India International Times Latest Business News from India
Forty-seven suspects have been indicted so far on charges of defrauding a federally funded child nutrition program of more than $250 million, meant for reimbursements for the costs of serving meals to children in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The investigators believe few meals were ever provided and accused the defendants of misusing the money to purchase cars, vacations, coastal resort properties, electronics, and other luxury items for themselves. The large-scale scam represents the largest theft of federal funds allocated to pandemic aid to date, said FBI.
At the center of the investigation is a now-closed Minneapolis nonprofit called “Feeding Our Future” and its former founder and executive director, Aimee Bock, who oversaw the scheme and has been indicted on multiple fraud and bribery charges.
FBI agents, along with investigators from the IRS and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, prepare to execute one of 25 search warrants carried out in the early morning hours of January 20, 2022, as part of the Feeding Our Future fraud investigation / FBI
FBI agents, along with investigators from the IRS and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, carried out 25 search warrants in the early morning hours of January 20, 2022, as part of the fraud investigation.
Feeding Our Future had served as a sponsor for numerous organizations that signed up to participate in the Federal Child Nutrition Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with states distributing funds locally. Under the program, Feeding Our Future allegedly used its position as a sponsor to engineer a massive fraud scheme.
The charges allege that beginning in early 2020, the organization began recruiting individuals and entities to open fake Federal Child Nutrition Program sites throughout Minnesota., which fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to thousands of children a day within just days or weeks of being formed despite having few—if any—staff and little to no experience serving this volume of meals. In exchange, Feeding Our Future received more than $18 million in administrative fees it was not entitled to.
Feeding Our Future employees also allegedly solicited and received bribes and kickbacks from the individuals and companies it sponsored. Many of these kickbacks were paid in cash or disguised as “consulting fees” to shell companies. In total, Feeding Our Future opened more than 250 sites throughout Minnesota between March 2020 and January 2022 and falsely claimed to have served 125 million meals.
How the defendants perpetrated the fraud:
- Conspirators submitted a fake attendance roster of 2,040 children who attended one of the sponsor’s afterschool programs during the pandemic but only 20 names matched.
- One site claimed to serve 2,000 to 3,000 meals per day, seven days a week, from a restaurant that previously had only a few dozen customers a day and $500-$600 in daily sales the previous year.
- One roster was created using names from a website called listofrandomnames.com. Because the program only reimbursed for meals served to children, other defendants used an Excel formula to insert a random age between 7 and 17 into the age column. In some reports, the names of the children would stay the same, but their ages would change.
More than 250 law enforcement personnel took part in executing the search warrants and then the evidence was brought to the FBI Minneapolis Field Office, where the FBI’s forensic accountants untangled the scheme.
During a news conference announcing the charges, FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Paul said, “During this investigation, the FBI followed many trails—including both money trails and paper trails—filled with falsified invoices and receipts, fictitious names, and an inconceivable number of meals allegedly served, all representing an astonishing display of deceit and evidence of outright fraud.”
To date, the FBI and its law enforcement partners have conducted more than 100 search warrants, completed an additional 100 seizure warrants, and reviewed more than 1,000 bank accounts. The 18-month long investigation was extremely complex, but the crime was quite simple. “It was just a massive fraud scheme,” said Paul.
The government so far has been able to recover $50 million from 60 bank accounts, 45 pieces of property, and numerous vehicles and additional items, such as electronics and high-end clothing.
One comment
Pingback: $250 Million Siphoned Off in COVID Time Scam: ‘Feeding Our Future’, 47 Suspects Charged by FBI — Fraudsters News