Feeding Our Future: more autism clinic connections

Deena Winter of MN Reformer is out with a piece this week looking at the connections between four autism clinics and the free-food scandal. Two of these names will jump out as familiar to the loyal reader of our coverage.

Here’s her headline:

Some Minnesota autism centers got money through fraud-riddled federal child nutrition program

Four centers were reimbursed over a million dollars after claiming to have provided thousands of free meals to children

Winter notes that:

The FBI is investigating possible Medicaid fraud in the state’s autism program, which has exploded in size and spending in recent years.

We added a placeholder for this investigation in our Scandal Tracker 2024. Winter adds in her piece:

No one has yet been charged with defrauding the autism program, but some Feeding Our Future defendants also founded or had ties to autism centers, state records show. 

She starts with Bekam Merdassa, Feeding Our Future defendant No. 45 and guilty plea No. 1 in the sprawling case. We first visited his Epic Therapy clinic on University Ave. in St. Paul back in March 2022, some six months before his eventual indictment in the case. The building was one of the original locations searched by the FBI back in January 2022.

Winter also discusses an autism clinic not associated with Feeding Our Future and not accused of any wrongdoing. We also first visited Twin Cities Autism Center in Columbia Heights back in March 2022.

Winter reports that the Center received more than $200,000 from the free-food program through the nonprofit Partners in Nutrition and more than $1 million through the nonprofit Gar Gaar Family Services. Again, no one associated with the clinic has been accused of any wrongdoing.