Minnesota continues to pay for health care for people who live in other states or are dead
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) once known as “food stamps” program is a federally funded program that spends more than $100 billion/year. How much of that money is being wasted on fraud? Probably more in some states than others. The virtue of feeding hungry children, together with the difficulty in matching up the lunch money to the hungry child, makes SNAP an easy target for crooks.
Here in Minnesota, the Feeding our Future fraud program poured more than $250 million down a rat hole by stealing money that was meant for kids and spending it on personal goodies like homes, cars and even an airplane. That scheme became infamous because according to the prosecuting attorneys the amount of money spent on food for kids was “almost zero.” This money was spent through grants to nonprofits through the Minnesota Department of Education and produced (as of August 26th) 54 convictions.
The obvious mistake the brazen crooks made (many purported to feed thousands of kids every day without so much as a single receipt for a juice box or ham sandwich to show for it) was that they really thought they would never get caught. And why wouldn’t they? They were feeding children and who would ever question that?
The Trump administration’s cops are getting their wheels under them and discovering that the Feeding our Futures fraud may be more of a rule than an exception in the government-led food delivery racket.
Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Fox Business that she believes 20 to 30 percent of the program’s annual funding, estimated at roughly $200 billion, may be lost to fraud after announcing a $66 million scheme was uncovered.
Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ Government Group, provides fraud prevention tools to 26 state unemployment programs and 50 U.S. banks. Talcove believes that the food stamp fraud loss is likely skimming between $24 and $36 billion every year.
Minnesota’s fraud problem has made our state the butt of jokes by late night TV hosts. May Feeding our Futures fraud be just the tip of the iceberg? Recent whistleblowers could point to another embarrassing fraud scheme with Minnesotans paying the tab. Stay tuned.
