Kissimmee's mayor is arrested on grand theft charges, accused of steering 90,000 dollars in city grant money to her own businesses and her tenants

The mayor of a city of about 80,000 people south of Orlando was taken into custody on Wednesday. Jackie Espinosa, who has been mayor of Kissimmee since November 2024, was arrested on charges of grand theft and organized scheme to defraud and booked into the Osceola County jail with no bond, state officials said at a news conference on October 21.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier laid out the state's account. Espinosa applied for the Kissimmee Business Boost 2.0 Program on the day applications opened in September 2025, a program meant to help small businesses hurt by the COVID 19 pandemic. Businesses she owned received 50,000 dollars, and 40,000 dollars more went to businesses renting from her, for a combined 90,000 dollars in public money, as of October 21. "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," Uthmeier said. "The evidence makes very clear there was intent to engage in this conflict of interest that ultimately abused her office to enrich herself."

The arrest did not come out of nowhere. A prosecutor's report had already found that Espinosa committed three of seven alleged ethics violations and recommended that city commissioners consider articles of impeachment to remove her from office. Espinosa had argued that the city's written guidelines at the time did not bar elected officials from applying for the grants. The 13 page report concluded her conduct was serious enough to put removal on the table anyway.

Her attorney, Migdalia Perez, answered the charges in a statement. "The prosecution must establish that the mayor acted with criminal intent. We firmly maintain that she did not," Perez said. "There is a fundamental difference between an alleged ethics violation and a criminal offense. The state cannot transform one into the other without providing every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Espinosa is presumed innocent, and the charges will be tested in court.