Minnesota fraud scandals may not be over, as a recent audit found that contracts handed to community groups in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death may not have had proper oversight at all.
The Neighborhood Safety Contract Management Audit Report found a stunning lack of oversight in the over 100 contracts awarded to community groups as part of the “violence interrupter program,” pointing to the potential of what Fox News Digital described as “fraud and favoritism.” It shows “the city is ‘not providing sufficient contract oversight or managing contracts effectively’ in order to properly manage the more than $36 million that has been spent since 2023 on five major violence-prevention programs,” per the outlet.
Auditors found weak contract oversight and instances of incomplete invoices that were missing documentation. Despite that, in some cases, the city still doled out the cash. Further, the city had no streamlined process for ensuring that the contractors were actually carrying out the work they claimed they would be doing with the funds.
The Neighborhood Safety Contract Management Audit Report concluded that lack of oversight points to the possibility of “fraud, waste, and abuse, and they limit the City’s ability to ensure it receives the services it pays for.”
Retired Navy intelligence officer Phillip C. Parrish posted about this revelation at length, asserting that this is not simply a “tracking glitch” but something far more sinister.
“It’s the same business model that looted child-nutrition money, Medicaid housing, autism therapy, and daycare: stand up a moral emergency, pour cash through politically connected nonprofits, skip site visits and receipts, then scream ‘livelihoods’ when anyone asks where the money went,” he said, emphasizing that the city gave out millions with weak controls, site-visit processes, and more.
“We Push for Peace took city money while AG [Attorney General Keith] Ellison later alleged $6.5M walked to luxury cars, Vegas, a liquor store, and a car dealership. Two interrupters got charged in a north Minneapolis shootout. And Council still says cutting it will make crime go up ‘as a fact.’ Incompetence doesn’t look this consistent. A slush fund does,” he added.
The audit is coming to the surface as budget cuts threaten $2.7 million from the “violence interrupter funding.”
The possibility of fraud harkens to well-documented instances of similar fraud in Gov. Tim Walz’s state, including the $250 million coronavirus pandemic fraud scheme that resulted in founder Amy Bach being sentenced to 500 months in prison.
Speaking to Breitbart News Daily earlier this month, Minnesota Republican Senate candidate Michele Tafoya said that Minnesotans are “embarrassed” by the fraud running rampant in their state.
“And I’ll tell you, every person I talk to in Minnesota, fraud is one of the first words that comes out of their mouths when they are unhappy about what’s gone on in Minnesota, and frankly, they talk about being embarrassed by it. Their words, not mine,” Tafoya said, pointing to the Feeding Our Future scandal.
“Let’s just start with Feeding Our Future. This was a program that Ilhan Omar, one of our congresspeople, championed for kids during COVID to get the meals that they would not get in school because schools were closed,” she said. “No kids got meals. Maybe three kids got meals, but 250 million dollars minimum went right through this program into the hands of these fraudsters.”
“And in the paperwork, it identifies them all as being from the Somali community here in Minnesota, and there was a woman, Aimee Bock, who was put into prison for 40, I think, 45 years. She was sort of at the tip of the spear on this thing. She organized all of it. No one in the government has paid a price. There were whistleblowers. There were people saying, ‘What is going on here? There are red flags everywhere.’ All of those whistleblowers were told to stand down, shut up, or were removed and moved to other departments,” she added, noting that no one in the Walz-Flanagan administration has been held accountable for all the fraud.
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