LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — In a troubling revelation that raises questions about financial oversight and accountability, our ongoing investigation into SafeNest has uncovered a series of lavish credit card expenses, leading to mounting concerns about how the state's largest domestic violence organization is using its funds.
A former employee-turned-whistleblower is speaking out about SafeNest as she calls for greater transparency and reform within the organization. One of her concerns is that some staffers are spending the non-profit's money on themselves, which leaves less for survivors, and she has the receipts to prove it.
WATCH | Our investigation following the money at Nevada's largest domestic violence shelter continues:
Jennifer Wolsey worked as the grant manager in SafeNest's finance department from October 2024 to January 2025. A short time, but long enough, she says, to learn the difference between SafeNest's image and the reality she saw on the inside.
Wolsey resigned after determining SafeNest wasn't an organization she could work for.
The shelter's funding comes from government grants, fundraisers and private donations — much-needed money to support survivors of domestic violence. But Wolsey found that some was spent on employees.
"We have staff members who are being able to purchase food at restaurants, but we're not being able to make sure that we provide the shelter with enough food," Wolsey told me.
It's a concern we're not hearing for the first time.
In a cell phone video taken in April 2024 by then-SafeNest client Natasha, she says, "This is day three. They've been starving us. We ain't had no food. They usually fill up the refrigerators. We ain't had no food. No eggs, no juice, no nothing."
In a later interview with 13 Investigates, Natasha said, "I feel like it's 'Hunger Games' there. You have to basically fight to survive in there! It's horrible."
When state inspectors went to SafeNest on Oct. 30, 2024 to check up on concerns shared by the women in our stories, they found "some food present but not a great deal."
State inspectors noted the director of residential services, and two other clients mentioned when the food is delivered, clients take the food from the kitchen and horde it in their rooms at times."
SafeNest declined our multiple interview requests. They said in a statement that "clients may bring their own food into shelter," but the organization also "purchases food directly from U.S. Foods," and "the refrigerators and freezers with shared meals are open and restocked regularly."
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"The resources that we have and we're receiving still doesn't meet the level of need there," Wolsey said. "I think we should be more mindful in how we're spending our money."
Credit card records Wolsey provided show SafeNest staffers repeatedly spending shelter money on meals — sometimes for just one person.
"A lot of Starbucks, Door Dash...anywhere between $1,000 to $2,000 a month. And it was just disturbing!" Wolsey said.
Receipts show more than $5,600 spent over four months — October 2024 to January 2025 — at restaurants ranging from Chick-fil-A and Panera to sushi and a Japanese steakhouse.
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"Recognizing that none of that funding or that food was being utilized for clients," said Wolsey. "I recognize the importance of having staff incentives and things like that, but this wasn't staff incentives for all staff. This was staff incentives for a single few, and it was extensive, repeatedly."
Another concern Wolsey shared with us had to do with The Giving Machine, a 2023 holiday giving program that provided donations in part to buy Visa gift cards for SafeNest clients. When she tried to trace them, Wolsey had questions about how SafeNest staffers distributed them.
"If they're on scene with Metro [police], did they provide it to a survivor there? Did they provide it to a survivor at the shelter? How was it used, and where was the tracking for this?" Wolsey asked.
In her November progress report emailed to SafeNest leadership, she wrote, "$2,200 in Visa gift cards was untracked, creating compliance risks and challenges in verifying expenditures."
"Angela Reyes, who is the chief program officer, it was her credit card that was used to purchase these Visa cards," Wolsey explained. "And then the survivor was actually supposed to sign off on a sheet that they received it, and those sheets were supposed to be held in the finance office. Those gift cards were supposed to be stored in the finance department. And none of that was being done. So, ultimately, she (Angela) was purchasing them, she was holding them, she was handing them out — hopefully she was handing them out — we just weren't tracking any of it. So, there's no way for us to say to a grantor that we know for sure what happened to the gift cards."
Wolsey thought, as she wrote in her progress report, that finding problems and suggesting fixes would help educate SafeNest leaders, "with the impression that if they knew better, they would do better. But what I continually found was that they did know better. They just didn't care."
Wolsey says she continued to focus on SafeNest's bottom line, looking closely at salaries. The non-profit's most recent IRS Form 900 — from 2023 — shows CEO Liz Ortenburger makes nearly $293,000 a year. Her salary went up from $261,000 the prior year, a $32,000 bump, while the organization reported its total revenue was down $2 million from the prior year.
Ortenburger's salary includes a $35,000 bonus. We've repeatedly asked SafeNest what Ortenburger does to earn the bonuses she gets. They have never provided an answer.
"You couldn't ever get a direct response," said Wolsey. "If you would directly ask that question to anyone from leadership, they'd say that it was really based on the unrestricted funds that were brought into the agency. So, unrestricted funds would be some of your foundation private grants, funding that comes from the donation center avenue and things like that."
As someone who's worked in the non-profit sector for most of her career, Wolsey says she was surprised by what she discovered, but even more so by the push-back she got when she brought issues to light.
"I entered this work to support people...to support vulnerable people that had been turned down and that had been mistreated by inequitable systems. And I thought that this was an agency that was providing that," Wolsey said. "And unfortunately, what I found out was it was part of the broken system that I was trying to fight against."