[ad_1]
A person accused of fleecing L.A.’s homeless companies forms for $23 million was arrested at his Westwood dwelling early Friday morning as a part of an ongoing multiagency probe into the county’s multibillion-dollar efforts to tamp down encampments and convey extra folks in off the streets.
“There was no vetting course of, there was no accounting occurring,” mentioned Invoice Essayli, who leads the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Los Angeles. “We are going to discover out the place each greenback went. We need to unravel the fraud.”
Alexander Soofer, 42, of Westwood was charged with wire fraud amid allegations he used his Hyde Park-based program Plentiful Blessings to line the pockets of his $2,450 Hermes trotting jacket with tens of millions in taxpayer {dollars} from Inside Protected and Measure H.
Soofer appeared in court docket Friday however didn’t enter a plea. His lawyer, Hilary Potashner, declined to remark.
He was launched on $1.5 million bond and is scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 26.
In accordance with the indictment towards him, Soofer charged L.A. companies to feed and home greater than 600 folks, then funneled the money right into a $7-million dwelling in Westwood, non-public college tuition, “White Lotus”-style holidays, a second dwelling in Greece and dear Hermes goodies.
To backstop his spending, officers say, Soofer falsified invoices to assert he was serving recent meals and renting out rooms whereas his purchasers had been left with breakfast bars, canned beans and bulk packs of ramen noodles to organize in a microwave oven.
When confronted concerning the lack of meals by a county monitoring staff, the indictment alleged, Soofer “ran to a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant and got here again with luggage of meals to provide members for lunch.”
“We have now supplied actually billions of {dollars}, trusting that LAHSA would discover contractors that would offer meals and rooms for the homeless,” mentioned Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, who unveiled associated state fees from a parallel, unbiased investigation. “Moderately than do his job, [Soofer] ripped off the voters of L.A. County, he ripped off the taxpayers of L.A. County, and sadly and tragically he ripped off the homeless.”
“Mr. Soofer known as his firm Plentiful Blessings, however the one plentiful blessings had been the blessings he gave himself,” Hochman mentioned.
Soofer agreed to give up to native authorities to face fees introduced by the L.A. County district lawyer’s workplace following his launch from federal custody, authorities mentioned.
The felony case is the third to emerge from a activity drive Essayli introduced final spring to analyze potential fraud and corruption involving native homelessness funds.
In October, federal prosecutors introduced their first circumstances, charging two actual property executives with misappropriating tens of millions.
Even earlier than the duty drive’s launch, there was rising concern from the general public and a few elected officers that the billions spent to fight homelessness hasn’t meaningfully shrunk the variety of folks sleeping on the road.
The variety of homeless folks throughout L.A. County dropped 4% final yr, in line with the annual depend launched in July. An estimated 72,308 folks had been residing in shelters or on the streets within the county, together with 43,699 folks within the metropolis of L.A.
Final yr, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to take away county funds from the Los Angeles Homeless Providers Authority and arrange its personal division. The transfer adopted two vital audits that discovered LAHSA, a joint city-county company, did not correctly monitor its funds and packages, leaving them weak to waste and fraud.
“My administration has zero tolerance for fraud — interval,” Mayor Karen Bass mentioned in a press release.
However at a information convention Friday, federal officers characterised these failings as endemic to the county’s homeless companies forms.
One Plentiful Blessings facility in a residential Mid-Metropolis neighborhood beforehand drew complaints from neighbors, who instructed The Instances in 2024 that folks staying there have been loud and aggressive.
On the time, LAHSA instructed The Instances that Plentiful Blessings had at one level been contracted to offer housing on-site to folks exiting jail and jail, however that use had stopped.
Plentiful Blessings knowledgeable the company {that a} county psychological health-funded program was working there, however the county Division of Psychological Well being mentioned it had no document of that.
In a quick interview in 2024, Soofer declined to inform The Instances what his group at the moment used the property for.
However in line with the indictment, he paid himself above market charge to “hire” properties he already owned, falsifying information to indicate he’d paid market charge to made-up landlords with a view to home his purchasers.
At one level, a resort the place Plentiful Blessings purchasers had been staying threatened to evict them over nonpayment, forcing LAHSA to pay immediately for the rooms, regardless of already having shelled out to Soofer to hire them.
If convicted, Soofer may resist 20 years in federal jail and as many as 17 years in state lockup, officers mentioned.
“We all know the general public desires arrests, it desires accountability,” Essayli mentioned. “Be affected person. I can guarantee you, justice is coming.”
[ad_2]
