{"id":193213,"date":"2026-02-25T15:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T15:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193213\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T15:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T15:40:14","slug":"former-san-francisco-homeless-services-ceo-charged-with-misspending-1-2-million-in-public-funds-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/193213\/","title":{"rendered":"Former San Francisco homeless services CEO charged with misspending $1.2 million in public funds \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \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\u201d over the nonprofit serving homeless and low-income people, according to a statement Monday from the district attorney\u2019s 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<\/a> 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\u2019s 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 \u2014 The former CEO of a San Francisco homeless services charity will be arraigned Tuesday on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[184,861,7,8,400,409,138,3130,1493,1011,181,1338,100,395,36365,13,101,396,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-193213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-bay-area-crime","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-california-politics","13":"tag-city-politics","14":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","15":"tag-fraud","16":"tag-homelessness","17":"tag-housing","18":"tag-latest-headlines","19":"tag-morning-wire","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-peninsula","22":"tag-peninsula-crime","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-san-francisco","25":"tag-san-francisco-county","26":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","27":"tag-san-francisco-news","28":"tag-sf","29":"tag-sf-headlines","30":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193213","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=193213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}