Rep. Angie Craig proposes doubling fines for fraud in federally funded child nutrition programs

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig introduced legislation Monday to double fines to $50,000 for fraud in federally funded child nutrition programs, in the wake of the massive Feeding Our Future scandal.

Craig's bill comes nearly a year after federal prosecutors announced the first charges in the $250 million fraud scheme. Since then, 60 people have been charged and the federal government has seized more than $50 million in property tied to the investigation.

"We need to do more to discourage future criminals and increase our efforts to protect taxpayer dollars — that's what this bill is about," the Minnesota Democrat said in a statement.

Last month, Minnesota Republican U.S. Reps. Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach and Pete Stauber joined three House Republican leaders in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack requesting documents in the Feeding Our Future investigation.

The Republicans sent a similar request in September but said they got an "inadequate response" from the Agriculture Department (USDA).

"These allegations and guilty pleas raise many troubling questions about the management of these programs by the USDA," they wrote. "It is unclear how the USDA and its partnering state agency, the Minnesota Department of Education, failed to discern this fraud ... earlier in the grant cycle."

The FBI raided Feeding Our Future's St. Anthony office and other Twin Cities locations in January 2022, publicly revealing what prosecutors say was one of the largest pandemic-related fraud cases in the United States.

Prosecutors have alleged that a large ring of associates inflated the number of meals they claimed to have served children, or had served no meals at all, and instead used the millions of dollars they received in public funds to buy luxury cars, homes and trips and other items.

The USDA reimburses nonprofits, child-care centers and other programs for providing food to low-income children after school and during the summer. Those programs are regulated in Minnesota by the state Education Department.

State Republican legislators have blasted the Education Department for poor oversight. Department officials have countered that they immediately reported Feeding Our Future's "inexplicable growth" to the USDA in July 2020, but blamed the federal government for not taking the reports seriously. The Education Department reported the case to the FBI in April 2021.

Education officials have also said they lacked investigatory power to take further actions. The Legislature just signed off on adding an inspector general to the Education Department who can investigate allegations.