Federal prosecutors announced charges had been filed on Tuesday, September 20, against 47 people accused of carrying out the biggest COVID fraud scheme to date in the United States. A theft of $250 million was pulled off by the accused through what officials described as a bold and staggering plot that exploited a federal program designed to feed needy kids in Minnesota.
Prosecutors said that a web of individuals, restaurants, and charities managed to pull off the fraud by claiming that they were providing meals for tens of thousands of underserved kids when in fact, the cash was going to luxury cars, fancy homes, commercial real estate, and even coastal property in Kenya.
Authorities said the defendants took advantage of loosened eligibility rules and a lack of oversight due to the COVID pandemic. U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger issued a statement, saying that this was a brazen scheme of staggering proportions and that the defendants worked extremely fast, stealing money at a breakneck pace. He added at a news conference that more than 125 million fake meals are at issue in this fraud case.
Defendants charged with fraud, bribery, and money laundering
Many of the defendants are charged not only with fraud in the scheme but also with bribery, with the government alleging that the charities took kickbacks from food sites in exchange for steering their federal grants. Many of them are also charged with money laundering for allegedly moving stolen funds through shell corporations and other vehicles to cover their tracks and blur the trail.
Prosecutors said the fraud was overseen by a woman named Aimee Bock, who ran a nonprofit organization called Feeding Our Future. Bock has denied wrongdoing on her part, arguing that if any fraud occurred, it was without her knowledge.
Nonprofits such as Feeding Our Future were supposed to oversee and sponsor the community centers, restaurants, and other places where the meals were supposed to be provided, according to NBC News.
The indictments stated that Feeding Our Future opened more than 250 meal distribution sites throughout Minnesota and fraudulently obtained and disbursed more than $240 million in funds from the Federal Child Nutrition Program, which the Agriculture Department runs.
Feeding Our Future in hot water
Many of the defendants come from the large East African community of Minneapolis, which was also where most of the nonexistent meals were supposed to have been given, according to CNN.
Affidavits from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) showed that one well-known restaurant collected $1.1 million in a single month, claiming they had fed 185,000 kids. The FBI stated in court records that a typical McDonald's restaurant takes in $2.9 million in an entire year, pointing out the scale of the fraud.
Prosecutors said that one group of defendants filled out government documents using names of phantom kids generated from the website "listofrandomnames.com." The FBI said in court records that state officials became suspicious in the summer of 2020 of the large number of meals being claimed at sites sponsored by Feeding Our Future.
They sought to deny payments at many of them, but Feeding Our Future sued in state court. A judge ruled in their favor, saying that the state had not made its case and ordered the payments to the nonprofit to continue.
