Criminal charges just came down on a former SF homelessness nonprofit CEO accused of buying a Tesla with public money, among a slew of other financial improprieties, and she's facing nine felony charges.

We know that San Francisco has had a number of nonprofit spending scandals over the last several years and it is quite difficult to keep track of them all. But one involving the former CEO of a Bayview homelessness nonprofit called United Council of Human Services (UCHS) goes absolutely beyond the pale. That CEO is the now-ousted Gwendolyn Westbrook, who was fired in 2023 after the Chronicle reported on a lawsuit that alleged Westbrook had doubled her own salary, and that "current and former employees were aware of her buying a new Tesla, giving her Infiniti sport utility vehicle to her niece, buying vehicles for a close family friend and her cousins and vacationing in Aruba."

For good measure, per the Chron, the same lawsuit alleged that Westbrook "was paying for relatives’ weddings and flaunting a trunk full of high-priced jewelry," while submitting financial statements that vaguely described hundreds of thousands in spending simply as "other expenses."

None of those allegations have been specifically proven or disproven, but it sure seems like something untoward was happening with UCHS's bookkeeping under Gwendolyn Westbrook. Today, the Chronicle reports that SF District Attorney Brooke Jenkins's office has charged Westbook with nine felonies, largely around the misuse of public funds. A statement from Jenkins's office does not specifically detail the improprieties, just that they add up to about $1.2 million.

"According to court documents, Ms. Westbrook misappropriated more than $1.2 million in public funds from UCHS accounts to herself through a combination of undocumented cash withdrawals and self-issued payments, and that additional large sums withdrawn from UCHS accounts remain unaccounted for," Jenkins's office announced Monday. "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."

UCHS was originally a mobile soup kitchen known as Mother Brown’s Dining Room, and transitioned into becoming a larger homeless shelter organization. According the the Chronicle, Westbrook "led the nonprofit for nearly two decades before her dismissal in 2023."

Westbrook was reportedly booked into SF County Jail on Friday, but has since been released. She's scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.

Related: SF’s 10 Wildest Nonprofit Spending Scandals of the Last Five Years, Ranked [SFist]

Image: SF Bay View Newspaper via Youtube

We have a new Hall of Fame entry in the annals of chutzpah, with the former director of an SFPD-affiliated nonprofit who’s under indictment for embezzling $100 grand suing the nonprofit for $26,000 in back pay she claims they still owe her.

It is difficult to keep track of all of the nonprofit spending scandals that have rocked SF City Hall over the last five years, but one stands out in particular because the director of the nonprofit allegedly embezzled $100,000 in taxpayer money from the SFPD. We refer to SF SAFE, an SFPD-funded “crime prevention education services” nonprofit that got caught up in scandal in early 2024 when a City Controller report found they were gouging the SFPD for $10,000 a month on limo rides, plus Vegas and Tahoe trips, and $162 gift boxes for their events.

A mere six days later, that scandal exploded into millions of dollars missing from their bank account, and allegations of check forgery lodged at SF SAFE’s executive director Kyra Worthy. By July 2024, DA Brooke Jenkins’s office charged Worthy with 34 felony counts of misusing public money, bank fraud, wage theft, and passing bad checks. Through DA Jenkins recused herself from the case, perhaps because she has attended so many of SF SAFE’s fancy taxpayer-funded parties.

And lavish parties these were! While Worthy is accused of embezzling around $100,000, the overall total of allegedly misused funds is $700,000. That includes the event below with now-state Assemblymember Catherine Stefani and former SFPD Chief Bill Scott, for which, according to Worthy’s indictment, she “spent $6,000 on an event planner and nearly $50,000 on catering." And, "The event featured a champagne greeting, open bar, and prime rib carving station.”

As Mission Local also noted, “She spent more than $24,000 at Marshall’s,” all on taxpayers' dime, according to the charging document.

Worthy is seen in the middle of the photo above (next to Mahammed Nuru!). Her embezzlement case is now making its way through the courts.

But the Chronicle now reports that Worthy is suing the defunct nonprofit SF SAFE for $26,000 — an amount she says includes her final paycheck and accrued vacation time she claims to be owed. (Mind you, she left the organization with negative $16 in their bank account.)

The Chron dug through filings to find that Worthy was being paid $157,000 per year in the executive director position. They also spoke to an anonymous former employee, who was furious at Worthy’s nerve for submitting the lawsuit, considering that her employees did not get their final paychecks either (reportedly an aggregate sum of $80,000) because the nonprofit dissolved.

