A person accused of fleecing L.A.’s homeless providers paperwork for $23 million was arrested at his Westwood house early Friday morning as a part of an ongoing multiagency probe into the county’s multibillion-dollar efforts to tamp down encampments and produce extra individuals in off the streets.
“There was no vetting course of, there was no accounting happening,” mentioned Invoice Essayli, who leads the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Los Angeles. “We’ll discover out the place each greenback went. We need to resolve the fraud.”
Alexander Soofer, 42, of Westwood was charged with wire fraud amid allegations he used his Hyde Park-based program Considerable Blessings to line the pockets of his $2,450 Hermes trotting jacket with hundreds of thousands in taxpayer {dollars} from Inside Secure and Measure H.
Soofer appeared in courtroom 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 in opposition to him, Soofer charged L.A. businesses to feed and home greater than 600 individuals, then funneled the money right into a $7-million house in Westwood, personal faculty tuition, “White Lotus”-style holidays, a second house 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 shoppers have been left with breakfast bars, canned beans and bulk packs of ramen noodles to arrange 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 baggage of meals to provide members for lunch.”
“We have now supplied actually billions of {dollars}, trusting that LAHSA would discover contractors that would supply meals and rooms for the homeless,” mentioned Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, who unveiled associated state costs from a parallel, unbiased investigation. “Slightly 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 referred to as his firm Considerable Blessings, however the one ample blessings have been the blessings he gave himself,” Hochman mentioned.
Soofer agreed to give up to native authorities to face costs introduced by the L.A. County district lawyer’s workplace following his launch from federal custody, authorities mentioned.
The legal case is the third to emerge from a job pressure Essayli introduced final spring to research potential fraud and corruption involving native homelessness funds.
In October, federal prosecutors introduced their first instances, charging two actual property executives with misappropriating hundreds of thousands.
Even earlier than the duty pressure’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 individuals sleeping on the road.
The variety of homeless individuals throughout L.A. County dropped 4% final yr, based on the annual depend launched in July. An estimated 72,308 individuals have been dwelling in shelters or on the streets within the county, together with 43,699 individuals 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 Companies Authority and arrange its personal division. The transfer adopted two vital audits that discovered LAHSA, a joint city-county company, did not correctly observe its funds and applications, leaving them susceptible to waste and fraud.
“My administration has zero tolerance for fraud — interval,” Mayor Karen Bass mentioned in an announcement.
However at a information convention Friday, federal officers characterised these failings as endemic to the county’s homeless providers paperwork.
One Considerable Blessings facility in a residential Mid-Metropolis neighborhood beforehand drew complaints from neighbors, who informed The Occasions in 2024 that individuals staying there have been loud and aggressive.
On the time, LAHSA informed The Occasions that Considerable Blessings had at one level been contracted to supply housing on-site to individuals exiting jail and jail, however that use had stopped.
Considerable 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 file of that.
In a short interview in 2024, Soofer declined to inform The Occasions what his group at present used the property for.
However based on the indictment, he paid himself above market fee to “lease” properties he already owned, falsifying data to indicate he’d paid market fee to made-up landlords as a way to home his shoppers.
At one level, a lodge the place Considerable Blessings shoppers have been staying threatened to evict them over nonpayment, forcing LAHSA to pay straight for the rooms, regardless of already having shelled out to Soofer to lease them.
If convicted, Soofer may withstand 20 years in federal jail and as many as 17 years in state lockup, officers mentioned.
“We all know the general public needs arrests, it needs accountability,” Essayli mentioned. “Be affected person. I can guarantee you, justice is coming.”
