Port of Seattle — Partner in Employment contract fraud ($250K misappropriated, $509K Port contracts)

A Port of Seattle internal audit found that a nonprofit workforce contractor had misappropriated approximately $250,000 in public funds — and had been reporting 45 clients served when the real number was 10, and 21 job placements when the real number was zero.

What happened

The Port of Seattle’s Internal Audit Department published Report #2024-17 in December 2024, documenting that approximately $250,000 was misappropriated from Partner in Employment (PIE), a nonprofit that held approximately $509,000 in Port of Seattle contracts, by PIE’s Executive Director Hien Kieu.

The audit documented specific performance falsifications:

• April 2024: PIE reported serving 45 clients; the actual count was 10
• April 2024: PIE reported 21 job placements; the actual count was zero

Port staff involved in the contracting relationship included Bookda Gheisar (Senior Director, Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) and Anna Pavlik (Director, Workforce Development).

What the primary source says

The Port of Seattle Internal Audit Report #2024-17 is the primary source. It documents the misappropriation amount, the falsified performance numbers, and the Port contract totals. Criminal referral status was not confirmed in the audit report; confirming it would require a Public Records Act request to the Port and to the King County Sheriff’s Office.

Status

PIE’s contracts with the Port were suspended following the audit. No criminal charges have been publicly announced. This is an audit-finding-level case until further action is confirmed.

Why it’s in the registry

A Port audit confirmed misappropriation with named actors and a confirmed dollar loss. The performance falsifications — reporting four and a half times more clients served than actually served, and reporting job placements when there were none — raise a broader question: how reliable is outcome data from publicly funded nonprofit workforce programs if program management didn’t catch this before an audit?

Reform implication

Three reforms apply:

1. Nonprofit subrecipient performance verification at intervals shorter than the annual audit cycle — the 45-vs-10 and 21-vs-zero gaps should have been caught by program management, not internal audit
2. Port Internal Audit authority and resourcing to flag red flags faster
3. Standardized outcome-data verification protocols for workforce programs across regional agencies that contract with nonprofit providers

See [reform: nonprofit_subrecipient_monitoring].

Relationship to other cases

• KC-2026-001 (KCRHA forensic audit) covers similar regional-agency subrecipient oversight failures.
• A Public Records Act request to the Port for the post-audit contract action timeline is the next investigatory step.