And amidst all this, SF SAFE had, just two months prior, spent $98,000 on an event called Halloween Candy Explosion, which per Worthy’s indictment, spent “$20,000 for desserts and ice cream; $15,000 for a taco truck; $19,000 for a petting zoo, face painting, bouncy houses, carnival games, and a climbing wall; $20,000 for event planners; and $7,000 for ‘mobile luxury restrooms.’”

Worthy's new lawsuit is separate from her criminal embezzlement trial, in which she’s pleaded not guilty, and is being represented by court-appointed attorney Jeremy Blank. Her suing for back pay is a civil trial in SF Superior Court, and the Chronicle reports she’s representing herself as her own attorney on this one.

Related: Scandal-Plagued SFPD Partner Nonprofit SF SAFE Now Accused of Stiffing Local Florist Out of $17k [SFist]

Image: @MrCleanSF via Twitter

The more than 30-year-old Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in the Western Addition may close permanently, as City Attorney David Chiu is vowing to cut off its parent nonprofit from receiving any more city grants after an alleged bribery scandal.

Of the many nonprofit spending scandals of the London Breed era, one that stands out is that of the SF Human Rights Commission, a City Hall commission whose former director Sheryl Davis was accused of lavishly spending on a $10,000 Martha’s Vineyard cottage rental paid for with your tax dollars, and with some fishy “split the invoice” accounting methods seemingly designed to hide that spending from oversight review.

Davis hastily resigned when that story broke, but that did not stop the flow of more revelations involving Davis and a nonprofit called Collective Impact. Local reporters found that Davis was living with that nonprofit’s executive director James Spingola, and they owned a car together, though she directed $6 million to that nonprofit during her tenure. More alarmingly, Collective Impact gave Davis’s son a $19,000 UCLA scholarship with that money, plus first-class airfare for Davis to promote her book and podcast, and another $5,000 for Oakland soul singer Goapele to perform at Davis’s book launch party.

SF City Attorney David Chiu canceled all of Collective Impact’s city contracts with the city in December, and moved to debar them from receiving any city contracts for the next five years. Those debarment hearings are set to begin this Monday.

Now today the Chronicle reports that Collective Impact says it will shut down permanently without those city funds, or in the words of their legal filing, the nonprofit “anticipates a complete shutdown of its programs by October” if stripped of city money. That would mean the closure of the Western Addition’s thirty-plus-year-old Ella Hill Hutch Community Center, and the discontinuation of the nonprofit’s summer and afterschool programs, healthy food assistance programs, and other programs that help people pay their bills.

“The disproportionate effect of poverty will once again come to Western Addition,” Collective Impact attorneys said in their legal filings opposing the debarment. “Put plainly, without Collective Impact, the community will suffer in ways that the city is simply not prepared to handle.”

Collective Impact received $27 million in city grants between 2021 and 2024, or about $8 million a year. Months after these scandals broke, City Attorney Chiu says the nonprofit still should not be trusted with public money.

“Collective Impact received city grant funding to provide services to vulnerable San Francisco kids, not to be a personal PR firm and travel agency for Dr. Davis,” Chiu said in a Tuesday statement to the Chronicle. His legal filings added, “Whether Collective Impact’s payments benefitting Davis are characterized as illegal gifts, kickbacks, or bribes, Spingola knew that he was living with Davis, never disclosed their relationship and continued to direct City funds for Davis’ benefit.”

Davis still has not spoken to the press since the day she resigned. Though the Collective Impact director Spingola did.

“How do you bribe somebody?” he said when the Chronicle reached him. “I don’t know what bribing is.”

You can judge for yourself whether that sounds innocent or guilty. But it seems the obvious play here would have been for Spingola to resign as Collective Impact director, and present some sort of “new page” or “fresh face” to convince the city to keep funding them. That didn’t happen, and now the future of the nonprofit is highly in doubt.

Related: SF’s 10 Wildest Nonprofit Spending Scandals of the Last Five Years, Ranked [SFist]

Image: Porsche C via Yelp

After the director of a city commission was found to be directing taxpayer-funded contracts to a man she lived with, City Hall officials have found what appears to be more self-dealing, and canceled their contracts with a controversial nonprofit.

It was terrible news for Mayor London Breed’s reelection campaign back in September when a lavish, improper spending scandal by a nonprofit revealed that San Francisco Human Rights Commission executive director Sheryl Davis had approved $10,000 in Martha’s Vineyard cottage rentals, and other expenses that seemed, well, out of the ordinary. A city audit found that under Davis’s watch, the commission was “not properly monitoring nonprofits, overpaying people by tens of thousands of dollars, approving expenses without documentation and formally approving invoices months after they were paid.”  

Breed asked Davis to resign pretty much immediately after that story broke. A month after her resignation, the Chronicle reported that one nonprofit the commission was paying was using city funds to promote Davis’s book and her podcast, essentially benefiting Davis with funds her commission had disbursed.

