SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 The former CEO of a San Francisco homeless services charity will be arraigned Tuesday on nine felony charges after prosecutors said she stole more than $1.2 million in public funds meant to keep people off the streets.<\/p>\n
Gwendolyn Westbrook, 71, raided the accounts of the United Council for Human Services while she had \u201cnear-exclusive financial control” over the nonprofit serving homeless and low-income people, according to a statement Monday from the district attorney’s office. <\/p>\n
\u201cProsecutors allege that between 2019 and 2023, Ms. Westbrook engaged in unauthorized self-payments, improper cash withdrawals, and fraudulent reimbursement practices that diverted public funds for personal use,\u201d the statement said. <\/p>\n
She faces charges including misappropriation of public funds, grand theft and filing false California tax returns. Her arraignment was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. <\/p>\n
Messages were sent to Westbrook and the United Council for Human Services seeking comment on the charges. An attorney for Westbrook could not be located. <\/p>\n
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the charges are the latest in a long history of trouble for Westbrook and the United Council of Human Services. She was accused in 1997 of stealing thousands of dollars from a cash box at a parking lot owned by the San Francisco Port, her employer at the time. In 2015, regulators found unsanctioned blackjack tables in the back of a charity bingo hall that the nonprofit operated, the Chronicle reported.<\/p>\n
In the court documents filed this month, Westbrook is accused of buying luxury vehicles and making purchases at high-end retailers like Louis Vuitton and Neiman Marcus with the nonprofit’s money. She led the organization, which ran a soup kitchen and collected millions in city contracts to shelter the homeless, for nearly two decades before her dismissal in 2023.<\/p>\n
In Los Angeles, the CEO of a homeless services charity faces federal and state fraud charges related to allegedly using $23 million in taxpayer money to live a luxury lifestyle. Federal prosecutors said last month that Alexander Soofer took funds meant to support his nonprofit Abundant Blessings to buy a $7 million LA home, a vacation house in Greece and a $125,000 Range Rover. <\/p>\n
Soofer was charged federally with wire fraud, and the state charges he faces include felony counts of conflict of interest, offering false evidence and forgery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 The former CEO of a San Francisco homeless services charity will be arraigned Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[32517,27902,5167,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-192040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-ap-business","9":"tag-ap-u-s-news","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}