SoFi, Healdsburg Startup, Called Out As Pervy 'Frat House' With Oversexed Parking Lot

HEALDSBURG, CA — You know that kind of douchey-looking, stripmall-beige startup office perched atop the Fideaux doggie shop in downtown Healdsburg? The one with the Silicon Valley-style "SoFi" logo tattoed across its forehead (see below), imposing the worst of the modern tech-bro aesthetic onto the once-quaint intersection of North Street and Healdsburg Avenue?

Well, according to former employees of the online banking startup that lives there, things are even worse on the inside.

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

“It was a frat house,” Yulia Zamora, who worked as an underwriter at SoFi (short for Social Finance) in 2015 and 2016, told the New York Times in a recent interview.

More than once, Zamora said, she was "propositioned" by her supervisor at work. And downstairs on the street, "you would find people having sex in their cars and in the parking lot," she said. "It was a free-for-all.”

Zamora's withering claims join an avalanche of similar testimony aired in a New York Times expose this week on SoFi's alleged frat-house culture. And it all seems to lead back to one man: New Jersey native Mike Cagney, the company's 46-year-old co-founder and, until he resigned Monday, its CEO.

According to the Times investigation, Cagney, who's married with two kids, was accused by current and former SoFi staffers of repeatedly sexting his executive assistant, "holding hands and having intimate conversations with another young female employee" and bragging about "his sexual conquests and the size of his genitalia" at "late-night, wine-soaked gatherings with colleagues."

A separate lawsuit filed against SoFi this summer by a guy who used to work at the company's Healdsburg branch describes a similar "sexually hostile" office culture.

Reached for comment Wednesday night, a SoFi representative pointed Patch to a blog post published the day before on the company website. It says:

"The story contained disturbing anecdotes about staff behavior in our Healdsburg office. As we shared several weeks ago, we’ve initiated an outside investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and other improper activities. Swift and severe action will be taken in any instances substantiated by the investigation."

As for Cagney's reasons for stepping down as CEO: Those are "confidential," the SoFi statement said.

As of summer 2015, the Healdsburg branch of the San Francisco-based startup — a self-described "finance company taking a radical approach to lending and wealth management" — was the town's fastest-growing business, and was on pace to be its largest private employer, the Press Democrat reported in a glowing profile.

Here's what reporter Bill Swindell found inside 375 Healdsburg Ave, Suite 280 that summer:

The 110 employees, many decked out in SoFi T-shirts, including Cagney, work in an open space environment with long tables from Restoration Hardware, where employees and team leaders sit together in a collaborative manner. Lunches and dinners are catered from local providers such as The Farmer’s Wife. Small meeting rooms have the look of a therapist’s office; soft music played from one. The decor is nothing like Bailey Brothers’ Building and Loan Association of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” instead invoking the feel of an Apple store.

In the six years since Cagney founded SoFi with four of his Stanford buddies, the startup claims to have shelled out more than $20 billion in loans and amassed 350,000 members. It reported revenues of $134 million last quarter. (Although the Times story raises some doubts about SoFi's track record when it comes to bookkeeping.)

SoFi's former CFO, 57-year-old Nino Fanlo — who left the company a few months ago to try his luck in the San Diego biotech industry — gets called out in the Times story, too.

Fanlo "sometimes kicked trash cans in the office when angry," according to the Times. "He also commented on women’s figures, including their breasts; said that women would be happier as homemakers; and once told two female employees he would give them $5,000 if they lost 30 pounds by the end of the year, according to more than a dozen people who heard the comments and witnessed the weight-loss offer."

Fanlo called these claims "patently false" in an interview with the Times.

Patch has reached out to a rep for Fanlo's current company, Human Longevity, for comment. We'll update this post if and when we hear back. Got anything you'd like to share about SoFi? Feel free to reach out: simone.wilson@patch.com.

Lead image via Google Maps