These funds came through the city’s Black community investment program the Dream Keeper Initiative, they were disbursed by the Human Rights Commission, and granted to a nonprofit called Collective Impact — which was formerly run by Davis, and is now operated by one James Spingola, whom the SF Standard reported shared a home and a car with Davis. Collective Impact bought copies of a children’s book Davis wrote, and financially sponsored her podcast.

Now the Chronicle reports that multiple SF City Hall departments have canceled their contracts with Collective Impact, citing “significant conflicts of interest” between Collective Impact and Davis.

“The former head of the Human Rights Commission engaged in practices which put at risk the integrity of the grantmaking process, and the subsequent awarding of funds,” the Human Rights Commission said in a Tuesday statement, a statement regarding their own former boss.

Per the Chronicle, the Human Right Commission canceled two contracts with Collective Impact worth a combined $2.5 million, while the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development canceled three Collective Impact contracts worth $8.1 million.

For his part, Spingola defended his nonprofit’s work. “It’s definitely unfair,” he told the Chronicle Tuesday. “This whole thing looks like an attack on Black people.”

Meanwhile, Davis is not talking to the press, but she’s lawyered up and letting her attorney do the talking. And her attorney Tony Brass argues that Davis had recused herself from the grant-making process in 2022.

“Taking back these grants and blaming it on Sheryl seems really out of place since the grants were approved under a process that she had nothing to do with,” Brass told the Chronicle.

The Chronicle notes that Davis’s ethics filings show she made somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 from sales of her book in 2023, and between $1,000 and $10,000 in book sales thus far in 2024.

The Human Rights Commission did acknowledge that Collective Impact is responsible for doing some commendable work.

“There is no question that Collective Impact staff members have done critical work with and for [the] community over many years,” the commission’s Tuesday statement pointed out. “There are hundreds of children, youth, and families who have been successfully served by the organization.

Not all of Collective Impact’s City Hall contracts have been canceled. The Chron found that the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development still had an active $780,000 contract with the nonprofit.

And while many of their current contracts were immediately canceled, Collective Impact will still be able to put in bids and potentially do business with the city in the future.

Related: Yet Another Improper Spending Scandal Rocks SF City Hall, Commission Director Hastily Resigns [SFist]

Image: Sheryl Evans Davis via Facebook

The curious matter of a $10,000 Martha’s Vineyard house rental paid for with your tax dollars had led to the resignation of an SF City Hall commission director, and she appears to have also approved more than a million dollars in contracts to a man that lives with her.

Update, 4 pm: And just like that, the Chronicle is reporting that San Francisco  Human Rights Commission executive director Sheryl Davis has resigned effective immediately, which is perhaps related to the matters discussed below.

Original Story, 2:40 pm: Thursday was a hell of a day at San Francisco City Hall’s Human Rights Commission, which gets plenty of city money for their “service of the City’s anti-discrimination laws to further racial solidarity, equity, and healing.” The commission’s executive director Sheryl Davis was nailed by a Thursday Chronicle exposé that alleged, among other things, a $10,000 Martha’s Vineyard cottage rental paid for by invoices that were split, seemingly to avoid city oversight of department bills larger than $10,000.

“Can you split the invoice?” Davis emailed to a nonprofit CEO who’d rung up that $10,000 tab for intern lodging at a conference. “Half before June 30 and the other half after July 1?”

The Chronicle also noted an internal city audit that accused the Human Rights Commission of “not properly monitoring nonprofits, overpaying people by tens of thousands of dollars, approving expenses without documentation and formally approving invoices months after they were paid.”

Then later Thursday afternoon, the SF Standard reported that same Human Rights Commission executive director Sheryl Davis had signed off on $1.5 million in grants to a nonprofit led by a man she lived with. That would be Collective Impact executive director James Spingola. The two deny having any romantic relationship, but per the Standard, “Davis and Spingola both registered to vote at the same home address in spring 2021.” The Standard adds that “The pair also currently co-own a 2008 Mini Cooper, which is registered to that same address.”

So about four hours after the first Chronicle story broke, that paper then reported that Davis had taken a leave of absence from the commission. The Chronicle confirmed with City Hall personnel that Davis is on paid leave.

When reached by the Chronicle, Davis simply said, “I’ve been working there for a while.” That almost sounds like… someone who does not expect to return to the job?

While the Standard noted that Davis had directly signed off on $1.5 million in grants to Spingola’s nonprofit, the Human Rights Commission's Dream Keeper Initiative had granted a total of $7.5 million to his Collective Impact nonprofit.

