Federal child nutrition program guidelines were loosened during the COVID-19 pandemic to the benefit of corrupt NGOs that stole over $1 billion from the Feeding Our Future program in Minnesota. Workers at the Minnesota Department of Human Services are now asking Governor Tim Walz to resign for attempting a massive cover-up.
“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response,” the Minnesota DHS employees’ X account posted. “Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation,” the account charged.
Feeding Our Future is a nonprofit organization founded in 2016 and dismantled in 2022 after it became apparent that the organization’s sole purpose was money laundering. Criminals created shell companies and billed the state for services that never occurred. The organization created fake “meal sites” that allegedly served thousands of meals per day to needy children. The state government reimbursed these agencies between $3 and $12 per meal. One site claimed it was serving 5,000 meals per day, seven days a week, and submitted its invoice to Feeding Our Future, which then passed on the bill to the Minnesota Department of Education.
These programs cost around $3.4 million in 2019, soaring to $200 million by 2021 as the pandemic was the perfect excuse to expand the program. Feeding Our Future took between 5% and 10% in administration fees. Site operators, if a site actually existed, took between 5% and 30% in kickbacks. The corruption was so blatant that restaurant owners and other nonprofits began enrolling into the Feed Our Future sponsorship program with the sole purpose of robbing the state.
Over 75 people have been arreste,d and the stories are relatively similar. As indicated in one court document:
“In 2020, Fidhin enrolled her company, M5 Café, in the Federal Child Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future. Fidhin later created a nonprofit organization called M5 Care, which, in 2021, she also enrolled in the program under another sponsor. Fidhin fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to 500 children a day, seven days a week, at her sites. In reality, Fidhin served few, if any, children at her sites. Fidhin submitted fake invoices purporting to document the purchase of food for use in feeding these children. In all, Fidhin fraudulently claimed to have served more than 300,000 meals at her two food sites, for which she claimed to be entitled to approximately $1 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds. Fidhin did not use these funds to purchase food to feed children. Instead, she used the money to pay off her home mortgage, to purchase a car, and to fund her lifestyle. Fidhin also wired tens of thousands of dollars out of the country. She paid approximately $27,000 in kickbacks to a Feeding Our Future employee in exchange for his sponsorship and submission of her fraudulent claims.”
Millions in funding were wired abroad to places like Somalia and China. The scam spread to NGOs that claimed to be helping the homeless epidemic. The scope of the fraud case is simply unbelievable and too massive to be chalked up to ignorance. The Minnesota Department of Education overlooked more than 30 fraud complaints from 2018 to 2021. One whistleblower alerted the department to a 1,900% spike in meal counts, kickbacks, and shell companies, but the state looked the other way.
Certain agencies were above the law under Walz. Feeding Our Future sued the Minnesota Department of Education for racism in 2020. Remember: everything was racist back in 2020. The organization claimed that the state was preventing “minority-owned businesses” from receiving new application approval. Walz was willing to permit this activity to happen to avoid being a labeled a racist. Of the 78 people arrested, 70 are of Somali descent.
And now Tim Walz has been labeled “seriously retarded” by the POTUS. “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone,” Trump said. “The seriously r——d Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both.” Walz claims there is a difference between “fraud” and “corruption” and claims no wrongdoing. He is extremely offended that Trump has continued to point out that the entire operation was run by Somali migrants.
Minnesota does not have term limits on governors and will continue to decay under Walz’s poor leadership. I do not understand how anyone could have cast a vote for him last November. The Harris-Walz ticket may have been the worst to appear on the ballot box in American history.