LA homeless housing provider charged with stealing $10 million in funding

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Los Angeles provider of housing and services for homeless people was arrested Friday on charges he stole at least $10 million of funding intended for the unhoused and used it as his own piggybank.

Alexander Soofer, 42, is charged with wire fraud, according to an announcement from the U.S. attorney's office in LA. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Soofer is the executive director of Abundant Blessings, a charity based in the Hyde Park neighborhood of South LA. He received $5 million in contracts from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to provide housing for people who were homeless or were at risk of becoming homeless.

He also received more than $17 million in contracts through a downtown LA-based nonprofit called Special Service for Groups Inc.

Federal prosecutors accuse him of misappropriating the money to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that included luxury improvements on a $7 million house in LA's upscale Westwood neighborhood, $475,000 for what appears to be a vacation property in Greece, private schooling for his children, lavish spending in Las Vegas, private jet travel and stays at luxury resorts across the U.S. — from Maui to Palm Beach.

Soofer is also accused of failing to appropriately shelter and feed the homeless people at his sites. After receiving hotline complaints and seeing anomalies in his billing and services, LAHSA and city investigators conducted site visits and, prosecutors say, found that the only food served were things like ramen noodles, canned beans, and breakfast bars — rather than the three meals a day he was getting paid for.

The charges against Soofer follow those the U.S. attorney's office brought last year against two others for defrauding local and state agencies that fund homeless aid programs.

The former chief financial officer of a downtown LA-based developer of affordable housing was accused of defrauding the California Department of Housing and Community Development, and a real estate investor was charged with lying to a bank to get financing for a property that he "flipped" to a publicly funded developer of homeless housing for more than double what he paid.

“California is the poster child of rampant fraud, waste and abuse of tax dollars,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement. “The state has facilitated the spending of billions of dollars to combat homelessness, with little to show for it and almost no oversight."

An attorney for Soofer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

To cover up the fraud, prosecutors say, Soofer created fake and misleading invoices — at times stealing the names, addresses, and logos of real companies — to make it appear that the vendor and rent payments were legitimate.

When a LAHSA investigator asked Soofer if his charity’s board knew how he was spending money, he said they did, but it turned out that the board was fake as well, with some purported members not existing at all while others had never heard of Abundant Blessings or Soofer. 

The LA district attorney's office said on Friday that it brought its own case against Soofer, charging with him 11 felony counts of conflict of interest, two felony counts of offering false evidence and five felony counts of forgery in connection with millions of dollars in contracts between LAHSA and Abundant Blessings.

“The defendant allegedly betrayed the public trust, and I assure Mr. Soofer that unlike the homeless he allegedly stole from, he will have shelter and get three nutritious meals a day in prison,” LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement.

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