An open secret': New records reveal officials failed to act on fraud warnings

Last edited Sun May 17, 2026, 09:54 PM - Edit history (1)

State education officials repeatedly raised concerns about possible fraud in the federally funded meals program during the pandemic, but their supervisors stopped them from taking more aggressive action, according to law enforcement interviews and other investigative records newly obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune. Frontline regulators said that they questioned soaring reimbursement claims and suspicious food distribution operations to their supervisors long before prosecutors uncovered what became one of the nation’s largest pandemic fraud schemes.

Three state employees told investigators that their managers discouraged aggressive oversight because they were afraid of lawsuits. One believed the department’s leadership feared accusations of racism from Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of the fraud case, which largely served Minnesota’s East African community.

The interviews provide a rare inside account of the state’s botched response to early warning signs of fraud — and how legal concerns and delayed enforcement allowed the scheme to grow, ultimately siphoning more than $250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program overseen by the state education department.

The records include FBI interviews with Jenny Butcher, a 25-year veteran of the Minnesota Department of Education who retired in 2024. Butcher told federal investigators in May 2022 that abuse in the meals program was an “open secret.”. She said that her supervisors repeatedly stopped her from digging into suspicious reimbursement claims and discouraged her from visiting sites that seemed “unbelievable” to her.

“No one at our agency was allowed to go to the sites — not even a drive-by,” Butcher said in an interview with the Star Tribune. At least two other state officials echoed Butcher’s characterization of the education department’s timid regulatory approach, according to the records. One of Butcher’s colleagues told the FBI that Butcher was the first regulator to raise internal concerns about fraud in the meals program.

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https://www.startribune.com/an-open-secret-new-records-reveal-officials-failed-to-act-on-fraud-warnings/601838325

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