Others doing this kind of thing are on notice: this will not be tolerated now,” said White. In 2017, the same month it received its first multi-million dollar welfare contract from Human Services, New’s nonprofit paid University of Southern Mississippi’s athletic foundation $5 million so it could build a new volleyball stadium, called the Wellness Center. There will be no additional comments at this time. The nonprofit says that the state agency, including Jacob Black, who served as interim director until this week, was involved in the Southern agreement from the beginning, while the spokesperson for the department of human services, Danny Blanton, said no one who works at the agency today “has any idea” about a volleyball center. About $94 million of that was “questioned” by state auditors, meaning the money was in all likelihood misspent or the auditors could not verify that it had been spent legally, Mr. White said. Persons arrested by the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. “I don’t care how politically connected a person may be. All have pleaded not guilty. Another calendar invite shows Davis set a subsequent meeting with Favre at his home in Hattiesburg in May of 2019. “My hope was/is to see the concussion drug manufactured in the state of Mississippi!! Critics say that states do not have to clearly justify that they are spending the money on helping the poor. Money for Welfare Instead Funded Concerts, Lobbyists and Football Games, Audit Finds. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. We know that Nancy's political affiliation is unknown; ethnicity is Caucasian; and religious views are listed as Christian. Mr. Davis is accused of taking part in a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme.

quarterback whose Favre Enterprises was paid $1.1 million by a nonprofit group that received the welfare funds. Defendants used a variety of business entities and schemes to defraud the taxpayers. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Davis and Smith created invoices to pay DiBiase TANF funds for teaching classes about drug abuse, but DiBiase was in a luxury rehabilitation facility for his own drug use in California at the time and did not perform the services. (https://mississippitoday.org/2020/03/05/the-governor-the-quarterback-and-the-concussion-discussion/). John Davis (pictured) and Latimer Smith stand accused of fraudulently manufacturing documents to enrich Brett DiBiase using TANF money by creating invoices to pay DiBiase TANF funds for teaching classes about drug abuse that DiBiase was not actually performing. “There is probably no other program where there’s as much money as TANF with as few controls as it has,” said LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for Family Income Support Policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The Hinds County District Attorney’s Office looks forward to working with the State Auditor Shad White and his dedicated team to end public corruption in Mississippi,” said Owens. Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization. The documentation submitted by the News claimed this was to pay DiBiase for conducting training classes that never, in fact, took place.

Bryant appointed a former FBI agent to replace Davis. Favre, whom Bryant calls a friend on social media, said he had known Davis for years. The breadth of the audit — which auditors said included funds that were “misspent, converted to personal use, spent on family members and friends of staffers and grantees or wasted” — raises broad questions about the efficacy of America’s social safety net. Join Facebook to connect with Nancy New and others you may know. By 2016, the state had $47 million in unused welfare dollars sitting in its coffer. gave Nancy New the Mississippi Meritorious Civilian Service Award, ‘They’re easiest to step on’: The real reason why families in the Delta, one of the nation’s poorest regions, are also the most audited by the IRS, Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program administered by DHS, were intended to help the poorest among us, From 2016: John Davis and MDHS' Dance with Privatization and TANF Funds. In 1996, the TANF program converted the old federal welfare system, in which cash benefits to poor families were deemed an entitlement, to a system of block grants issued to the states. MCEC has every intention of moving forward in providing the services and programs intended by this agreement should MCEC have the funding to do so.”.

The broader scandal is one of numerous major problems the state is facing, including the coronavirus pandemic and a prison system in crisis. Mr. Favre could not be reached for comment Monday. Through the agreement, the nonprofit rented all University athletic facilities to house “activities that benefit the area’s underserved population,” though those programs never materialized, Mississippi Today first reported Feb. 26.

Other large sums went to a family of pro wrestlers whose flamboyant patriarch, Ted DiBiase, earned national fame performing as the “Million Dollar Man.” In a news conference on Monday, Shad White, the state auditor, said it was possible that many recipients of the money did not know it had come from the federal welfare program. In December of 2018, about six months into the Wellness Center’s construction, Davis scheduled a meeting at University of Southern Mississippi with Nancy New and another contractor with the department, Ted DiBiase Jr.

Separately, Favre had also been seeking support for the construction of a volleyball center at University of Southern Mississippi, the majority of which was also funded by Nancy New’s organization, Mississippi Community Education Center, Mississippi Today reported last week.

