after posting $200,000 bail, according to jail records.
“I don't anticipate any other charges at this time, but I can't really comment,” Ho told reporters after giving his State of Public Safety Address in downtown Sacramento on Friday. “If other information comes to light, we'll take a look at anything that comes to light.”
The Sacramento County District Attorney’s office accused Reina of “orchestrating a multi-year scheme” to divert CapRadio funds for his own personal use. The former executive allegedly misappropriated more than $1.3 million through unauthorized credit card charges, payments to his personal credit card accounts, and electronic fund transfers to his personal bank account.
The district attorney, who is running for California’s new 6th Congressional District, elaborated on Friday about the significance of the charges against Reina.
“CapRadio is a great nonprofit organization that provides news and information to the community,” Ho said. “When you have a nonprofit and when you have somebody in a position of [trust] that violates the trust, it undermines the purpose and the goal of that nonprofit.”
‘The scale is pretty big’
Monica Bustamante is a detective with the Sacramento County Sheriff Office’s Property Crimes Bureau. She led the investigation into Reina, which began in January 2024 and ran through August 2025.
Bustamante described the case as the largest she’s ever worked on. “The scale is pretty big for what the sheriff’s office would typically investigate,” she said. “It grew so nobody in the beginning had any idea what this was going to ultimately be. That was impossible to know.”
The investigation focused on transactions Reina allegedly carried out on his own, “so that resulted in only him being responsible for those.” She says while there was talk about whether Reina collaborated with others, such as on CapRadio’s now-scrapped moves to buildings in downtown Sacramento, “that was out of the scope of this investigation.”
Bustamante said she spoke with Reina’s attorney as part of the investigation, who made it clear that “Jun was not interested in having a conversation with me.” She said the first contact she had with the former executive was when he turned himself in Thursday at the Main Jail.
Jun Reina appears in an undated CapRadio file photo.CapRadio File
Bustamante said embezzlement cases like the one Reina is accused of committing are not uncommon, and that she hopes this incident can serve as a lesson for other nonprofits and businesses.
“Those in a position to make a difference in businesses and nonprofits, I hope that they learn,” she said. “It’s become a favorite phrase of mine, ‘trust but verify.’”
Details from criminal complaint
The felony complaint against Reina lists one count each of embezzlement, grand theft and forgery. Between Dec. 6, 2016 and March 25, 2022, Reina is accused of “fraudulently appropriating the property” and “unlawfully [taking] money or property belonging to” CapRadio.
Prosecutors described these offenses as being “of an ongoing and continuous nature” which were discovered in December 2023 when an Account Services Director obtained credit card statements and reviewed CapRadio’s bank accounts. This revealed charges “that appeared personal in nature and ACH (Automated Clearing House) transfers from Capital Radio’s [sic] bank account to the defendant’s personal account without supporting documentation.”
The complaint also says on Sept. 15, 2022, Reina allegedly violated the state’s Penal Code “with the intent to defraud, falsely make, alter, forge and counterfeit, utter, publish, pass and attempt and offer to pass, as true and genuine, MAGNUM TOWERS PROPOSAL, knowing the same to be false, altered, forged and counterfeited.”
The District Attorney’s office’s initial announcement listed Reina's alleged scheme as taking place between Dec. 6, 2016, and June 12, 2022.
Prosecutors identified CapRadio as the victim in the complaint, saying the station “had no knowledge… prior to this date of discovery of the offenses within.” They say the criminal activity was not discovered earlier because Reina used his position as the station’s general manager and chief financial officer “to conceal the transactions by miscoding payments as innocuous business payments, withholding credit card statements and creating false documentation.”
The complaint also says there was no disclosure to anyone at CapRadio that Reina was involved with the unauthorized distribution of funds.
Legal expert weighs in
Gabriel Chin is a Professor of Law at UC Davis. He said Reina’s case appeared to have been carefully investigated by the sheriff and district attorney’s offices.
“They seem to have come up with what looks like some fairly substantial evidence of suspicious conduct,” he said, adding that prosecutors are “understandably fussy about misuse of public funds.”
Chin said the three charges are known as “wobblers,” or offenses that can be punished as misdemeanors or felonies in California. He said that decision is initially made by prosecutors, but the court also has the power to treat the charges as one or the other.
“If the allegations are true, it’s distinctly unlikely that the court would treat these as misdemeanors, or that the prosecutor would change their mind,” Chin said.
He also said the amount of public funds involved in the case — over a million dollars — and the public nature of CapRadio would likely result in the charges being treated as felonies. “This wasn’t one sort of ‘wild weekend in Las Vegas,’” Chin said.” This is an ongoing set of actions.”
Regarding potential penalties or sentencing if Reina were found guilty, Chin said there is a lot of variability including the “wobbler” nature of the charges, enhancements included by prosecutors and the flexibility of California’s sentencing.
“It could be months in prison, or it could be less… could be days in prison, or in jail if it’s a misdemeanor, or no incarceration at all.” Chin said.
On the other hand, he said Reina could be facing years behind bars if convicted on all counts and if the “wobblers” are prosecuted as felonies. “If the case is as carefully investigated as it proves to be, and if there are no surprises, it is certainly possible that there could be a double digit sentence here… more than 10 years in state prison,” Chin explained.
Former GM’s arraignment set for Monday
Reina is set to be arraigned Monday afternoon in Sacramento County Superior Court. Chin said if the case proceeds to trial, white-collar crime cases like Reina’s are not “sweet and very straightforward.”
“An executive in an organization does spend money all the time for legitimate purposes, and in many cases those expenses are indistinguishable,” he explained.
Chin said prosecutors will have to prove criminality and will likely focus on “unambiguously inappropriate expenditures,” while a potential defense might pick away at expenses to minimize the amount of losses presented to a jury.
Chin said the case raises one overall question: if such a serious crime was committed, how did compliance and accounting systems fail to catch it?
“That’s something for every institution that handles money to think about, because it does indicate that something has gone seriously wrong… that someone could get away with this for so long, if it’s true,” he said.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by CapRadio Statehouse Politics Reporter Gerardo Zavala and Senior Producer Sarit Laschinsky. It was edited by Politics Editor Chris Nichols.
Following NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no CapRadio corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted or broadcast.
You can read our independent ongoing coverage of financial issues at Capital Public Radio here.
Editor’s note: CapRadio is licensed to Sacramento State, which is also an underwriter.
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