A Lawsplainer -- The Somali Fraud Edition
It's a tale as old as time and I've seen in play out a dozen times with a dozen different immigrant nationality groups -- steal what you can get away with is an ethos to live by in the Third World
I must say that I’ve read stories and listened to podcasts this past week with a sense of bemusement over the seemingly sudden discovery of endemic fraud in the Somali community of Minnesota. I’m not intending to be critical of Christopher Rufo or the reporters at the NYT who published long stories on this subject in the past several days.
But I do have one question — Where have you been???
Based on a poll I did on X with several hundred respondents, more than 50% of those who responded had no idea about this story.
But the image above is from a City Journal Story written by one of Powerline Blog’s co-founders Scott Johnson — in 2018!!!
As Powerline readers have known for years — because Scott and others at Powerline have written about it repeatedly — this is about the worst kept secret in the “Land of Ten Thousand Frauds.” The “meals for starving children” fraud broke into the open on January 20, 2022 — almost four years ago — when 200 federal agents served a dozen or more search warrants related to an investigation of “Feeding Our Future,” a non-profit — who needs profits when fraud pays better? — entity involved prior to COVID in providing free meals to underprivileged children.
As a preliminary matter — the money involved is federal tax money. These programs a run by state governments, but they are funded with money from the federal government. So it is not the taxpayers of Minnesota who got ripped off — it was the tax payers across the country.
The USDA administers the Federal Child Nutrition Program under its “Food and Nutrition Services” agency. That agency distributes funding to state government programs that use private vendors to provide the meals. Those funds are used for the equivalent of a “School Lunch Program” during hours needy children are not in school. Afterschool programs run by licensed day-care centers, churches, community centers, YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, etc. The program also served meals for children on weekends, holidays, and as part of summer programs where no other meal service was provided.
The way the program worked was that a “site” proposing to serve the meals had to be “sponsored” by a non-profit that was an authorized participant in a state’s program. The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) administered the state’s program and distributed money to the non-profits who were authorized participants. The non-profits in turn paid the “sites” on a per meal basis for the children they fed each day.
Such sites had to be located in neighborhoods where the 50% of the families qualified for subsidized school lunch programs. The sites needed to provide educational or enrichment programs while the children were present, and the meals had to be consumed on site — it was not a program to send groceries home. The sites were supposed to be strictly monitored for compliance by the MDE.
Because COVID closed schools — no more school lunches — the demand for free meals for kids at other locations during the week increased.
The owner of “Feeding Our Future” was a woman named Aimee Bock. She started “FOF” in 2016, and participated in the MDE program as a non-profit that sponsored “sites” as participants in providing meals.
Changes brought on by COVID caused USDA to relax some of the rules with regard to the kinds of applicants that could qualify as a “site.” Most significantly, for-profit restaurants were allowed to participate in the program where they had always been barred before. Private residences, and newly formed LLCs were also ineligible prior to COVID. But both of these restrictions were relaxed as well. Many ineligible locations were then allowed to register as cites — beyond for-profit restaurants — and newly formed businesses were accepted as well.
On-site consumption was discouraged because of COVID, so “grab and go” meals were allowed, including meals for an entire family.
Well, it is not hard to understand what happened. Bock coordinated a scheme where it suddenly seemed that every Somali family in Minneapolis operated a Halal restaurant — at least on paper. Why would she should do this? Because as the sponsoring agency for the new “sites”, Bock’s FOF was paid an administrative fee (10-15%) for submitting invoices on behalf of the sites to MDE, and then disbursing the federal funds received from MDE back to the sites.