Needless to say, every other candidate for mayor is jumping all over London Breed over yet another improper spending scandal on her watch. And there’s not much support for Sheryl Davis, except from Supervisor Shamann Walton, who told the Chronicle, “I have never met a public servant as dedicated to community as Dr. Director Sheryl Davis.”

Mayor Breed will appoint a new interim executive director of the Human Rights Commission. But we’re likely to hear a lot more about the executive director who’s currently on paid leave before that new appointment happens.

Related: Nonprofit ‘SF Safe’ Improperly Spent Tens of Thousands of SFPD Money on Limo Rides, Tahoe Trips [Joe]

Image: Sheryl Evans Davis via Facebook

Former employees are spilling the beans on the extravagant spending and head-scratching decision-making by now-fired Bay.org CEO George Jacob. He’s hired former SF supervisor Angela Alioto as his attorney, but that may be little help as the feds are reportedly sniffing around.

When pretty much the entire staff of the Bay Institute up and quit on the same day in late May, supposedly over some academic dispute over peer review of research, you wondered if there might be more to this story. There was. A few days later the Bay Institute's parent nonprofit Bay.org, which also operates the Aquarium of the Bay, told its CEO George Jacob to resign amidst reports of lavish spending while the aquarium infrastructure was crumbling. And that neglected aquarium lost its accreditation the very next day, though the Fisherman’s Wharf facility does remain open.

Some of those departed staff members are now talking to the press, and in detailed terms at that. The Chronicle has so much of that detail in their new report on Jacob’s alleged profligate spending of the institute’s money that departed employees are even spilling the beans on his expensive wardrobe; a lavish concert in Dubai where he wore “an aquamarine brocade jacket and red leather boots,” and a staff photo shoot where he donned “a pink-striped suit and paisley tie while volunteers wore matching white T-shirts.”

That concert in Dubai was one of the first revelations, a concert where Jacob blew a stunning $460,000 of Bay.org’s money on travel for some “climate concert” featuring Stewart Copeland of The Police. We’re now learning that Jacob not only attended the concert, but helped organize it as a “fundraiser” for the organization, again on Bay.org’s dime.  

For the $460,000 investment, the event took in $93,000.

The Chron digs more dirt in finding that Jacob’s first trip as Bay.org CEO was to Sir Richard Branson’s Caribbean private island, a trip that the Chronicle found was “without any tangible fundraising results." He held another Bay.org fundraiser with Dr. Jill Biden, which also lost money, and therefore was not really so much of a “fundraiser.”

All of these schemes hoped to raise $240 million for turning the Aquarium of the Bay into some grand “Ecotarium” that would quadruple the facility’s size, but each lavish fundraiser seemed to lose more money every time. And they all had seemingly little to do with the actual Aquarium of the Bay, whose infrastructure was crumbling, the place was behind on rent, and getting phone calls from collection agencies daily.

But Jacob still had global visions for his “ecotarium.”

“We are setting up an Oceanarium in Jamaica,” he told a UN climate council the day after the Dubai concert, per the Chronicle. “We are focused on Galapagos. We are working on a project in Norway.”

The day he was ordered to resign, Jacob told the Chronicle he was leaving “to pursue a new project that I am very excited about.” But now that he’s hired former SF supervisor Angela Alioto as his attorney (yes, that Angela Alioto), their side is telling a different story.

“If it were not for my client, they would have had to close shop two years ago,” Alioto told the Chronicle.

But Bay.org’s newly installed board chair Jon B. Fisher, who ordered Jacob’s resignation, said that a federal law enforcement agency has contacted the nonprofit in regards to Jacob’s handling of the finances. And a former SF supervisor as your attorney may not be much help when the feds are closing in.

Jacob reportedly fired his CFO in 2019 (which might have helped hide the spending?), and the Chronicle notes that after that a “$700,000 loan intended to upgrade infrastructure went to back rent, payroll software and miscellaneous credit card expenses.” Jacob also reportedly rented new offices, though office space was available at the aquarium, and made a curious $10,000 splurge on yoga wear to sell at the museum’s gift shop.

And does it sound like a vanity project that he used institute funds to publish “books authored by Jacob about the future of museum design and tourism in California,” as the Chronicle describes them?

The obvious question for a nonprofit here is where was the board of directors this whole time? We noted that the new board chair Jon B. Fisher ordered Jacob to resign and started blowing the whistle on all this.

But his predecessor, ironically, was Ben Bleiman, owner of Tonic Nightlife Group (which operates Teeth and most recently Harrington's Bar & Grill). Bleiman is also the founder of the SF Bar Owner Alliance, and currently president of City Hall’s SF Entertainment Commission.

