Former San Francisco homeless services CEO charged with misspending $1.2 million in public funds

Tents line a sidewalk on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco, April 18, 2020. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

SAN FRANCISCO — 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 US$1.2 million in public funds meant to keep people off the streets.

Gwendolyn Westbrook, 71, raided the accounts of the United Council for Human Services while she had “near-exclusive financial control” over the nonprofit serving homeless and low-income people, according to a statement Monday from the district attorney’s office.

“Prosecutors 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,” the statement said.

She faces charges including misappropriation of public funds, grand theft and filing false California tax returns. Her arraignment was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.