If you’ve ever heard of the expression “taking candy from a baby,” well then chances are that they’ve never actually done so. Because that’s unusually criminal for anyone to do. So tell me then, why did the COVID-19 pandemic create about 47 miscreants that stole from a federally-funded child nutrition program? Because those kids needed that food! It’s almost incredulous that those dozens of criminal thieves stole from those kids, being that it was over $250 million dollars that was sucked from a foundation meant to feed the hungry.
They Didn’t Even Think About The Children!
Feeding Our Future was meant to allow for federal child nutrition to occur for the underprivileged. All forty-seven of the accused have been charged over six separate indictments as well as multiple criminal charges of conspiracy, money laundering, bribery and wire fraud. The defendants had been calculating a huge scheme to defraud the Federal Child Nutrition Program. In which case, they obtained and misappropriated millions of dollars meant to reimburse for meals as other, more selfish means. The Federal Child Nutrition Program, originally administered by the USDA, is well-known as a federally-funded program to give kids free meals. But the unfortunate fact is how it quickly corrupted itself as Attorney General Merrik B. Garland exposed the nonprofit for it’s faults. In a press conference, he had this to say.
“In partnership with agencies across government, the Justice Department will continue to bring to justice those who have exploited the pandemic for personal gain and stolen from American taxpayers. These indictments, alleging the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged to date, underscore the Department of Justice’s sustained commitment to combating pandemic fraud and holding accountable those who perpetrate it.”
The Federal Child Nutrition Program had been overseen in Minnesota by the Minnesota Department of Education. Meals provided by the Federal Child Nutrition Program had been served by “sites.” With the participation of every site, there was sponsorship by authorized sponsoring organizations. From there, sponsors are to submit applications to MDE for every site. Each sponsor has to monitor every site while preparing reimbursement claims for the sites. The USDA would afterwards provide MDE federal reimbursement funds for an every-meal basis. But the MDE can also provide the funds to the sponsoring agency. The reimbursement is paid to sites under that sponsorship while the sponsoring agency holds on to ten to fifteen percent of the funds as an administrative fee.
Throughout the whole fraud, Feeding Our Future had recruited many individuals and such to open Federal Child Nutrition Program sites all over the state of Minnesota. Such sites, operated by the defendants, had fraudulent claims to serve meals to thousands of children. All within a day or mere days or even weeks of formation. From there, plenty of shell companies had been in need of enrolling the program to the Federal Child Nutrition Program sites. The defendants also made shell companies for laundering and receiving the process of the fraud.
Defendants had to create and submit false documentation. There had also been fraudulent meal count sheets that would document a quantity of children and meals served for every site. There were even false invoices submitted to document the purchase of food to get served to children at the sites. The defendants would submit fake attendance rosters to go with a list of names and ages of children receiving meals at the sites for every day. The rosters had been made with so many fake names, that they created a roster. Another of the 47 defendants had utilized an Excel formula to make random ages out between the age seven and seventeen.
