On the Construction of Paper Empires

Following up on my last post, Alexander Soofer is accused of a massive wire fraud scheme in which he allegedly stole at least $10 million out of $23 million in public funds that he took for the supposed purpose of providing emergency shelter to homeless people in Los Angeles. You can read the complaint here. The details of the allegation are sort of fun to read, with pictures, and you can see for yourself how the scheme was supposed to work. Soofer’s “homeless services” company wrote a lot of checks to other companies that provided things like food, security, and construction services, prosecutors allege, but all the other companies were just…Alexander Soofer. Details like this are just rubbing it in:

Hermes is a luxury retailer, and the luxury goods SOOFER and his wife purchased with taxpayer dollars include $910 for women’s Chypre sandals with goat lining, $260 for a men’s Faconnee tie, $1,250 for men’s Paris calf-skin loafers, $455 for a men’s Chevaux en Symetrie tie, and $2,450 for a men’s trotting jacket.

Homeless services in Los Angeles: Hermes sandals with goat lining. I just pray they don’t use whole goats.

But beyond the problem of alleged fraud, I wanted to find out how Alex Soofer qualified for $23 million+ in public homeless services funding. Who was he on the day he showed up and started bidding for emergency shelter contracts? What was his background running large-scale social services programs for a highly dependent and debilitated population? It took some work, but here’s what I’ve been able to find:

“Yogurtland’s longstanding Santa Monica outpost will be moving to the Third Street Promenade at the start of the summer, according to franchise owner Alex Soofer.”

It appears he successfully bid for tens of millions of dollars in public emergency shelter contracts on the strength of his history as the owner of a frozen yogurt franchise. Careful vetting being done before those checks are written, clearly.

This is a busy man:

As you can see, Soofer is also a provider of medical services. On Google Maps, I looked up the address of his “Public Health Medical Center.” Here it is:

Alex Soofer wears a lot of hats at this important medical center.

Soofer has due process rights, and he’s entitled to a presumption of innocence until and unless prosecutors prove these charges in court. But note the layering and clustering when fraud allegations start to circulate, as we’re seeing in Minneapolis (screenshot, click the link to play the video):

Alleged public services fraud is a Lay’s potato chip: Betcha can’t eat just one.