The federal government on Tuesday charged 47 other people in Minnesota with conspiracy and other charges in what they called a grand plan that relied on the COVID-19 pandemic to obtain a $250 million loan from a federal program that supplies food to low-income children.
U. S. Attorney Andrew Luger is “the largest pandemic fraud in the United States,” CBS Minnesota reports.
Luger said the defendants are charged with federal crimes and added “conspiracy, cord fraud, laundering and payment and receipt of illegal bribes,” the station reported.
Luger said the defendants took $250 million from a federal child nutrition program, which would be used to “feed children in need. “Instead, Luger alleges that the defendants “primarily pocketed the money. “
Prosecutors say the defendants’ corporations claimed to be offering food to tens of thousands of young people in Minnesota and then requested reimbursement for that food through the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s food nutrition programs. USA Prosecutors say little food was served and the defendants used the cash to buy luxury cars, goods and jewelry.
Many of the corporations that claimed to serve food were sponsored through a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, which filed the corporations’ refund claims. Feeding Our Future founder and executive director Aimee Bock, among the defendants, and the government say she and other members of her organization filed the fraudulent claims and won bribes.
Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, said he would comment until he had a chance to see the indictment, but the indictment “implies guilt or innocence. “
In an interview earlier this year, Bock denied stealing and said he had never noticed evidence of fraud.
The defendants face several charges, in addition to conspiracy, cable fraud, laundering and bribery.
Earlier this year, the U. S. Department of Justice(The U. S. Department of Homeland Security made prosecuting pandemic-related fraud a priority. The ministry has already taken enforcement action on more than $8 billion of alleged pandemic-related frauds, imposing charges on more than 1,000 scam cases involving losses in excess of $1. 1 billion.
According to court documents, the alleged scheme focused on USDA’s federal child nutrition programs, which provide food to low-income youth and adults. In Minnesota, the budget is administered through the state Department of Education and food has been supplied to youth through educational programs. , such as schools or kindergartens.
Sites that serve food are through public or non-profit groups, such as Feeding Our Future. The sponsoring company keeps between 10% and 15% of the reimbursement budget as an administrative payment in exchange for filing claims, sponsoring sites and disbursing the budget.
But with the pandemic, some of the popular requirements for sites to participate in federal food nutrition systems were removed. Among them, the USDA allowed for-profit restaurant participation and allowed food distribution outside of education systems. The indictments say the defendants exploited adjustments to the program’s needs “to enrich themselves. “
The documents imply that Bock oversaw the program and that she and Feeding Our Future sponsored the opening of nearly two hundred federal child nutrition program sites across the state, knowing that the sites intended to make fraudulent claims. to thousands of young people per day just days or weeks after their status quo and despite enjoying little or nothing and little or nothing to serve this volume of food,” according to the indictments.
Feeding Our Future earned nearly $18 million in investments from the federal child nutrition program in the form of administrative fees in 2021 alone, and Bock and other workers earned more bribes, which masqueraded as “consulting fees” paid to shell companies, according to billing documents.
According to an unsealed FBI affidavit earlier this year, Feeding Our Future earned $307,000 in USDA refunds in 2018, $3. 45 million in 2019, and $42. 7 million in 2020. The number of rebates increased to $197. 9 million in 2021.
The court documents imply that the Minnesota Department of Education was involved in the immediate accumulation of the number of sites sponsored through Feeding Our Future, as well as in the accumulation of refunds.
The branch began reviewing the Feeding Our Future site’s programs more thoroughly and rejected dozens of them. In response, Bock sued the branch in November 2020, alleging discrimination, alleging that most of its sites are founded on immigrant communities. This case has since he was fired.