Five takeaways from a report on the state’s oversight of Feeding Our Future

The Minnesota Department of Education could and should have done more to prevent the massive alleged fraud orchestrated by Feeding Our Future, according to a new report released Thursday.

The Office of the Legislative Auditor published its report on the education department’s oversight of Feeding Our Future, a now-defunct nonprofit that served as a sponsor organization that registered sites to distribute meals. It grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic in what investigators say was the country’s largest pandemic fraud.

The Minnesota Department of Education distributed federal food-aid funds to sponsor organizations like Feeding Our Future and Partners in Quality Care. The sponsor organizations then dispersed those funds to food vendors and food sites, which were supposed to provide ready-to-eat meals to local children.

Several organizations in the Feeding Our Future case reported serving thousands more meals than they actually did — or simply never served any meals at all — in order to receive more federal funds, prosecutors say.

Federal prosecutors allege that 70 defendants working with sponsor organizations in Minnesota stole $250 million in federal funds that were designated to feed underserved children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jurors convicted five defendants and acquitted two others on June 7, in the first trial in the case. Eighteen others have pleaded guilty.

Here are five takeaways from the state’s report.

Concerns about Feeding Our Future started early, and predate the pandemic.

Feeding Our Future launched in 2016 and started approving sites for the federal food programs in 2018. Allegations of wrongdoing started right away. The department received its first complaint about Feeding Our Future in June 2018, and 10 by the end of 2019.

The complaints involved actions by the organization’s executive director, Aimee Bock; its recruitment of food sites to participate in federal food programs; and allegations that the organization was soliciting kickbacks from vendors, among others. All told, MDE received at least 30 complaints about Feeding Our Future from 2018 through 2021.Many of the early complaints appear to have been filed by Partners in Quality Care, a rival organization where Bock used to work .

MDE missed chances to revoke Feeding Our Future’s status as a sponsor organization.

Sponsor organizations like Feeding Our Future are required to submit annual applications to continue working with federal nutrition programs. Starting in 2018, MDE raised concerns in each of Feeding Our Future’s annual applications, the report found, but still approved them.

In February 2019, MDE completed its only administrative review of Feeding Our Future. That review should have prompted more follow-up and scrutiny by MDE, according to the auditor’s report, but didn’t.
“No additional authority would have been needed to take these steps. MDE had the authority—and the obligation—to take each of these steps,” the report states.

The department of education was not prepared to investigate fraud.

MDE had 15 staffers on its federal nutrition program team, and those people were not trained or equipped to investigate fraud allegations, the report found. Several complaints were not investigated and the inquiries that did occur were “inappropriate or of limited usefulness.”

Oversight during COVID was lax.

Typically, oversight measures like the in-person inspection of food sites that reported serving children did not occur during the pandemic. At times, Feeding Our Future would provide check-ins through video calls from Bock’s phone.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the food programs, allowed more flexibility during the pandemic in the types of sites that could be approved as food sites. But, the report says, that does not excuse MDE from following up on suspicious activities, such as sites claiming to serve the exact same number of meals each day for weeks.

Questions will continue for the state.

The Office of the Legislative Auditor presented its report to a commission of lawmakers Thursday, and members of both parties were very critical of MDE’s performance.

The report came days after the same auditor’s office released findings about poor management of pandemic relief funds administered by the departments of labor and revenue, and could put pressure on Governor Tim Walz’s administration. The pandemic created unique challenges and unleashed a flood of federal funding that state governments were tasked with administering.

Thursday’s hearing suggests that lawmakers will continue to question how Minnesota’s state departments performed during the pandemic.

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