Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced that he has filed a civil lawsuit and an $18.5 million settlement of the civil lawsuit with Partners in Nutrition, d/b/a Partners in Quality Care (“PIN”), that resolves claims that the non-profit knowingly defrauded the State of Minnesota out of millions of dollars in federal child nutrition funds during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, in violation of the Minnesota False Claims Act.
Federal child nutrition programs provide funding to ensure that children have consistent access to healthy, nutritious foods. Minnesota Department of Education (“MDE”) administers federal nutrition programs in Minnesota. Under federal program rules, “sponsors” are responsible for overseeing and managing food distribution sites. PIN applied for and sponsored hundreds of sites in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and submitted thousands of monthly claims to MDE based on the purported service of millions of meals to children.
In the civil lawsuit, Ellison alleged that from October 2020 to February 2022, PIN took advantage of its role as food program sponsor by knowingly and repeatedly submitting false claims to MDE for meals that were not served and facilitating widespread fraud in the food distribution sites it claimed to be monitoring.
In the consent judgment that Attorney General Ellison filed in court, Partners in Nutrition agrees to (1) pay $18,517,909.27, which represents the entirety of the funds in the nonprofit’s possession, (2) produce to the Attorney General’s Office additional documents and communications related to PIN’s participation as a food program sponsor that were not already provided in the course of the Office’s investigation, and (3) voluntarily and permanently dissolve as an entity.
The consent judgment also includes a stayed civil penalty of $1 million that may be triggered by violations of the consent judgment. If, however, the Attorney General finds that PIN failed to provide materially accurate and complete financial disclosures, the stayed civil penalty shall be a $1 million dollar floor plus the entirety of any non-disclosed assets.
Source: Minnesota Attorney General’s Office
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