Major failures by Minnesota’s Education Department enabled the rampant abuse of a federal program meant to feed children during the pandemic, according to a state audit report released Thursday.
The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) failed to properly oversee Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of an alleged $250 million Covid relief program that federal prosecutors say is the largest of its kind, Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor in a 103-page report.
The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota has charged seventy people in the large-scale Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. Eighteen have pleaded guilty and five were sentenced last week, officials said.
The Education Department oversees federal programs that reimburse participants who provide free, nutritious meals to low-income children and families.
Feeding Our Future was a participant in the program. But prosecutors said the nonprofit’s employees recruited people and entities to take advantage of the program for their personal gain.
Feeding Our Future went from receiving and disbursing about $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021, prosecutors said.
The MDE failed to hold the nonprofit accountable to program requirements, failed to respond to warning signs and was “ill-prepared to respond to the issues it encountered at Feeding Our Future,” the audit said.
“We found that MDE’s inadequate oversight of Feeding Our Future created opportunities for fraud,” the accounting firm said in a statement.
Under federal regulations, the MDE was responsible for reviewing and approving participant applications and conducting monitoring visits and compliance reviews. The audit found that the MDE’s sole review of Feeding Our Future “resulted in serious findings” that required a follow-up, which never happened.
The evaluation, which included visits to four Feeding Our Future sites, took place in 2018, about four months after the nonprofit filed its first meal claims. That investigation found that at least one site failed to collect child enrollment information, incorrectly inflated average daily attendance, declared disallowed food expenses, and incorrectly observed or counted meals and snacks, the audit said.
The MDE did not conduct an in-person follow-up assessment due to the pandemic, the audit said.
The report revealed other significant shortcomings. It says the MDE received at least 30 complaints about Feeding Our Future between 2018 and 2021, but that it failed to investigate some complaints, “despite their frequency or severity,” or conducted “inadequate” investigations.
The MDE was also required to provide guidance and training to Feeding Our Future employees, and had the power to terminate the group’s participation in the program if warranted, according to the audit. The audit found that the agency “did not always take steps to verify Feeding Our Future statements before approving program applications.”
In a written response to the report, Education Commissioner Willie Jett disputed the report’s claims of lax oversight and blamed individual defendants for the scheme.
“What happened with Feeding Our Future was a travesty – a coordinated, blatant abuse of nutrition programs that exist to ensure access to healthy meals for low-income children,” Jett said. “The responsibility for this blatant fraud lies with the accused and convicted fraudsters.”
After the MDE made “extensive findings” about the nonprofit’s shortcomings, Jett said his office contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Regional Office multiple times, as well as the USDA Office of the Inspector- general and the FBI. The commissioner said the MDE stopped approving Feeding Our Future’s new applications in December 2020.
Jett, who became commissioner in January 2023, said the MDE’s oversight of the federal program is “regularly reviewed” and improved. “MDE has proactively made changes over several years to improve the oversight and integrity of the program,” he said.
The MDE faced additional pressure Thursday when it received a letter from a group of members of Congress demanding more information, including emails and text messages between the MDE and the FBI.
The audit report comes almost a week after a jury found five of the seven defendants guilty of most of the crimes they faced in connection with the Covid relief scheme. The federal fraud trial was the first of several related to the alleged scheme.
According to a criminal complaint, the defendants in the first trial collectively received more than $40 million in federal funds between April 2020 and January 2022. Although the defendants claimed to have fed millions of children with this money, prosecutors said they used most of the money to purchase multiple homes, properties and luxury vehicles.
Five of them – Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff and Hayat Nur – were convicted last Friday of various financial crimes.
The end of the trial was overshadowed by an alleged incident of jury tampering.
On the eve of jury deliberations, a juror who was later dismissed said she was offered nearly $120,000 in cash in exchange for a vote to acquit.
It is unclear who offered the juror the bribe. The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on the jury tampering investigation, and the FBI said the investigation was ongoing.
The FBI searched a defendant’s home in Minnesota last week. On Wednesday, the agency said it was conducting more “court-authorized law enforcement activities” at more than one home in connection with the investigation, but declined to provide more information.
Lawyers for the five convicts did not respond to requests for comment.
The juror said a woman delivered a gift bag full of cash and left it with a relative, according to an FBI search warrant affidavit. She said she wasn’t home when the money was delivered.
The names of the jurors were not made public, but the visitor knew the woman’s first name and told her relative that “there would be more of that tomorrow” if the juror agreed to vote not guilty, the affidavit said.
The FBI said all defendants, their attorneys and prosecutors had access to the juror’s identifying information.
In an arrest warrant, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel said it is “likely” that at least one defendant was involved in the attempted bribery.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