A ThinkProgress article found that in 2016, only 167 of the 11,700 Mississippi families who applied for a TANF payment were approved.

Family brought Nancy to campus for the first time. Human Services awarded more than $2 million in welfare grants directly to the charity founded by DiBiase’s father, also Ted, the professional wrestler known as the “Million Dollar Man”-turned Christian minister, Clarion Ledger first reported. Shortly after on New Year’s Day in 2019, Davis sent another calendar invite to DiBiase, an ex-professional wrestler and motivational speaker the nonprofit was paying to conduct workplace training for state employees. Gov. Nancy New sat on the foundation’s board and another athletic foundation board member sat on the of board of New’s nonprofit. Anna has received recognition for her work, including the 2020 Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award and the February 2020 Sidney Award for reporting on Mississippi’s debtors prisons, a first place 2020 Green Eyeshade Award for reporting on jobs, poverty and the Mississippi economy and the Bill Minor Prize for Investigative Journalism in 2019 and 2018 for reporting on unfair medical billing practices and hunger in the Mississippi Delta. Please pay what you can to keep us reporting and publishing.

To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS). District Attorney Owens and assistant district attorneys will prosecute the case. That is economic development.”. The January meeting did not result in Prevacus’ relocation to Mississippi, but did come weeks before state investigators say Davis, Nancy New and her son Zach New allegedly took $2.15 million in welfare dollars to make personal investments in Prevacus and its affiliate PreSolMD, according to a State Auditor release. That month, Bryant gave Nancy New the Mississippi Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the second highest honor the governor grants.

The abrupt growth of Nancy New’s nonprofit — in both government influence and physical offices — started in 2017 after the welfare agency started awarding the group TANF contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. Records are kept for all cases from the last twenty years. Shad White, the Mississippi state auditor, right, and Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens discuss the auditor’s office investigation about millions in federal money meant for the poor, in February in Jackson, Miss. “(T)his is about economic development plain and simple!! Five other people were charged in the apparent scheme, including Nancy New, a politically connected figure who was the executive director of the Mississippi Community Education Center, one of the two nonprofit groups mentioned in the report. Mr. Davis, in a statement to a congressional committee last year, said that Mississippi welfare officials were using the program “to address the needs of those we serve. Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America.

It’s not clear why the human services department became the point of the contact for the meeting, set by John Davis, the agency’s director at the time, for Jan. 2, 2019 at the office of state contractor Nancy New. Former First Lady Deborah Bryant often attended events celebrating Nancy New’s efforts and spoke at one of the nonprofit’s most recent ribbon cuttings for its new State Street Center in downtown Jackson last September, while the investigation into the welfare program was ongoing.

States have broad authority to spend the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families federal block grant, known as welfare, to meet one of four objectives: provide cash assistance to poor families, promote employment, prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies and encourage two-parent families. The alleged fraud occurred just after the meeting between Jan. 18 and Oct. 7, 2019, according to court documents. In June of 2019, Human Services employees took information about potential fraud to Bryant, who relayed the information to State Auditor Shad White. You do not have the right to treat taxpayer money as your own or to lie to the taxpayers about what you’re doing with that money. – Special agents from the office of State Auditor Shad White have arrested John Davis, the former Director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services (DHS); former DHS employee Latimer Smith; Dr. Nancy New, owner and Director of the Mississippi Community Education Center (MCEC) and New Learning, Inc.; Zach New, Assistant Executive Director of MCEC; Anne McGrew, accountant for MCEC; and Brett DiBiase in connection with a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme. The new program created work rules and time limits on aid — and, notably, gave each state much more leeway on how to spend the money. Mr. White’s office, in a statement, said the group was “particularly dependent” on TANF funding “and engaged in significant misspending.” From 2016 to 2019, the statement said, the group was given more than $60 million in welfare money, and raised less than $1.6 million from other sources. For those who support anti-poverty initiatives, the unfolding scandal has left a particularly bitter taste.

Danny Blanton, a spokesman for the human services department, said on Monday that steps were being taken to clean it up, including a planned forensic audit. by Anna Wolfe, Mississippi Today March 5, 2020. They then converted funds to their personal use and concealed the conversion through various fund transfers, fraudulent documents, at least one forged signature, and deceptive accounting measures. Her work in the welfare field was feted by conservatives for helping poor people achieve self-sufficiency. Those facing criminal charges include former Department of Human Services Director John Davis, as well as Nancy New, the leader of the Mississippi Community Education …

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