Larry Yates

Introduction

Larry Yates is the 72-year-old mayor of Haysi, Virginia — a town of about 500 residents in Dickenson County that he has led since 2008 — who was arrested in September 2026 on eight fraud-related charges after a Virginia State Police investigation into his spending of town money. The charges include felony embezzlement, use of public assets for personal benefit, credit card fraud, receiving goods obtained through credit card fraud, and two counts of credit card theft. When Yates ignored his own council’s calls to resign, all six members of the Haysi Town Council voted in October 2026 to launch the process of expelling him from office under the town charter — a step that would make him one of the few Virginia mayors removed by his own town government rather than by voters.

Background Information

Yates’s trouble built over months before any officer got involved. Town council meeting minutes, reviewed in the aftermath of his arrest, documented months of council members questioning his spending on town credit cards and on advances against his monthly pay. The council imposed restrictions — including a requirement that the mayor obtain council approval for all nonessential spending — which led to heated discussions and multiple formal requests that Yates resign. Ultimately, it was the town council itself that asked the Virginia State Police to investigate its own mayor, an extraordinary step for a five-hundred-person town where the council and mayor govern as neighbors. The state police investigation that followed led to Yates’s arrest on September 17, 2026, on eight fraud charges.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Charged, not tried; expelled — or trying to be — by his own council. The eight charges against Yates are accusations in criminal papers, not convictions; he has not been tried, and he is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The expulsion process is a civil creature of the town charter, not a criminal judgment.

The criminal case against Yates centers on town money. He was arrested September 17, 2026, on eight fraud charges: felony embezzlement, use of public assets for personal benefit, credit card fraud, receiving goods obtained through credit card fraud, and two counts of credit card theft, along with related counts. A Virginia State Police spokesperson said the investigation that produced the charges remains active, with no update as of early October. As a condition of his bond, Yates must refrain from drugs and alcohol, is barred from town property, and is not permitted to contact town employees — conditions that left the town’s mayor legally unable to set foot in the town hall he still nominally leads.

The political response arrived three weeks later. On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, the Haysi Town Council voted — all six members — to move forward with expelling Yates under the town charter, which allows a supermajority vote to remove a member for good cause. The council’s attorney, Allison Mullins, said a hearing scheduled for October 19 would fulfill Yates’s due-process rights; because his bond forbids him from town property, he was to be allowed to appear remotely or through his attorney. Mullins said she reached out multiple times to Yates’s court-appointed lawyer, Stuart Collins, with the council’s request that he resign, and had heard nothing back. Vice Mayor Debbie Wood put the council’s position in writing: “voluntary resignation would be ideal — and simpler for everyone involved,” and “[W]e stand firm in the fact that Mayor Yates can no longer represent Haysi in any capacity.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

In a town of about 500 people, a mayor’s arrest on embezzlement charges is not an abstract scandal — it is the neighbor down the road, and the council’s minutes show the friction played out in public meeting after public meeting before the arrest. The unanimous expulsion vote, taken at the council’s regular October meeting, represented total institutional repudiation: every elected colleague supported removal. Wood framed the council’s resolve as civic rather than personal, but the message was categorical — the mayor who had held the office since 2008 could “no longer represent Haysi in any capacity.”

The machinery for removal turned out to be genuinely uncertain, even to local officials. A clerk at the Dickenson County Circuit Court told Cardinal News he was not sure what a removal petition would entail, since he had never been involved in removing a mayor from office. Virginia law provides two paths: the town charter’s expulsion process the council invoked, and a circuit-court removal petition signed by registered voters equal to 10% of the votes cast at the last election — but the judicial route requires grounds like neglect of a ministerial duty, misuse of office, incompetence, or conviction of certain crimes, none of which had yet occurred. Mullins told the outlet that the charter route “would likely be quicker.”

Current Status

The expulsion hearing scheduled for October 19, 2026, was set to determine whether Yates is removed from office; if he is, Wood would serve as interim mayor until the council files a petition for a special election, since Yates’s four-year term does not expire until 2028. His criminal case was moving in parallel: online court records showed a plea-review hearing scheduled for November 12, 2026, in Clintwood, the Dickenson County seat. The state police investigation remains active. The fraud charges remain unadjudicated, and Yates — arrested, charged, bonded, and barred from town property — is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Yates’s 18-year hold on the Haysi mayor’s office ended not with an election loss but with handcuffs and a unanimous council vote. Whatever the October hearing brings, his bond conditions alone have already severed him from the daily work of the job — no town property, no contact with town employees — meaning a mayor in name who cannot govern in fact. At 72, facing eight fraud charges that include felony embezzlement, he is looking at the possible end of both his political legacy and his freedom: a conviction on the felony counts would carry prison exposure and, under Virginia law, a formal pathway for his removal from office that would not depend on his colleagues’ votes at all. For Haysi, the saga has been a civics lesson in the options a tiny town has when its chief executive is accused of stealing from it — and in how few of those options are quick.

Sources

• Cardinal News, “Haysi Town Council votes to expel the mayor following his arrest on fraud and embezzlement charges,” October 7, 2026 — source