Berkeleyside34%
Longtime Berkeley bar owner pleads no contest to theft from father 15%
By Alex N. Gecan28%
7/10/2026, 2:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Anchoring Bias, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 15.4% saturation with 260 hits. Analysis detected 1,706 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,689 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 31.1% and a BS Rank of 15% (17,598 of 20,515 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 85.80% of the article peer group.
Alexander Popov, right, is seen during the court battle over the ball Barry Bonds hit for his 73rd home run of the 2001 season.
His attorney, Martin Triano, left, later accused Popov of failing to pay legal bills.
Credit: Julie Jacobson/AP Photo
A veteran Berkeley restaurateur has pleaded no contest to felony theft in a scheme in which he was accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his father.
Solano County prosecutors initially charged Alexander N.
Popov, 62, of Moraga, with 13 counts of theft from an elder or dependent adult.
According to the complaint against Popov, the total theft surpassed $500,000.
In an agreement with prosecutors, Popov pleaded no contest to a single count of felony theft on April 17.
The other 12 counts were dismissed under the agreement.
He was given a deferred entry of judgment, meaning if he completes a two-year program, his conviction could also be wiped clean.
Popov is a co-owner of Cornerstone , a 13,000-square-foot bar, restaurant and concert venue on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley.
He has been running restaurants in Berkeley for three decades, beginning with Smart Alec’s Intelligent Food in 1996 and continuing with Pappy’s Grill & Sports Bar .
Both are now shuttered.
Cornerstone, the live music venue and bar Popov co-owns, opened in downtown Berkeley in 2017.
Credit: Alex N.
Gecan/Berkeleyside
The criminal complaint against Popov, which the Solano County District Attorney filed July 17, 2025, provides little information about the alleged thefts, which authorities say occurred between August and December of 2022, and does not name the alleged victim other than his initials, N.P.
Solano County prosecutors declined requests for comment.
But a slew of civil filings in Contra Costa County, where Popov lives, show that the alleged victim was his father Nickolai Popov, who died in March 2025.
Filings in that case, which was one piece of a lengthy legal battle in civil and probate court between Alexander Popov and his siblings over their father’s estate, allege at different times that Alexander Popov took between $800,000 and $1.4 million, according to court records.
Popov denied those allegations, and sued his brother for defamation in connection with online posts discussing the claims.
He has agreed to dismiss that lawsuit as part of a larger settlement agreement reached in May that has brought an end to five overlapping and intertwining court cases between the brothers.
Neither brother made any admission of wrongdoing.
Alexander Popov’s plea agreement in his criminal case requires that he “pay any restitution, if ordered,” in one of those five cases, a probate matter.
It was unclear from the settlement agreement how much, if anything, he would be required to pay.
Popov declined to speak on the record in response to inquiries from a Berkeleyside reporter.
Instead, he contacted News Editor Nico Savidge and Lance Knobel, CEO of Berkeleyside’s parent nonprofit Cityside, asking that Berkeleyside kill this article.
“This is a private estate dispute with my siblings and has nothing to do with Berkeley or Cornerstone,” Popov wrote in a Jan. 26 email to Knobel, in which he also pointed out that several of his Berkeley businesses have bought advertising in Berkeleyside over the years.
“It’s surprising that Berkeleyside would find a bitter estate dispute with false accusations worthy of a story.”
Popov’s attorneys, in his civil and criminal cases, did not respond to requests for comment from Berkeleyside.
Brother alleged Popov siphoned money from father’s accounts
Michael Popov, Alexander’s younger brother, accused him in a 2024 civil complaint of siphoning at least $570,000 from their father’s Bank of America account during roughly the same time period covered by the criminal complaint, between September and December of 2022.
(Nickolai Popov was, officially, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, but Michael Popov initiated it, acting as his father’s attorney-in-fact.)
Alexander Popov denied any wrongdoing in a formal response, as did Bank of America, which Michael Popov alleged was also partially responsible, court records show.
The complaint alleged that Alexander Popov “fraudulently … made himself the sole trustee” of Nickolai Popov’s trust the following year, then cut himself a cashier’s check for $500,000 more and moved another $240,000 into an LLC he controlled.
The interior of Cornerstone.
Photo: Marcell Turner
Nickolai Popov went years without receiving bank statements because Alexander Popov had changed the account’s mailing address to his own, according to the complaint.
The money drain came to an end when Nickolai Popov went to a bank branch in July 2023 to check his balances only to learn Alexander Popov had closed his accounts, the complaint alleged.
This case was initially dismissed in January 2025 at Nickolai Popov’s request, but Michael Popov’s attorney, Amber C.