Bleiman explained to the Chronicle that “Volunteering for 11 years to help run a small but scrappy aquarium is a really hard job — but it was a passion of mine. He added that “I’ve nothing but confidence that they’ll keep the aquarium open for San Francisco families to enjoy.”

And Jacob’s problems should perhaps not come as a huge surprise. His previous position was with the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in Alberta, Canada. He was reportedly asked to resign in 2016, as the institution needed a government bailout amidst a financial mismanagement scandal.

Related: Bay Institute and Aquarium of the Bay Scandal Explodes, CEO Resigns Amidst Reports of Extravagant Spending [SFist]

Image: Cris I. via Yelp

What started as a bookish academic kerfuffle has blown up into a larger scandal of financial mismanagement, and the CEO of the SF Aquarium by the Bay and Bay Institute has stepped down as reports surface that he blew huge money on lavish travel and concerts in Dubai.

It sure seemed like there was more to the story when we learned this week that pretty much the entire staff of the Bay Institute resigned en masse over a fairly minor academic dispute (the Bay Institute and Bay.org also manage the Aquarium of the Bay in Fisherman’s Wharf, which has not suffered the same mass resignations). The dispute was that researchers at the ecological nonprofit were upset that the Bay Institute was planning on publishing some of their research without proper updates and the peer-review process they had wanted. Seems like an easy issue to solve! Just delay the publication and do the additional review, as there would be no point in publishing research that the authors had already disavowed themselves from.

Oh boy, was there more to the story. Two days after that news broke, the Chronicle is now reporting that Bay Institute CEO George Jacob has abruptly resigned amidst reports of his profligate spending on the institute’s dime. Jacob was clearly pushed out, as the Chronicle says he stepped down “after the board of the nonprofit asked him to resign.” The Chronicle also adds that “Jacob’s resignation came as the Chronicle prepared to publish an investigation into turmoil inside the organization,” so there may be more shoes to drop here.

But the shoe that has dropped, and likely played a major role in Jacob’s resignation, is the eye-popping spending at an organization where, per the Chronicle, staffers “reported receiving daily calls from collection agencies.” Meanwhile, in 2023, alone, documents obtained by the Chron show Jacob spent $286,000 on luxury hotels and business-class flights, plus another $461,000 just on a climate event in Dubai where Stewart Copeland of The Police was playing a concert (which appears to be this).

“Preliminary analysis shows that the combination of travel and expenses far exceeded anything that I was comfortable with for an organization of this size, and an organization in our financial shape,” new Bay.org board chair Jon Fisher told the Chronicle. “Clearly this was no longer a fit.”

For his part, Jacob told the Chronicle that he resigned “to pursue a new project that I am very excited about,” which sure sound like the words of someone trying to gloss over being fired. He also said reports on the mass resignation were “based on absurd baseless pronouncements that make little sense.”

Another of Bay.org’s financial problems may have been its boondoggly-sounding pursuit of a $200 million renovation of the Aquarium of the Bay, which was announced in 2018, but its permits have since been abandoned.

And the Chronicle also reports that Bay.org had “accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent over the past several years,” including at the Pier 39 aquarium facility. Yes, a number of Fisherman's Wharf establishments struggled with their rent during the pandemic. But the Aquarium of the Bay did some apparently brisk business the last couple years, with a reported 500,000 visitors a year each of the last two years, and about $10 million a year in ticket revenue.

So Aquarium of the Bay ticket sales are the main revenue source for Bay.org and the Bay Institute. Maybe, hopefully, with the profligate spending eliminated, these marine life organizations can use the summer tourism boost to right their ship.

Related: Nearly Entire Staff at Bay Institute Up and Quits Over a Book Being Published Without the Authors' Consent [SFist]

Image via Yelp

The SFPD-affiliated nonprofit SF SAFE was already awash in allegations of forged checks and millions in funds missing. Add to their troubles that they allegedly ran up a $17,000 bill at a Mission District floral shop that the nonprofit never paid.

A donnybrook of a local scandal broke last month when we learned that a city audit of an SFPD-funded nonprofit called SF SAFE turned up tens of thousands of dollars in frivolous spending, in Tahoe trips, limo rides, $162 gift boxes, and events that seemed much fancier than they needed to be (as seen below). That scandal went nuclear less than a week later, when we learned of allegations of forged checks and millions of dollars missing, and freshly fired SF SAFE CEO Kyra Worthy went radio silent.

Those allegations overshadowed other allegations that SF SAFE has stiffed some other Mission District nonprofits out of hundreds of thousands. And it sure doesn’t smell right, as Mission Local now reports, that SF SAFE reportedly left a $17,000 unpaid bill with Mission District florist Diosa Blooms (22nd and Capp streets).

