EDITORIAL: State's fraud is stunning; legislative response demanded
This is from the neighborhood paper Sun Sailor. Is all of this true?
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The calculating larceny of Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future fraudsters, proven or still alleged, is stunning.
Ayan Abukar received some $5.7 million in federal child nutrition funds during the COVID pandemic while falsely claiming to feed up to 5,000 children a day at sites in four Minnesota cities. The Savage resident, who pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, spent millions on real estate, including a 37-acre commercial property in Lakeville, and bought an aircraft in Nairobi, Kenya. Apple Valley resident Aimee Bock, the alleged ringleader of the $250 million scheme, has been described in court as a “narcissist” who reveled in the praise of East African food site operators while extorting kickbacks from some.
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It isn’t only Feeding Our Future. In June, Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor found that 40% of $500 million in bonuses for pandemic front-line workers were either fraudulently applied or unverifiable. Dead people and applicants who never worked at a front-line job received bonuses. Last August, the U.S. Department of Labor said Minnesota overpaid $430 million in jobless claims during the pandemic. In December, the feds executed search warrants on autism centers, for allegedly stealing more Medicaid funds.
The House Republican Caucus fraud tally also includes an alleged $100 million rip-off of the state and federally funded Child Care Assistance Program (the legislative auditor and Department of Human Services officials in 2019 called that estimate excessive). The Republicans’ reporting period aligns with DFL Gov. Tim Walz’s tenure in office, which included the COVID relief period that spawned most of the fraud.
Fraud rests with nonprofit grant recipients that deliver services, but government departments that administer the grants don’t escape blame, according to the Office of the Legislative Auditor, whose oversight work led to creation of an Office of Grants Management as far back as 2007.
In a 2023 report on oversight of state-funded grants, OLA found “pervasive noncompliance” with Minnesota’s grant management policies, which “established important practices” but “generally lacked detail.” State-funded grants topped $600 million in 2021. State law provides little authority to enforce policy compliance, OLA said. For example, federal waivers aimed at delivering food fast during the pandemic encouraged off-site reviews of grant recipients, but the department’s monitoring of the sprawling Feeding Our Future operation was “limited.”
The department had received complaints about Feeding Our Future even before the pandemic, but its response in many cases was “inappropriate or of limited usefulness, particularly in the context of the alleged fraud.”
More..
https://www.hometownsource.com/sun_sailor/free/editorial-state-s-fraud-is-stunning-legislative-response-demanded/article_36bfc05a-027d-11f0-b80d-579923cebe6f.html