Federal prosecutors have filed charges against 15 people in Minnesota, accusing them of defrauding social service programs out of more than $90 million in taxpayer money. The announcement followed the near-42-year prison sentence of Feeding Our Future founder
In Minneapolis, the room was quiet for a beat—then the announcement landed. Federal charges were filed Wednesday against 15 people accused of defrauding social service programs in Minnesota. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald made it official on Thursday.
He said the cases involve theft of more than $90 million in taxpayer money. McDonald also framed the moment as only part of a broader push in the state.
“This is not the end of our work in Minnesota. This is not the end of the beginning of our work in Minnesota. This is the beginning of our work in Minnesota,” he said.
The timing felt sharp. Moments before the new charges were detailed. Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock was sentenced to nearly 42 years in prison on federal charges that included bribery. Federal prosecutors have described her as one of the first defendants to go to trial in what they called one of the nation’s largest Covid-19-related frauds—an operation that. prosecutors said. exploited rules that were kept lax so the economy wouldn’t crash during the pandemic.
Authorities said more than $250 million in federal funds was taken in the Minnesota scheme overall, with only about $50 million of it recovered.
The new court filings lay out multiple theories of fraud. One person is accused of defrauding the Federal Child Nutrition Program and a state program that provides grants to child care providers—partly by falsifying the numbers of meals served to children.
Another defendant, accused of defrauding a state program that helps child care centers pay staff, is alleged to have inflated the number of staffers and their hours worked.
Some of the allegations also involve Medicaid. Two people charged—responsible for providing housing services to people in need—are accused of defrauding Medicaid by inflating the hours of service they provided. In rural Minnesota. the owners of group homes for people with disabilities are alleged to have taken more than $1 million in fraudulent Medicaid billings for personal use. an indictment says. including seven high-end cars.
McDonald described the accused as people who treated public programs as something meant for private gain.
“The people charged are ‘fraudsters who treated Minnesota-run programs as their personal piggybank,’” McDonald said.
The filings also include allegations of a different kind of abuse—children allegedly being falsely diagnosed with autism in order to receive government money. McDonald called it the “largest autism fraud scheme ever charged by the Department of Justice.”
All of it follows another burst of enforcement. The charges came three weeks after a federal official said 22 search warrants were executed in Minnesota as part of a long-running fraud investigation.
Thursday’s news conference in Minneapolis wasn’t limited to prosecutors. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz also spoke late Thursday morning.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had been initially scheduled to travel to Minnesota and speak at the news conference. Instead, he met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, aiming to save the Justice Department’s “anti-weaponization” fund as the party weighs its fate.
This case is still unfolding, with updates expected as the Justice Department proceeds through the charges filed this week.
Minnesota fraud charges social service programs Medicaid fraud Federal Child Nutrition Program autism fraud scheme Feeding Our Future Aimee Bock Colin McDonald Minneapolis news conference