Free-food fraud in Missouri
KARE-11’s Lou Raguse drew my attention to this free-food fraud story out of St. Louis. The alleged fraud involved ($21 million) seems like small potatoes compared to the numbers up here in Minnesota.
The details are all the same: sketchy nonprofit, explosive growth during COVID, bad suburban architecture.
Raguse zeros in on this national NBC report from August 2022. Aired seven months after the FBI raids on Feeding Our Future in Minnesota, the purpose of the story is to criticize Missouri’s Republican governor for not permitting more program waivers that would have enabled more free-food fraud.
Missouri was the only state that did not allow a grab-and-go option for its Summer Food Service Program operators, according to an exclusive NBC News analysis based on responses from all 50 states.
The NBC news piece mentions the Missouri governor by name and by political party, but makes no mention of the massive program fraud centered on the “to-go” meals option.