A former San Francisco city official admitted guilt on Thursday to orchestrating a massive theft of taxpayer money, confessing to embezzling more than $600,000 from the city’s workers’ compensation division and facilitating a kickback scheme involving other public employees.
Stanley Ellicott, the former assistant director of finance and technology for the Department of Human Resources (DHR), entered the plea to resolve charges spanning two separate corruption scandals that have rocked city hall over the last year.
According to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, Ellicott faces a three-year state prison sentence.
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The plea deal covers a brazen scheme Ellicott ran from inside the DHR. Between May 2019 and January 2024, Ellicott abused his oversight role to siphon $627,118.86 directly from city coffers. Prosecutors detailed how he recruited a friend to register a shell company in Illinois called “IAG Services” and open a bank account that Ellicott controlled.
Using his position, Ellicott registered the fake business as a city vendor. He then approved payments for auditing services on more than 600 workers’ compensation claims—work that was never actually performed.
Thursday’s guilty plea also addressed Ellicott’s role as a middleman in a wider corruption probe involving the Community Challenge Grant Program.
In January, prosecutors charged Ellicott with aiding Lanita Henriquez, the program’s former director, in steering city contracts to entities controlled by Rudolph Dwayne Jones, a former mayoral staffer. Authorities allege Jones paid Ellicott nearly $270,000 in kickbacks. Ellicott then funneled portions of that money—roughly $65,000—back to Henriquez using personal payment apps like Venmo and PayPal.
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District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the conviction marks a significant step in the city’s effort to clean up local government.
“San Franciscans have a right to expect that city employees will act with integrity while performing their public duties and not seek to enrich themselves at the public’s expense,” Jenkins said in a statement following the plea. “This conviction comes almost two years after charges were initially filed and demonstrates my office’s ongoing commitment to rooting out public corruption.”
The wider investigation has ensnared several high-profile figures. Henriquez and Jones were hit with a 59-count complaint in August 2023 involving bribery and misappropriation of funds. In a related development, Dana Williamson, a former chief of staff to Governor Gavin Newsom, was arrested in November on separate fraud charges.
Ellicott is scheduled to return to court for formal sentencing on January 2, 2026.
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