And apparently, the arrangements Worthy ordered from that florist were quite extravagant. “She always liked big arrangements,” Diosa Blooms co-owner Krisha Militante told Mission Local. “Nothing dainty, no small flowers.”

Mission Local reports that SF SAFE has an unpaid invoice for “$7,814 for a belated Christmas party in January 2023” (in addition to a $9,625 bill the next month for a Black History Month event). But given that date, and its correlation to a tweet posted by Supervisor Catherine Stefani, we can Zapruper-film ourselves a look at what are likely these very floral arrangements whose invoices are still in arrears.

Stefani tweeted the above photo on January 12, 2023, saying, “Thank you to @SFPDChief and @SFSAFE for gathering the many community partners who support SFPD’s work tonight in their ‘after the holidays’ party.” Mission Local also describes unpaid floral bills from “a belated Christmas party in January 2023.” And we do see a floral arrangement beyond Stefani’s left shoulder in the above photo.

And we see another arrangement in this image, on a table at which the guests were clearly treated to a very nice buffet. Wonder if those caterers ever got paid!

Either way, the florist has not. Worthy reportedly promised the shop they’d start receiving payment installments by January 25 this year, but then Worthy was fired on January 24.

Parenthetically, SFPD just canceled their contract with SF SAFE Thursday, according to the SF Standard. But there is no word on whether anyone is picking up the tab on SF SAFE’s unpaid bills.

Related: SF SAFE Scandal Gets Way Bigger, With Allegations of Check Forgery, and Millions of Dollars Missing [SFist]

Image: Adele F. via Yelp

An SFPD-funded “crime prevention” nonprofit is now itself under investigation for crime, with an untold amount of money missing, a criminal investigation for check forgery, and a suddenly fired executive director.

It seemed like a fairly standard public/nonprofit corruption scandal last week when an SFPD-funded nonprofit called SF SAFE was nailed in an Office of the Controller report for improperly spending money on limo rides, fancy trips to Tahoe, and $162 gift boxes. That audit found improperly spent funds to the tune of $80,000 (though the total is probably much larger, because the Controller only audited nine months worth of spending). But it sure seemed there was some “there” there with an organization that was regularly feting SFPD higher-ups and a who’s who of “tough on crime” elected officials with parties and events that were perhaps fancier than they needed to be.

But this thing has blown up in the last 36 hours and may be going into Mohammed Nuru territory, as we now see allegations of check forgery and perhaps millions of dollars unaccounted for. Let’s walk through these past 36 hours of a scandal that is sure to see more shoes drop.

Late Wednesday morning, the SF Standard reported that SF SAFE had fired its executive director Kyra Worthy, and temporarily suspended operations. The nonprofit's board of directors said this decision was based on some sort of vague “new information” which was not disclosed in that original report.

That came on the heels of a Tuesday night report in Mission Local alleging that SF SAFE had reportedly stiffed the Latino Task Force out of $625,000. That report cited a letter from the the Latino Task Force which said SF SAFE had “failed to reimburse our partner agencies” for that six-figure sum after providing training Spanish-speaking community ambassadors.

But the big bombshell dropped Wednesday afternoon, when the Chronicle broke the story that SF SAFE’s own board of directors was asking SFPD for an investigation of check forgery in their own organization. The Chronicle reported there was an unexplained “lack of funds in the organization's bank accounts and [suspected] check forgery,” with two of the organization's accounts that should have had money in them at zero dollars, and another account at negative-$16.

There is also the issue of “an estimated $600,000 to $1 million that the nonprofit allegedly owes” to a company that installs those billionaire-backed security cameras all over town, in a complaint from the cameras’ financier Chris Larsen first reported Tuesday by the SF Standard.

That same article notes what seems like a separate matter,  but certainly raises eyebrows, that Larsen’s spokesperson Alex Tourk also said SF SAFE owed his firm Ground Floor Public Affairs somewhere around $80,000.

And come Thursday morning, the Chronicle has a follow-up that now-fired SF SAFE executive director Kyra Worthy had, in a previous gig, allegedly submitted “false or unsupported invoices and documents” totaling $234,484 to the West Contra Costa County Unified School District. That was in Worthy’s previous capacity with a nonprofit called For Richmond, with whom she is no longer affiliated.

But let’s zoom out here: Between the Latino Task Force, Chris Larsen, and Alex Tourk’s firm, that’s about $2 million in unpaid invoices. SF SAFE now has no money in their bank account. We may learn more over time, but a normal person looking at this would conclude that there’s at least $2 million missing here, some of it taxpayer money. Maybe Kyra Worthy was acting as a lone wolf (and the West Contra Costa County story may have been leaked to present this as such), or maybe there is some corruption carryover to, ummm, other city organizations.

