Los Angeles homeless services CEO charged with defrauding taxpayers to pay for luxury lifestyle

The charitable group was contracted with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a county agency, to use taxpayer money to find shelter and provide three meals a day for more than 600 homeless residents.

Instead, prosecutors said Soofer bought a $125,000 Range Rover, a $2,450 Hermes jacket, a vacation home in Greece and a trip to Hawaii, where he stayed at the Four Seasons hotel that was famously the setting for the HBO TV show “The White Lotus.”

“He was living the high life while the people suffering, the homeless, lived on the streets with no shelter, no food,” Essayli said during a Friday news conference with Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman.

If convicted as charged, Soofer could receive a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, Essayli said. An email was sent Monday seeking comment from Soofer's attorney, Hilary Potashner.

According to the indictment, Soofer falsified invoices to claim he was serving fresh meals and renting out rooms while homeless people were instead fed canned beans and bulk packs of microwavable ramen noodles.

Investigators found Soofer falsified records to cover up the fact that he paid himself to “rent” properties for homeless people that he already owned, the indictment said.

“Mr. Soofer called his company Abundant Blessings, but the only abundant blessings were the blessings he gave himself,” Hochman said.

During the news conference, the prosecutors pointed to concerns that billions spent to combat homelessness haven’t brought enough people off the streets. The number of homeless residents across Los Angeles County dropped 4% last year, according to the annual count released last July. The tally estimated that some 72,000 people were living in shelters or in sidewalk encampments countywide.

Los Angeles County officials last March moved to take control of hundreds of millions of dollars in spending, citing two scathing audits that found that the homeless services authority spent it recklessly and without transparency.

Between 2018 and 2025, Soofer received more than $23 million in homeless housing funding. Of that, more than $5 million came directly from the county homeless services authority and more than $17 million came through a Los Angeles-based nonprofit called Special Service for Groups Inc., the U.S. Attorney's Office said. None of the money came directly from the state.

Soofer is charged federally with wire fraud and the state charges include 11 felony counts of conflict of interest, two felony counts of offering false evidence and five felony counts of forgery.

Soofer appeared in court Friday but did not enter a plea. He was released on $1.5 million bond and is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court on Feb. 26. His arraignment on state charges was not yet scheduled.

The arrests became fodder for the ongoing war of words between President Donald Trump's administration and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. After a conservative commentator placed blame for the fraud on Newsom, the Democratic governor's press office pushed back.

“This case was uncovered by local investigators working with law enforcement — exactly the kind of accountability and oversight the state has pushed for,” Newsom's office said.

That prompted a response by Essayli, who again blamed Newsom.

“You and the California legislature facilitated this fraud by handing out billions in tax dollars to these nonprofits with zero vetting and zero state oversight,” Essayli said Friday on social media.