A Florida grand jury followed $10 million from a Medicaid-related settlement through a state-supported charity, two nonprofit organizations, and eventually into political committees and the Republican Party of Florida.<\/p>\n
Then, after concluding that taxpayer money had been misappropriated and used for political purposes, the grand jury reached another conclusion: It did not have enough evidence to charge anyone with a crime.<\/p>\n
The findings come from a sealed grand jury report obtained by CBS News Miami<\/a>. The report examined a roughly $67 million settlement between Florida and Centene Corp. involving overpayments connected to prescription drugs.<\/p>\n The grand jury rejected the position that $10 million of that settlement was a separate donation or “bonus” that could be directed elsewhere. Instead, the panel concluded that the entire settlement was taxpayer reimbursement and that the $10 million ultimately routed through the Hope Florida Foundation belonged to Florida taxpayers.<\/p>\n Following The Money<\/p>\n Embedded media follows; please allow a moment to load.<\/p>\n The story began years before the money started moving.<\/p>\n Florida officials learned in 2021 that Centene had overbilled the state through pharmacy benefit management practices connected to the Florida Healthy Kids program. According to the grand jury report, Florida’s share of a potential settlement was calculated at $67,048,611.<\/p>\n A draft agreement offering to repay the full amount was sent to Florida officials in 2021. The matter remained unresolved until September 2024, when negotiations moved quickly.<\/p>\n The report says a Sept. 12 version of the agreement called for $62 million to be returned to the state while $5 million went to the Hope Florida Foundation. One day later, the amount directed to the foundation had doubled to $10 million, leaving approximately $57 million for the state.<\/p>\n The Hope Florida Foundation describes itself as a 501(c)(3) direct-support organization for the Florida Department of Children and Families<\/a>. Its donor disclosure says its sole purpose is to support the department.<\/p>\n The grand jury concluded that directing part of the Centene settlement to the foundation was not equivalent to Centene making an independent charitable contribution.<\/p>\n “We find that the full Centene settlement was taxpayer reimbursement,” the grand jury wrote, according to CBS News Miami.<\/p>\n It also rejected then-Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Jason Weida’s characterization of the $10 million as a “bonus,” concluding that the money was part of the damages Centene owed Florida taxpayers.<\/p>\n A Quick Turnaround<\/p>\n Centene transferred the $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation on Oct. 4, 2024.<\/p>\n Joshua Hay, who chaired the foundation at the time, testified that its largest previous donation had been $100,000. He also testified that he learned the $10 million was coming shortly before the transfer and soon learned that two organizations would seek $5 million grants.<\/p>\n The first was Secure Florida’s Future. The second was Save Our Society from Drugs.<\/p>\n Hope Florida approved the grants, and the entire $10 million was out of the foundation within 25 days of arriving, according to the grand jury’s findings.<\/p>\n The speed did not stop there.<\/p>\n Secure Florida’s Future received $5 million and transferred $3.75 million to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee chaired by James Uthmeier, who was Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff at the time.<\/p>\n Save Our Society from Drugs also received $5 million. The grand jury found that it transferred another $4.75 million to Keep Florida Clean.<\/p>\n Together, that put $8.5 million into the political committee.<\/p>\n The grand jury said the two organizations had represented in their Hope Florida grant applications that the money would not be used for political purposes, but substantial portions were transferred to a political committee shortly after the grants were received.<\/p>\n The panel described the movement of the money as part of a “sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.”<\/p>\n Where It Went<\/p>\n A forensic accountant working with the grand jury traced what happened next.<\/p>\n Keep Florida Clean transferred $7 million to the Republican Party of Florida and another $1.23 million to the Florida Freedom Fund, a second political committee chaired by Uthmeier, according to the report.<\/p>\n The Republican Party later returned $2 million to Keep Florida Clean<\/a>, making the net transfer to the state party $5 million, according to FOX 35.<\/p>\n That $2 million movement is important, but it is not the same thing as Florida taxpayers getting $2 million back. The report traces money moving between political organizations; it does not describe the $10 million being restored to the state.<\/p>\n The political spending was connected in part to opposition to Amendment 3, the unsuccessful 2024 ballot initiative that sought to legalize recreational marijuana in Florida.<\/p>\n Who Decided?<\/p>\n That is where the grand jury ran into a problem.<\/p>\n It concluded that the $10 million had been misappropriated, but said it could not establish who was criminally responsible for the original decision to send the money to Hope Florida.<\/p>\n “Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida,” the report said.<\/p>\n The panel also found that people involved in the settlement frequently relied on legal advice from other attorneys, further complicating the question of whether prosecutors could establish criminal responsibility.<\/p>\n James Uthmeier occupied an important place in the grand jury’s reconstruction.<\/p>\n The report said Uthmeier was in a position of authority over people involved with the settlement while serving as DeSantis’ chief of staff. Testimony also connected him to directing money after it reached Hope Florida, while Keep Florida Clean, the political committee he chaired, received most of the money that passed through the two nonprofits.<\/p>\n But those findings did not result in a criminal charge against Uthmeier or anyone else.<\/p>\n “Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally,” the grand jury concluded.<\/p>\n Neither Uthmeier, DeSantis, nor then-Attorney General Ashley Moody testified before the grand jury.<\/p>\n The Other Side<\/p>\n Uthmeier, who is now Florida’s attorney general, has rejected allegations of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n “Nobody did anything wrong here,” he said Thursday, according to FOX 35<\/a>, while pointing to the grand jury’s decision not to pursue criminal charges.<\/p>\n He also called the controversy a “hoax.”<\/p>\n Moody, who is now a U.S. senator, said the Agency for Health Care Administration negotiated the Centene settlement and that the attorney general’s office was one of several state agencies that signed the final agreement. She said her office did not know how the Hope Florida Foundation would later spend the money.<\/p>\n DeSantis similarly defended the settlement.<\/p>\n “The settlement that AHCA did was legally sound,” DeSantis said. “It was appropriate, and it advanced the interests of the state.”<\/p>\n He also criticized the disclosure of the confidential grand jury report and said the apparent crime was whoever leaked it.<\/p>\n No Charges<\/p>\n The absence of criminal charges did not amount to the grand jury finding that nothing improper happened.<\/p>\n The panel instead separated two questions: what happened to the money and whether it could prove who was criminally responsible for making it happen.<\/p>\n On the first question, the conclusion was unequivocal.<\/p>\n “While we can’t prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes,” the grand jury wrote.<\/p>\n The panel recommended that Florida lawmakers require that state funds be deposited into the state’s general fund and establish consequences for violating that requirement.<\/p>\n It also called for clearer rules governing how direct-support organizations such as Hope Florida can use taxpayer money, including requirements to track those funds.<\/p>\n The grand jury closed by reiterating that it considered the $10 million taxpayer money.<\/p>\n “As taxpayer money,” the report concluded, “it should have been treated as such instead of being allocated for partisan political purposes and without transparency.”<\/p>\n If you want more stories like this, follow Guessing Headlights<\/a> on <\/a>Yahoo<\/a> so you don’t miss what’s coming next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Florida grand jury followed $10 million from a Medicaid-related settlement through a state-supported charity, two nonprofit organizations,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9869,153767,28,153766,153764,30,29,153769,153768,153765,7910],"class_list":["post-383521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-centene","tag-centene-corp","tag-florida","tag-florida-clean","tag-florida-foundation","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-keep-florida-clean","tag-the-money-embedded","tag-the-republican-party-later","tag-uthmeier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}