- Absence of Children:Workers at a neighboring nonprofit, Repowered (which provides jobs to former inmates), told law enforcement they “never saw any children at New Vision Foundation—either being served meals or otherwise.”
- Prohibited Environment:Repowered, which shares a building with NVF, has registered sex offenders on staff, making it legally impossible for children to be present.
- Suspicious Invoices:NVF’s food purchase invoices point to an address in Eden Prairie. Yet investigators found this address led to an apartment complex—not a food warehouse, as claimed.
- Inflated Finances:NVF’s 2021 public tax filings showed “gifts and grants” income ballooning to five times the amount reported in 2020 or 2022, a dramatic and unexplained spike.
Despite these red flags, NVF claimed to have served more than 1 million meals to children over eight months in 2021, supported by reimbursement requests submitted to the Minnesota Department of Education.
“It Was Never About the Kids”: The Mechanics of the Fraud
The scam’s playbook was deceptively simple. Nonprofits would submit forged rosters and inflated meal counts, claiming to serve thousands of children daily, and receive federal reimbursements. In reality, meals were not served, and the children—on paper—never existed. Feeding Our Future reportedly funneled over $2.5 million to NVF in 2021 alone for its supposed efforts.
This new chapter in Minnesota’s meal fraud saga raises the uncomfortable question: How did such fraud slip through the cracks—again?
A recent report by the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor concluded that the state’s Department of Education “created opportunities for fraud” through weak oversight and lax enforcement. The report urged urgent reforms, including stricter sponsor application reviews, increased monitoring, and regular compliance visits.
“Fraud like this doesn’t just waste money—it diverts desperately needed resources from real children and families, and it erodes public faith in critical safety net programs,” notes an independent analyst cited in the audit.
The NVF raid is not just another story about greed and corruption—it’s a warning bell for every public program aimed at the vulnerable.
National data underscores the scale of the problem: The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates that fraud siphons off between $233 billion and $521 billion from federal programs every year. (GAO) That’s enough to fund school lunches for every American child for years.
When fraudsters exploit programs meant to help the needy, the public’s growing distrust is only deepened. That, in turn, threatens future funding and the ability of legitimate nonprofits to serve communities.
