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Audit finds Minnesota agency's lax oversight fostered theft of $250M from federal food aid program
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This photo supplied by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Minnesota shows cash from a bag that was left at the home of a juror in a massive fraud case, June 2, 2024, outside Minneapolis, Minn. Authorities have confiscated cellphones and taken all seven defendants into custody as investigators try to determine who attempted to bribe the juror to acquit them on charges of stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic. - photo by U.S. Attorney's Office for Minnesota via AP
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota agency's inadequate oversight of a federal program that was meant to provide food to kids, and its failure to act on red flags, created the opportunities that led to the theft of $250 million in one of the country's largest pandemic aid fraud cases, the Legislature's watchdog arm said Thursday in a scathing report. The Minnesota Department of Education “failed to act on warning signs known to the department prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to the start of the alleged fraud, did not effectively exercise its authority to hold Feeding Our Future accountable to program requirements, and was ill-prepared to respond to the issues it encountered with Feeding Our Future,” the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor concluded. Seventy people have been charged in federal court for alleged roles in what's known as the “Feeding Our Future” scheme.