On Tuesday, the Justice Department brought charges against 47 individuals for allegedly stealing $250 million from a government initiative aimed at providing food for underprivileged kids during the pandemic.

The plan, in accordance with the agency, represents the greatest Covid-19-related fraud discovered to date. A number of allegations, including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and giving and receiving unlawful kickbacks, are brought against the defendants.

In order to take advantage of the federal child nutrition program, which is intended to give meals to children from low-income families, the accused, according to the prosecution, set up a network of shell corporations tied to the Minnesota-based nonprofit Feeding our Future. At the outset of the epidemic, Congress expanded the program to include more groups.

The Justice Department said in a release, “Feeding Our Future employees recruited individuals and entities to open Federal Child Nutrition Program sites throughout the state of Minnesota. These sites, created and operated by the defendants and others, fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to thousands of children a day within just days or weeks of being formed.”

The Minnesota Department of Education, which managed and controlled the federal program for the state, received the claims despite Feeding Our Future knowing they were false, according to the Department of Justice.

S Attorney Andrew M. Luger for the District of Minnesota claimed, “This was a brazen scheme of staggering proportions. These defendants exploited a program designed to provide nutritious food to needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, they prioritized their own greed, stealing more than a quarter of a billion dollars in federal funds to purchase luxury cars, houses, jewelry, and coastal resort property abroad.”

A part of the indictment stated, “The company went from receiving and disbursing approximately $3.4 million in federal funds to sites under its sponsorship in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021. In all, Feeding Our Future fraudulently obtained and disbursed more than $240 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Prosecutors stated that the accused claimed to be feeding thousands of children every day. The defendants allegedly provided fabricated receipts for meals delivered to the kids as well as lists of fictitious identities to indicate who was fed in order to maintain the scam.

Additionally, after the Minnesota Department of Education “attempted to exercise appropriate monitoring regarding the number of sites and amount of claims being submitted,” the department received “false assurances” that Feeding Our Future was providing the meals as stated, according to the DOJ.

Prosecutors claim that the defendants purchased luxury vehicles, jewelry, and real estate in Minnesota, Kenya, and Turkey, among other things, with the money they received through the fraud.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Luger claimed that although an undisclosed number of persons had been detained early that morning, some of the accused were not currently citizens of the US.

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