More than half a billion dollars was stolen from Minnesota nutrition and frontline worker programs under Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrat vice presidential nominee, in an enormous pandemic-era fraud scheme for which critics are calling him out.
Fraudsters allegedly bought luxury cars, boats, jewelry, properties, and more with around $250 million stolen from the Federal Child Nutrition Program, ABC News reported of an audit report and court documents.
The crime ring used a nonprofit organization called “Feeding Our Future” to launder “millions of dollars in program funds that were intended as reimbursements for the cost of serving meals to children,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said when it indicted 47 people related to the scheme in September 2022.
As of August 2024, “at least 70” people were allegedly part of the “wide-ranging criminal conspiracy,” according to ABC.
“Rather than feed children, the defendants enriched themselves by fraudulently misappropriating millions of dollars in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds,” federal prosecutors said.
With the rise of coronavirus pandemic-related relief programs, Feeding Our Future reportedly went from receiving and disbursing around $3.4 million in federal funds in 2019 to almost $200 million in 2021.
When the indictments were first announced, FBI Director Christopher Wray called it the “largest pandemic relief fraud scheme yet,” and U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger for the District of Minnesota said it was a “brazen scheme of staggering proportions.”
The FBI raids Twin Cities nonprofit Feeding Our Future in St. Anthony, Minnesota, on January 20, 2022. (Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
More than 20 defendants have pleaded guilty or been convicted so far, and two were found not guilty. None have been sentenced yet, and most are still awaiting trial, the ABC report stated.
In June, five people — including three defendants in a previous case related to the scheme — were charged for allegedly attempting to bribe a member of the jury in one of the Feeding Our Future cases.
Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 35; Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, 23; Said Shafii Farah, 42; Abdulkarim Shafii Farah, 24; and Ladan Mohamed Ali, 31, are all accused of conspiring to bribe one of the jurors to return a not guilty verdict, FOX 9 reported.
A nonpartisan state audit released in June found that Minnesota’s Department of Education (MDE) — which was supposed to oversee the distribution of funds — “failed to act on warning signs” and allowed the fraud to occur with its inadequacy.
According to Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor, MDE was aware that the nonprofit “failed to accurately describe meal and snack service” — such as plans for specific meals and how to distribute them — failed to provide information on child enrollment, and “incorrectly inflated” the attendance of the program to make it seem like it was serving millions of meals.
The audit also found that while some MDE officials had expressed concerns about Feeding Our Future, they felt unable to act due to “operational challenges,” including limited ability to make in-person visits and a “litigation and public relations campaign” from the nonprofit, as it pulled the “discrimination” card.
“While we acknowledge these factors created challenges for the department, we also believe MDE could have taken more decisive action sooner in its relationship with Feeding Our Future,” the report stated.
All of these system exploitations and failures occurred while Walz, whom Vice President Kamala Harris selected as her 2024 running mate on Tuesday, was overseeing the distribution of those nutrition funds.
Following the release of the audit, Walz said his administration “certainly” takes “responsibility” and that they can “do better,” ABC reported.
Soon after Walz was declared the vice presidential candidate on the Democrat ticket, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune highlighted the Feeding Our Future crime ring as one of his major “vulnerabilities” going forward.
Joe Teirab, a former federal prosecutor who said he “helped investigate and prosecute the Feeding Our Future fraudsters,” said “Walz was asleep at the wheel, allowing a quarter-BILLION in fraud” in a post before the vice presidential announcement:
.@AngieCraigMN wants @GovTimWalz on the ticket. That should tell you all you need to know about how much she cares about protecting your taxpayer dollars.
I proudly helped investigate and prosecute the Feeding Our Future fraudsters. Tim Walz was asleep at the wheel, allowing a… https://t.co/IXXIBPqr4n
— Joe Teirab (@JoeTeirab) July 29, 2024
Teirab, who is running to represent a Minneapolis suburb in the U.S. House as a Republican, warned voters to “imagine fraud at the scale nationwide” if Walz becomes the vice president after his running was declared.
“Governor Walz and the people he directly hired and oversaw lost half a billion dollars to fraud in a few short years as governor,” the conservative wrote on X:
Governor Walz and the people he directly hired and oversaw lost half a billion dollars to fraud in a few short years as governor.
Imagine fraud at that scale nationwide. If every state lost that much, the amount lost to fraud would be greater than the annual budgets of over 15…
— Joe Teirab (@JoeTeirab) August 6, 2024
In a follow-up post, Teirab added that it “isn’t just the Feeding Our Future case.”
“Over half a billion dollars has been lost by his Administration so far with instances of waste and/or fraud in child care programs, the frontline worker bonus pay program, unemployment benefits, Medicaid programs, and more,” the conservative congressional hopeful wrote.
Teirab was referring to another audit, completed in June, which found that Minnesota’s Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) and other state entities failed to adequately oversee a program to distribute funds to frontline workers during the pandemic.
Another estimated $200 million may have been paid out to people who were ineligible to receive the money or were otherwise committing fraud, ABC reported.
“This wasn’t malfeasance,” Walz told KSTP in June, following the release of both audits. “Both of these cases, there’s not a single state employee that was implicated doing anything that was illegal. They simply didn’t do as much due diligence as they should have.”
Teirab also claimed that Medicaid and other programs were abused and defrauded under Walz’s administration.
“[Walz] owns what happens within his administration,” Jim Schultz, a Minnesota business advocate and former Republican candidate for state attorney general, told ABC.
“There was this massive fraud under his watch. To this day, he has never fired anybody, nobody’s been rebuked.”