Ernesto Londoño

And collectively, according to federal prosecutors, up to $1 billion has been stolen just in these three schemes.

And what state officials have said was that fraud essentially became the business model and that these people were acting kind of above board.

They had office space that they leased all around town.

They had websites.

They had business cards.

And they were sort of stealing staggering amounts of money in plain sight.

And state officials tasked with overseeing and supervising these programs were just paying the invoices that came in.

I spoke to a defense lawyer who has represented people involved in some of these schemes, and he said that among the people who were stealing money over the years, they kind of came to think that it had become so easy to tap into these funds and.

you know, get rich fraudulently, that they kind of assumed state officials were tolerating this, if not outright authorizing it.

And the way he described it was, you know, it was like people were stealing from the cookie jar one day and the next morning they had refilled it.

That is a great question that state officials are really struggling to answer.

But I think it's useful to go back in time a little bit and kind of remember the context in which this took hold.

So there were red flags that emerged in 2020 when money was gushing into this program to feed children.

And when state officials felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of business owners who wanted in on the program, who wanted to be serving meals and be reimbursed for them, and when they started reviewing the invoices that were coming to them,

They had questions.

And those questions were met with an extraordinary accusation.

Which was what?

The largest group that was organizing meal providers in this program was called Feeding Our Future.

It was a nonprofit organization.

And in response to questions from state officials, they essentially said the state was slow-walking this new petition for people who wanted in on the program because they were being racist against East African immigrants.