Dallas man pleads guilty to scamming summer food program for needy children out of $2M
A Dallas man was sentenced to a year and a half in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to scamming a summer food program out of millions of dollars, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton said Tuesday in a news release.
Michael Anthony Munson, 47, who founded the Heloise Munson Foundation — a nonprofit free food service — was indicted in August 2018 and pleaded guilty in July 2022 to conning the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Food Service Program out of more than $2.3 million.
He was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge Ada Brown.
Munson admitted he inflated meal counts for summer food sites that his foundation served and provided false meal counts for sites it did not serve, according to plea papers.
He also admitted he paid someone $75,000 to create fake invoices from a fake company, Janus Wholesale Food Inc., suggesting that Munson’s foundation had bought enough produce including food, juice and milk to distribute the number of meals it claimed to provide, according to the release.
Munson claimed to have provided more than 2.4 million meals to children in need, but actually provided less than a million meals, collecting fraudulent reimbursements for more than 1.4 million meals that were never provided, according to court documents.
The judge also is expected to order that Munson pay restitution in the case, authorities said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture - Office of Inspector General and the FBI’s Dallas Field Office conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Brasher prosecuted the case.
