Before two beauty both queens hung up their sashes this week, Miss USA organization was in such disarray that Miss Teen USA, UmaSofia Srivastava, had a broken crown — for months.
CEO Laylah Rose Loiczly didn’t have the money to fix it, sources said.
“She [Rose] let Uma have a broken crown since October. Layla didn’t uphold her end of the contract,” Claudia Michelle, a former social media manager who resigned on May 3, told The Post.
Insiders say funds were tight because Loiczly lost a sponsorship deal from Fred Mouawad, the long-time maker of Miss USA and Miss Teen USA crowns, when she allegedly sat a member of his staff in the nosebleeds at a pageant event.
The organization has been hit by Miss USA, Noelia Voigt, quitting and accusing her of “bullying and harassment” in a bombshell resignation letter obtained by The Post — then Miss Teen USA, UmaSofia Srivastava, quitting two days later.
Loiczly bought the troubled Miss USA franchise from the Miss Universe organization last year, calling it a vehicle for female empowerment, and made herself chairman and CEO.
But critics told The Post she is a “narcissist,” and “pageant mom” who was allegedly ousted from a job as Catholic school cheerleader coach in 2019 over her Playboy past.
Loiczly and the Miss USA organization declined to respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
The Post has learned that in 2009 she was on the cover of a Playboy franchise magazine in India, called “Royal,” posing in revealing clothing under the name Laylah Figueroa. There is no indication from the cover that she posed nude for the magazine.
The previous year she was part of a Playboy golf tournament in San Diego, California, attended by Brody Jenner.
“She has a very tawdry past – she has a path that she’s clearly been trying to hide. When you try to hide things they always come out to light,” an insider close to the situation told The Post.
“She was presenting herself as Mother Teresa, but behind the scene she’s a Playboy girl posing for covers of Indian ‘Playboy’ and running around half naked on a golf course,” they added referring to her public persona as a dutiful mother at a Catholic school. “And no one knew about her past.”
A pageant industry expert told The Post, “Everybody has something they’re not proud of but if you’re going to position yourself as Mother Teresa, then be that. Otherwise, be who you are.”
Indeed, sources with knowledge told The Post that when an employee flagged the cover two weeks ago, she dismissed it as Photoshopped. The cover has been online since 2009.
“She yelled and said it wasn’t real, it’s photoshopped. It can’t be her, she had children and she never had boobs that small,” a second source told The Post.
Then, when Miss Teen USA’s father brought the matter to the Miss Universe organization’s vice president of international relations, Mario Bucaro Flores, he allegedly dismissed it as “AI and photo shopped,” the former staffer told The Post.
Loiczly is also accused of failing to pay her own staff — and of using Miss USA to promote herself.
When Miss USA was due to appear in Charlotte, North Carolina, it was Locizly’s face which was put on a local billboard.
Two former assistant national directors, an insider told The Post, were getting paid $1,000 a month with no benefits, and late checks.
“They both resigned and Laylah sent out a memo on April 29 saying they were parting ways,” Michelle told The Post. For four months of work since January, Michelle said she was only paid $2,000.
Loiczly, 45, is a three-times married pageant mom from the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, with a colorful resume.
In 2008, when she was married to Peter Figueroa, who declined to comment to the Post, she was the manager of the Slender You figure shaping spa in Chardon, Ohio as well as a Playboy golf girl.
A year later she appeared under her married name Figueroa, in a sheer bra top on the cover of “Royal” with the headline, “Seductive Laylah Figueroa on life and sex,” and worked as a ring girl at a boxing match in the Chevrolet Centre in Youngstown, Ohio.
In 2011, she worked for the little-known sports show “Cavaliers Gab” as a reporter on the Cleveland Cavaliers.
She is now married to her third husband, Tom Loiczly, with a total of six children.
In 2018 she was the cheerleader coach to the Geauga Lions, a squad of girls from Catholic schools in Chardon, Ohio.
But an independent contractor who has worked with Miss USA for two decades told The Post, “She was a cheerleading coach, she was hired and paid, and parents came to a closed session board meeting and they asked for her removal.”
The following year she launched her fashion line Laylah Rose “to market beautiful and flattering designs for women of all shapes and sizes,” holding a catwalk event at New York Fashion Week which she featured in.
That same year, her younger daughter, Voila, was named 2019 Ohio Junior Princess, but in 2020 the family moved to a $2.5m home in Sarasota, Florida, and her older daughter, Maliyah Lorenzo, began competing in pageants in that state.
She has since picked up titles including Teen Universe Ohio 2020, Teen Miss Florida Earth USA and World’s Top Model 2021.
Loiczly appears to have moved into the pageant business in 2021, naming herself executive producer of her company VIP Pageantry.
In 2022 her husband’s family sold their aerospace manufacturing firm to a larger competitor, and that fall, Loiczly approached Thom Broedeur, a pageant industry consultant, to help her draft a proposal to buy the Miss USA franchise.
Broedeur said he was promised a role as president of Miss USA, but instead she ghosted him and flew to Thailand to meet with trans Thai business mogul Anne Jakkaphong’s JKN Global Group, which owns Miss Universe. There Loiczly secured the Miss USA franchise.
In August 2023, Loiczly, calling herself Laylah Rose, officially took over the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA licenses.
Now, sources say, she’s driving the pageants into the ground.
“She bought the house and couldn’t furnish it,” Broedeur said.
An insider close to the situation told The Post, “She is the epitome of a narcissist. It’s not about the girls. It’s not about the pageant and what it stands for: it’s about what she can get out of it.
“With all this history on who she is, how can Miss Universe continue to let her run this organization?”
