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.”…