Haskett, sought to overturn the dismissal that April, arguing that Alexander Popov had exerted “undue influence” over their father, according to court records.
Nickolai Popov had died the previous month.
The settlement between the brothers ended the case.
None of the charges against Alexander Popov in the criminal case relate to actions after December of 2022, according to court records.
In September 2023, Nickolai Popov conditionally disinherited Alexander, writing in financial forms that his son had misappropriated $844,355, according to an exhibit attached to court filings submitted by Michael Popov.
If Alexander Popov returned that money, he would again be eligible for his share of the estate, his father wrote.
Alexander Popov said he and his father had “a written agreement with specific plans for repayment” in his January email to Knobel, Cityside’s CEO.
But he had not paid anything back by April 2025 — almost three years after he allegedly began siphoning money — according to a court filing at that time from Haskett.
Michael Popov also accused Alexander Popov of trying to access nearly $800,000 more of their father’s money in a different bank, according to court records.
The bank, Oregon-based Umpqua Bank, has filed its own suit against both sons and their father after both Michael and Alexander Popov tried to assert control over Nicholai Popov’s accounts, according to the bank’s complaint.
Both Michael and Alexander Popov have denied any wrongdoing in that case, which has also been resolved through the settlement agreement.
Legal history includes Barry Bonds home run ball, alleged underage drinking and unhappy investors
Alexander Popov, right, is seen during the court battle over the ball Barry Bonds hit for his 73rd home run of the 2001 season, along with Patrick Hayashi, left, who also vied for ownership.
Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo
Popov and his businesses have been front and center in several other high-stakes legal battles and at least one other allegation of financial wrongdoing, according to court records.
When San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds hit a record-setting 73rd home run of the 2001 season at what was then Pacific Bell Park, Popov was in the stands and caught the ball .
But as a mob rushed him, Popov lost his grip on the ball and another man, Patrick Hayashi, picked it up.
(The scrum had knocked over Hayashi too — he was not part of the group that swarmed Popov.)
Both men claimed ownership and, after a legal challenge by Popov that drew national media attention , a civil court ruled in 2002 that the two would have to split the proceeds after selling the ball.
Popov’s attorney in the case, Martin Triano, later accused Popov in court records of failing to pay hundreds of thousands in legal bills he accrued in connection with the case.
That matter would not be resolved for several years, and it is unclear how much, if any, Triano was ultimately able to retrieve.
Popov became embroiled the next year in a court battle with an investor at Smart Alec’s, who accused him of taking $200,000 out of company accounts and loaning himself another $85,000, among other alleged wrongdoing, according to court records in a civil suit from his Japanese investors.
A forensic accountant who reviewed Smart Alec’s books at the time projected that Popov hid between $1,000 and $4,000 in revenue every day, according to court records.
Popov denied the allegations, but creditors at Smart Alec’s forced him to resign from his positions as CEO, president and director at the restaurant in 2004, according to court records.
He petitioned for bankruptcy the following year, and around that time parked his shares in the restaurant with his wife, Stephanie Dodson.
U.S.
District Judge Samuel Conti ruled the transfer fraudulent, and ordered the shares turned over to Popov’s creditors, according to court records.
During the bankruptcy trial, Conti found several points of Popov’s testimony in that case not to be credible, according to court records.
An officer keeps watch outside Pappy’s on Telegraph in this 2013 file photo.
Credit: Emilie Raguso
After Smart Alec’s, Popov ran the popular but troubled Pappy’s Grill & Sports Bar, which temporarily lost its liquor license in 2018 for allegedly serving underage patrons and closed in 2022.
In August 2013 the organization behind the Ultimate Fighting Championship sued Popov, Dodson and the bar itself for $960,000, alleging they had rebroadcast a UFC event at Pappy’s without a licensing agreement.
Popov and Dodson never formally responded to the allegations, and settled with UFC three months later under undisclosed terms.
Pappy’s courted further controversy in 2016 when it posted recruitment signs for front-of-house positions in English and dishwashers in Spanish.
At the time Alexander Popov denied any discriminatory hiring practices and highlighted the diversity of his service and kitchen staff.
Popov and a business partner, Chris Hoff, were already working at the time to open Cornerstone, and did so the following year.
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February 3, 2016 Oct. 4, 2022, 1:33 a.m.
Les Arceaux closes after 5 months, to come back as Idyllwhile; Pappy’s liquor license suspended
February 22, 2018 Oct. 4, 2022, 1:44 a.m.
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Alex N.
Gecan joined Berkeleyside in 2023 as a senior reporter covering public safety.
He has covered criminal justice, courts and breaking and local news for The Middletown Press, Stamford Advocate and...
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