Looking at SF SAFE’s most recent available IRS Form 990, their address is listed as 850 Bryant Street  — the SF Hall of Justice. It also shows an SFPD officer on their board of directors, as well as as some other higher-ups in the local law enforcement system. So at minimum, we seem to have a lack of oversight issue. Or at maximum, well, new SF SAFE scandal revelations are now breaking every six to twelve hours, so there’s no telling where this whole thing will go.

Related: Nonprofit ‘SF Safe’ Improperly Spent Tens of Thousands of SFPD Money on Limo Rides, Tahoe Trips [SFist]

Image: @SFSAFE via Twitter

A new report from the City Controller says that a long-standing “public safety services” nonprofit has been improperly billing the police department nearly $10,000 a month on limo rides, Vegas and Tahoe trips, and curiously pricey gift boxes.

It’s an old trope from the tough-on-crime crowd that there’s a homeless industrial complex of nonprofits devoted to eliminating homelessness, but actually spending big money on personal expenses. But the Chronicle is all over a new audit from the SF Office of the Controller showing that an SFPD-funded “crime prevention education services” nonprofit called SF SAFE improperly spent SFPD money on luxury gifts, limo rides, and trips to Tahoe and Las Vegas, and events that were perhaps a little more fancy than they needed to be.

The full City Controller's report audited only a nine-month period between July 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023, but during that period, they identified $79,655 where SF SAFE billed the police department for expenses that were ineligible for reimbursement under their contract — and SFPD dutifully paid for them anyway. “These expenses included the cost of luxury gift boxes, a Lake Tahoe symposium trip, recurring parking fees, and ride-hailing services,” the reports says, noting that none of these are eligible for reimbursement under the terms of the SF SAFE’s grant agreement with the department.

But the full scope of the inappropriate spending is likely vastly higher. The Controller’s Office only audited nine months, over which SF SAFE billed SFPD $910,000, nine percent of which was deemed inappropriate spending. But SF SAFE has billed the department for a total of $5.3 million since July 2018. So at that rate, the improper spending over the last five or so years could plausibly total many hundreds of thousands (and the Controller does request an audit of that full period).

And boy do these aforementioned gift boxes sound extravagantly priced. Above we see a promotion for something called a CPAB (Community Police Advisory Board). One October 2022 CPAB event handed out gift boxes. And per the City Controller report, “Each gift box cost $162 and contained items such as Silver Needle Tea, a portfolio, and a mug.” Must have been one hell of a portfolio and mug! And it was all paid for by SFPD, via your tax dollars.

The report also calls out an SF Safe trip to Las Vegas. “Although the symposium was held at a hotel that had an estimated room cost of approximately $129 per night, SF SAFE staff stayed in another hotel nearby, incurring lodging costs of $7,367,” the audit notes. But again, lodging is an expense that is not eligible for reimbursement under the organization’s grant with the police.

In response, the nonprofit’s attorney Dylan Hackett told the SF Standard “SF SAFE acknowledges the findings, and they are committed to implementing corrective measures, which they have already done.”

But there's likely more scrutiny coming. “I’ve been ringing this alarm bell inside City Hall for several years, and it's taken until today to see the light of day,” Supervisor Aaron Peskin told the Standard (though he is seen at an SF SAFE event above with the nonprofit’s executive director Kyra Worthy). “They should not be doing business with [Kyra Worthy], plain and simple.”

SF Safe may sound like one of those generically named tech PACs like Grow SF, Abundant SF, and TogetherSF Action, but it is something very different. Those PACs are at least privately funded, whereas SF Safe has been around since 1976 and is largely taxpayer-funded. And we may hear a lot more in the months to come just what they’ve been doing  with that taxpayer money.

Related: Exposé Finds San Francisco Doled Out $90M Last Year to Nonprofits That Are Not In Good Standing With the State [SFist]

Image: San Francisco SAFE, Inc. via Facebook

The SF Bay Area Queer Nightlife Fund (QNF) was born during the pandemic as a charitable endeavor that financially supported out-of-work nightlife workers. Now more than eighteen months since it began raising funds, the nonprofit has awarded 511 single-installment grants to queer nightlife workers.

COVID-19 created a global health emergency and a widespread financial crisis, completely upending both healthcare systems and economies around the world. Here in the United States, unemployment rates were higher at some points than those observed during the Great Depression. People who worked in restaurants, bars, clubs, and other sectors of the hospitality industry were among the most affected by the pandemic; San Francisco was no exception to this trend.

Well, QNF helped local queer nightlife works pay their bills; late rent payments; growing utility and cellphone debts; and other essential payments. Now many months later, the nonprofit has raised a staggering $399,641 for queer nightlife workers, donations used to fund 511 single-installment grants.

