The Minnesota Department of Human Services has filed a lawsuit against Zion Baptist Church, accusing the church of misusing funds intended for community services.
MINNESOTA, USA — The Minnesota Department of Human Services filed a lawsuit against a North Minneapolis church, accusing the church of misuse of funds.
According to court documents, the state is accusing Zion Baptist Church of breaching a contract and unjust enrichment after accepting approximately $2,483,958 in funds to provide services that the state believes were not offered. The DHS seeks to recover grants that were not used for the services stipulated under the contract.
The complaint states that the church was granted funds to provide services such as “mental health, substance abuse, and violence prevention,” but the DHS claims that the documents submitted to the agency contained “numerous inconsistencies, billing irregularities, and other documentation problems,” raising concerns over the grant use.
According to the DHS, Zion was awarded funds through two contracts to offer services in collaboration with a group of 17 subrecipient agencies called The Wellness Collaborative.
The DHS states that upon receiving documents required to support Zion’s use of grants, the agency found several deficiencies.
Following an audit, the DHS said it discovered that at least three Zion staff members received nearly $1 million in grant funds, while being paid as contractors rather than as employees, despite owning their own subrecipient agencies also paid by Zion. Similar payments were discovered, including two more former staff members, the complaint alleges.
In addition, the state alleges that Zion didn’t exercise “adequate oversight of subrecipient agencies” and “failed to provide (DHS) sufficient source documentation to determine if services were provided.”
The DHS also said that the information they received about services contained “missing dates for some claimed services, missing staff and client information, missing times of service, service categories differing from the corresponding invoice, inconsistent payment rates for the same service, and unexplained service codes.”
