Healdsburg Reacts To SoFi Sex Scandal: They Were Doing WHAT In The Parking Lot?

HEALDSBURG, CA — Since making an unconventional move to the neighborhood in 2014, "social financing" startup SoFi has earned its local haters, lovers and on-the-fencers. On the one hand, it brought a trove of new tech and banking jobs to a small town better known for its food and wine. (Although heaven knows SoFi employs its fair share of out-of-towners.) On the other hand, the startup's desk army of 100-plus employees — and counting — needed a place to park their commuter machines. So they completely overtook one of the best and biggest public parking lots in central Healdsburg: that precious patch of concrete right across Foss Creek from the Bear Republic Brewing Company, host to the Healdsburg Farmer's Market on summer Wednesdays and Saturdays and one of the only options for downtown bar and restaurant parking.

Up to now, though, the collective beef with SoFi has been pretty one-note, and pretty PG. Parking, parking, parking.

But a damning expose this week on the multibillion-dollar company's allegedly sex-crazed office culture has given its local parking problem a perverted twist.

"You would find people having sex in their cars and in the parking lot. It was a free-for-all," Yulia Zamora, who worked as an underwriter for SoFi in 2015 and 2016, told the New York Times.

“It was being run as a frat house,” Zamora added of the company's Healdsburg office, which is perched above Fideaux and Willi's Seafood at North Street and Healdsburg Avenue. “Managers, directors... it didn’t matter who it was," she told the Press Democrat. "Everyone was having sex with anyone.”

In response, SoFi called the claims "disturbing" and said it had "initiated an outside investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and other improper activities." Patch has since reached out to a company rep about the parking-lot situation in particular; we'll update this post if and when we hear back.

More from Zamora's cringy interview with the PD:

Managers during her 3 p.m.-to-midnight shift encouraged employees to drink from a margarita cart or grab beer from an on-site Kegerator. Talk from the bosses quickly became sexual, with supervisors engaging in bathroom and parking lot trysts with female employees, Zamora said, and at an office Christmas party a director approached the 28-year-old underwriter saying he wanted to do “sexy things” to her.

So not only have SoFi staffers been hogging the parking lot behind the Bear, but — if we are to believe the disgruntled ex-employees who went to the press — it appears these startup bros also turned the lot into their own personal hookup joint, HR be damned.

"I couldn't even get through half of this article," one resident wrote in the What's Happening Healdsburg Facebook group. "Sickening. AND they take up all the parking downtown!"

Another longtime Healdsburg businessman told Patch: "I knew they took up a lot of parking, but I never looked inside the cars to see what's going on."

He added: "Sex-wise, do what you want, but don't mess with our parking!"

Robert Cordtz, co-founder of Sonoma Cider, a Healdsburg startup of the more homegrown variety, said: "That has become 'their' parking lot. I can't park behind the Bear ever anymore." SoFi's employees arrive downtown early in the a.m. hours, Cordtz explained, "and there are hundreds of them. So all side streets are full. It's rare to find parking."

Other members of the What's Happening Healdsburg group claimed that even before the Times story dropped, they'd gotten wind of sketchy goings-on at SoFi.

"My Step-Daughter works there. She says it's like being back in highschool," one woman wrote. "I heard everyone is packed in like sardines," another commented. "Yes she said that too — 20 people to a table & they keep adding more," the first woman replied. And a third lady chimed in: "I personally know a previous sofi employee and had heard about the terrible nature of the situations long before this all came to light. It is sad and true. Not only that but he's male and the entire atmosphere there was threatening even to him."

Others lamented the fate of the company's current staff if the sex scandal drives SoFi out of town.

"I hate sexual harassment, and if this is true I wish the worst on the perpetrators," a young woman from Windsor wrote in the Facebook group. But "I love my Sonoma county fam" too, she wrote — and "if sofi goes down, a lot of good ppl will lose work."

Thoughts? Anger? Allegations? Reach out: simone.wilson@patch.com.

This story has been updated. Lead image via Google Maps