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.

Front-line 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.

Under the program, nonprofits were reimbursed for meals served at sites across Minnesota. Prosecutors found that site operators were vastly inflating the number of meals served and pocketing the profits. So far, 65 of the 79 individuals charged with defrauding the federal government have been convicted, including Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock. Some of the fraudsters worked with a competing nonprofit called Partners in Nutrition, but nobody within that organization has been criminally charged.

The scandal was the first of several pandemic-era fraud cases that triggered state and federal investigations, drew rebukes from the Trump administration and became a major political liability for Gov. Tim Walz, who ended his campaign for reelection.

In her interviews with federal agents, Butcher did not identify the supervisors who allegedly prevented her from investigating. She declined to name them to the Star Tribune.

The commissioner of the education department at the time was Heather Mueller, a Walz appointee who stepped down shortly after the fraud allegations were made public. Mueller did not respond to a request for comment.

In response to the newly released records, Walz’s spokesman Teddy Tschann said in a statement that the governor “has made sweeping changes across state government since these interviews took place years ago, including policy and personnel changes within the Minnesota Department of Education.”

Department officials have said that they did everything within their power to crack down on suspicious activity. Emily Buss, the department spokesperson, declined to make officials available for an interview with the Star Tribune.

In a written response to questions, she disputed that the department limited regulators’ oversight. She blamed “legal constraints” for limiting enforcement, noting that the Minnesota Court of Appeals blocked the department from barring a different nonprofit from operating in 2017.

“Bock and her associates in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme used allegations of racism as a tactic throughout their criminal enterprise,” Buss said in the statement. She added it was litigation and court decisions that limited the department’s ability to prevent the fraud, “not fear of being called racist.”

Katherine Theisen, special reviews director with the state Office of the Legislative Auditor, said the department could have tried shutting down Feeding Our Future as early as 2018, when regulators uncovered 22 violations, including inflated attendance figures and other markers for fraud.

That same year, according to her 2024 report, state officials received the first credible allegations of criminal activity involving Feeding Our Future.

The auditor concluded the department had the authority to terminate sponsors and conduct additional verification even during the pandemic.

“They could have taken different action. They chose not to,” Theisen said. “It was a systemic failure.”

FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents interviewed hundreds of people as part of the sweeping investigation into fraud in Minnesota. The courts ordered the parties to hold the investigative records in “strict confidentiality,” making the documents accessible only to defendants, their lawyers and law enforcement.

A federal judge recently rebuked Bock for allegedly conspiring with her adult son to provide copies of FBI interviews and other records to the Star Tribune and other media outlets. The Minnesota Star Tribune obtained the records through multiple people, who requested anonymity.

In some cases, the newly obtained records suggest it would have been relatively easy for state regulators to prove at least some of the fraud sites were bogus.

Butcher said she wanted to visit several sites that were located at public parks and apartment complexes. Employees at the facilities later told the FBI they never saw food being handed out.

In her interview with FBI agent Jared Kary, who testified extensively at Bock’s trial, Butcher said her efforts to dig deeper were thwarted throughout 2020 and 2021. If she defied her bosses and investigated, Butcher told Kary that she got her “hand slapped.”

“At every turn, she was told to stop,” Kary reported. “Butcher was told by management at MDE to stop digging into things because it will appear as if she was targeting certain groups.”

Butcher also said she was “warned not to do anything that would be considered targeting or discriminating against certain diverse communities.” Butcher, who is married to a Black immigrant from Barbados, said such insinuations were “offensive” to her.

Another education official, Camille Jones, told investigators that her supervisors showed little interest in pursuing her concerns about potential kickbacks and “totally crazy” reimbursement claims by Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition just a few months into the scheme in 2020. Jones did not return calls and emails seeking comment.

A third official, Jeanette Johnson-Reed, told federal agents that she tried to establish a rule that would have limited sites from switching sponsors more than once a year. Court records show some fraudsters used such tactics to overwhelm regulators with paperwork and make it harder for them to spot fraud.

In her 2025 interview with the IRS, Johnson-Reed said she was “forced to take back the rule” after Bock complained to Mueller’s office.

Johnson-Reed did not return calls and emails seeking comment.

In her statement, Buss said department employees were told to follow “established procedures,” believing that tactic was “essential to defending agency actions against repeated legal challenge” from Feeding our Future.

Buss also noted the state enacted a law limiting so-called sponsor shopping in 2023.

The records show that other officials, including Assistant Commissioner Daron Korte, told federal investigators that by the fall of 2020 it was clear there weren’t enough children to justify the giant reimbursement claims coming in.

Korte did not return calls or emails from the Star Tribune.

Korte told investigators that the department was reluctant to accuse anybody in the meals program of fraud without proof, noting such disputes were likely to wind up in the courts. The department was especially wary of Feeding Our Future, Korte told investigators, saying the nonprofit and its attorney often called department employees “racist” when they tried to hold it accountable.

“Korte felt like it was part of his job to protect the MDE commissioner in dealing with the accusations,” Kary said in his FBI report on the 2025 interview.

Bock used the legal system to counter efforts by regulators to rein in her now-defunct nonprofit. At one point, she filed a restraining order against department officials. In November 2020, Feeding Our Future sued the department after it refused to approve dozens of meal sites.

The state settled the case.

In 2022, when state lawmakers held hearings on the education department’s oversight of Feeding our Future, top department officials claimed they had no evidence of fraud until the FBI unsealed search warrants earlier that year.

Mueller and other department officials initially blamed the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funds and oversees the meals program alongside the Minnesota Department of Education, for failing to provide guidance on how to deal with its concerns about Feeding Our Future.

The federal agency has repeatedly refused to comment on the scandal.

The department also blamed state court judges for taking Feeding Our Future’s side in a long-running legal battle, with officials claiming they were essentially forced to approve dozens of questionable sites and resume payments to the nonprofit when the department failed to justify the actions.

In January 2021, the education department took its strongest step when it threatened to terminate the nonprofit’s participation in the meals program because of “serious deficiencies.”

But each time the department threatened Feeding Our Future, the legislative auditor noted in its report, education officials later backed off, allowing the nonprofit to remain in the program despite ongoing concerns about fraud and mismanagement.

Theisen said the department had all the authority it needed to take decisive action against the nonprofit.

The problem, Theisen said, was that the department waited until 2022 to appoint a general counsel, which she said deprived the department of the legal expertise it needed to fully understand — and wield — its regulatory powers.

“The department was ill-prepared to deal with these issues,” Theisen said.

In a recent interview from Sherburne County jail where she has been detained since her conviction last year, Bock claimed she was the one raising concerns about fraud among other nonprofits and operators in her organization – and being ignored by state officials.

Bock said she terminated dozens of site operators for suspected fraud and her records gave prosecutors a trail of evidence when they raided her home.

“I handed it to them on a silver platter,” said Bock, who is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday. “Our government needs to be held accountable, and they have not.”

At a legislative hearing in April, a top education official said the department has dramatically overhauled its regulatory approach, in part by creating its own inspector general to investigate fraud allegations.

Since late 2023, the department has received 412 complaints resulting in 66 full investigations and 20 sanctions against providers accused of fraud in various programs. Those investigations allowed the state to withhold payments of $1.1 million, Deputy Commissioner Maren Hulden told legislators.

“Much has changed at MDE in the past five to six years,” Hulden said at the hearing.

State lawmakers passed legislation this month that will create the state’s first independent office of inspector general, which will investigate and root out fraud in state programs.

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(Star Tribune staff writers Allison Kite and Chris Vondracek contributed to this story.)

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