Last summer, we covered the unfolding fraud investigation concerning a Minnesota non-profit named “Feeding Our Future,” which emerged during the COVID era. This organization was initially established to provide meals to hungry children amid the pandemic. However, a legislative audit in mid-2024 uncovered “opportunities for fraud” amounting to a staggering $250 million.
With $250 million, countless children could have been fed. Instead, 70 individuals were accused of misappropriating these funds, failing to fulfill the organization’s mission. Shortly after, the House Education and the Workforce Committee issued a subpoena to Minnesota Governor and then-vice presidential candidate Tim Walz to produce documents related to this scandal.
Now, there’s another development.
The clip says in part:
This development indicates that federal authorities are delving deeper into the $250 million pandemic fraud, identifying new suspects. Just yesterday morning, the FBI conducted a raid on a non-profit whose board members include prominent figures in the business community. The raid took place at a modest office located in an industrial park on Vandalia Street, St. Paul, belonging to New Vision Foundation. This non-profit engages with underprivileged youth by offering coding and digital literacy education and has been praised by Mayor Melvin Carter. However, as revealed in a newly unsealed search warrant, they are now under federal scrutiny in connection with the Feeding Our Future meal program fraud case.
An exhibit from former Feeding Our Future Executive Director Amy Bock’s trial shows that they paid New Vision Foundation more than $2.5 million in taxpayer money in 2021, after New Vision claimed to serve more than one million meals to children. But according to the search warrant, the FBI belived the meal count sheets such as these claiming to feed more than 3,000 kids two meals every day are phony.
Workers at the electronics recycling site that leases New Vision the office told the feds they never saw any children either being served meals or otherwise. Another red flag pointed out in the search warrant, allegedly phony invoices, claiming they bought their food from a supposed food service company located within Eden Prairie, that actually turned out to be an apartment.
This isn’t just fraud, if all these allegations are true. It’s lazy, incompetent fraud. And, we might add, this investigation seems to be like an onion, just one smelly, tear-inducing layer after another.