In a news release, QNF said the organization has also paid $8,849 to community members through multiple streaming events, offering paid gigs to over 80 DJs, event hosts, ASL interpreters, and other group facilitators; QNF was also able to extrapolate that same success for local in-person gigs later on, as well.

All those opportunities were greatly appreciated by nightlife workers.

"Everyone [in the gay nightlife community] is scrambling to figure out how to make ends meet," said Juanita MORE!, a San Francisco drag icon and prominent nightlife figure, speaking to Hoodline last year at the launch of the initiative, harping on those fisically hard times. "It's a time to reach out and help each other any way we can."

Per the Bay Area Reporter, funded grants through QNF were "from $2750, with $500 for dependents, and the [lowest amount given] being $300 for [applicants] with less financial need."

Members of QNF's Steering Committee — which is made up of local notables Shannon Amitin, Race Bannon, Angel Garfold, Phil Hammack, Juanita More, Mark O’Brien, and Joe Weidman — waxed they were incredibly proud of these fundraising efforts, and how the group was able to financially support workers through a roster of online events, community outreach programs, and fundraising drives.

"Our financial contributors are our heroes," the release continues. "QNF is so thankful for every person, organization, and company who has donated or otherwise worked to make QNF’s support for queer nightlife workers possible. Your donations made the difference between many queer nightlife workers surviving or not."

The San Francisco Queer Nightlife fund is a Fiscally Sponsored Project of the Q Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, so all donations were tax-deductible as well.

To continue following QNF's efforts, which will continue supporting Bay Area queer nightlife, visit sfqueernightlifefund.org.

Related: SF Queer Nightlife Fund Launches to Bring Financial Relief to the Community

Photo: Getty Images/JasonDoiy

A former grant writer with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice was busted recently for violating civil-service laws -- an alleged conflict of interest that "could lead to fines and perjury charges against the ex-employee." According to the Examiner's Brent Begin, the unidentified one-time City Hall employee also consulted for Vanguard Public Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that helps fund other nonprofits focused on "social injustice." In the fiscal year 2008, the employee "was a paid consultant, Vanguard received $70,169 through an agreement with the Juvenile Probation Department." Begin goes on to report that "the year before, the nonprofit received $38,487 from The City, according to vendor payment summaries."

Oops.

Mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard went on to say, "OMG, no way! We had no idea! This is totally not tolerated and stuff!?" Or something like that.

Vanguard had no comment.

Shifting focus, this Examiner article brings up an interesting point. People bitched about the Ex as a decent local rag, but did the Chron get this story? Nope.

It just goes to show that the Chron isn't (and shouldn't) be your only source for good, well-rounded local news stories. As SFist commenter Robbie Peeler put it, "The Ex routinely beats the Chronny on local news." While a few out there think the Chron closing down is akin to the rapture, this just isn't the case.

December has been an unfortunate month for Bernal Heights and fires. One fire that we haven't discussed yet is one that happened on December 22nd. In this Bernal Fire, Rocket Dog Rescue founder Pali Boucher became homeless and lost three fostered rescue dogs all in the blink of an eye.

Since 2001, Boucher has been rescuing otherwise doomed doggies from Bay Area shelters, nursing them back to health, finding them temporary, and then ultimately permanent homes. So far, the organization has saved an impressive 1,900 dogs.

Rocket Dog Rescue is asking for some extra help through their "Fire Emergency Fund." Long-term foster homes are needed, as well as funds for a new space where Boucher can live and continue rehabilitating dogs.

Read more about the tragic fire here. To find out more about Rocket Dog Rescue, visit their website. To make a donation to the Fire Emergency Fund, click here.

Image credit: Rocket Dog Rescue

Your Black Muslim Bakery -- the prominent and notorious Oakland setting featured in many a Chauncey Bailey story -- will probably be sold today to Vital Life Services, a nondenominational "nonprofit serving people living with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses," founded in 1987.

The high bidder NCK LLC, a limited liability corporation, plans on buying the space, then turning it over to VLS. (Aw.) The property was also sought after by several other interested buyers, such as East Oakland deli proprietor Won Chul Lee, and Paulette Arbuckle, a "longtime resident of the neighborhood near the bakery."

According to the Oakland Tribune, the bakery "spun out of control during [the Bey family] turmoil, leading Yusuf Bey IV to file for Chapter 11 protection late last year." Today's hearing on the controversial baked-goods-and-so-much-more establishment will rule on the purchase of the "troubled property," most likely going to VLS in the end. (Goodbye, tofu burgers and fish sandwiches! We hardly knew ye.)