Name: A local church became one of Missouri’s biggest free meal providers, with $29M from taxpayers
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A local church became one of Missouri’s biggest free meal providers, with $29M from taxpayers

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ST. LOUIS COUNTY — An approaching helicopter quickly drowned out the chatter of parents and their children enjoying a warm Sunday morning on the grounds of an unassuming church along Interstate 55.The Bell 407 chopper descended to the church’s parking lot near Meramec Bottom Road in south St. Louis County, landing just beyond the crowd. Out climbed the Rev. Darnell West, who made his way to a side entrance of the church, where one of his three congregations was waiting.It was a week before Halloween, so West spoke of death and eternity to the more than 100 people gathered inside the dimly lit sanctuary. At one point, the 42-year-old West mentioned his own north St. Louis roots, saying he had been born into a drug and gang culture.“Jesus,” West proclaimed as his message approached its crescendo, “saved my life.”
            He left before the service was over, heading back outside where the waiting helicopter, pilot ready, flew him to Influence Church’s Bellefontaine Neighbors campus in north St. Louis County, nearly 30 miles away.A throng of parents and children remained, milling outside the church’s doors on the parking lot. Signs advertising a free helicopter candy drop had been dotted throughout the region and widely advertised on social media. Soon, a second, smaller helicopter arrived, delivering the promised candy for the Halloween season.It’s a competitive marketplace for congregants, and West’s showmanship has helped him grow Influence Church to three locations — at one point it had five — since it was founded under the name Church In Action in 2005.West arrives by helicopter weekly, something he said he has done since 2015 to travel between campuses. He has a personal security detail. His sermons are broadcast on local television stations. The church has purchased billboard space along busy Interstate 55.And during the COVID-19 pandemic, Influence Church launched and operated what in a matter of months became one of the largest U.S. Department of Agriculture child nutrition meal distribution operations in Missouri. Unlike other large operators — and the largest tend to be churches or nonprofits affiliated with them — Influence Church only applied for and was allowed into the USDA programs once their safeguards were loosened during the pandemic.Even in that short time, Influence Church managed to bill the USDA nearly $28.8 million for food it said it distributed — the second-most in Missouri during the time COVID-19 flexibilities were in place from 2020 through mid-2022.The pastors in West’s church would tout their work distributing meals during Sunday services, leaving out the fact that millions of dollars were coming through the door in federal reimbursement.“It was sold to anybody watching the program as ‘Oh, look what our church does, we’re very benevolent,’” said one person who worked for the church’s food program but spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “It’s not a church with a food program. It’s a food program that’s paying for the church.”While the federal money was coming in, property records indicate the church acquired the land for its location near University City and 10 acres surrounding its Bellefontaine Neighbors church location.An audit covering the church’s first few months of the USDA reimbursements in 2020 indicated church expenses were mixing with food program reimbursement funds, which are supposed to be kept separate and only used for food program work.The audit, filed in a federal database, only covered a few months of the church’s operation in the federal program, through the end of September 2020. But it found several problems, including that “payroll expenses allocated to the program were difficult to distinguish from Church worker expenses.”Auditors were ultimately able to distinguish between church and food program costs, Darnell West said in an emailed response to questions from the Post-Dispatch. Influence Church “voluntarily implemented a formal process for monthly review and approval of program expenses to more clearly distinguish them from church expenses,” he said.Darnell West’s wife and co-pastor, Rochelle West, who has an accounting background and signed responses to the federal audit, did not respond to requests for comment. Darnell West declined to be interviewed for this article, explaining the Christmas season is a busy time for the church. But he agreed to respond to written questions from the newspaper.In his responses, West said the church distributed over 10 million meals during the pandemic and used some of its own money “to ensure we could feed as many children as possible.” He said the “first year was a learning process, and we have since formalized our own internal procedures.”“We have a rich history of springing into action to help our city and community, and we were feeding over 3,000 people per day before becoming an approved sponsor in the USDA programs,” West said in a statement. “We were grateful the USDA programs allowed us to expand our mission to assist children who were not in school to receive meals due to the pandemic, which was particularly hard on families whose children would normally receive free school lunches, especially as food prices increased while the pandemic lingered.”The church said it is no longer participating in the programs now that Missouri has ended the grab-and-go option and requires meals to be served on site, a decision Missouri officials made this summer due to concerns about “program integrity.” Influence Church said it has applied to begin participating in the food programs again next year.While there were issues raised in the early audit, Missouri officials have not cited Influence Church for any major violations. Nor are there any pending actions against the church, said a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which oversees the USDA programs in the state. Unlike other food program sponsors, such as New Heights Community Resource Center, which was the subject of a Post-Dispatch report last month, it has not been barred from the food programs.Still, Influence Church’s ability to quickly launch a food distribution program and claim almost $29 million in reimbursements in just two years shows just how much money was suddenly being sent to organizations without long track records in the program, and why state officials grew worried enough to shut down grab-and-go.In the last two years, Influence Church has acquired more real estate. In November 2020, it bought the land around its Bellefontaine Neighbors Church, over 10 acres along Bellefontaine Road. In May 2021, Influence Church purchased its location near University City, a small building at 8200 Page Boulevard appraised at $433,000. There is no mortgage filed with the county for either purchase.Then, in March 2022, a lien against the church’s south St. Louis County campus was lifted by the lender. The lien stemmed from a $1 million loan taken out to purchase the property in 2016. Another lien, against an old church building Influence Church owns at 6500 Natural Bridge Road, was released in October.West said the property transactions were covered by the church’s budget and by “leveraging or selling existing Church-owned assets.”An audit for the church’s 2021 fiscal year has not yet been filed. But in that initial audit through September 2020, before the real estate transactions, three of 60 tested expenses were church expenses, auditors found, and one of those was “erroneously reimbursed twice and duplicated in Program expenses.” There was no process for formal approval of expenses, and supporting documentation couldn’t be provided for five of the 60 expenses auditors examined — four of which “were incurred by and reimbursed to the same Program staff.”The person familiar with the program says it was paying church employees. Some got bonuses. As the food program was winding down, West at one point told a group of staff that attendance needed to grow at the church’s congregations or people would be laid off.“He even admitted in that meeting, the food program’s paying everybody’s wages,” the person said. “I never saw a church make that kind of money on a food program.”In response, West said that “merit-based bonuses for food program employees were paid from USDA reimbursements in strict accordance with the food program allowable expenses and our state approved budget. Merit bonuses for church employees were paid from Influence Church’s operating budget.”Meant to ensure the country’s neediest children don’t go hungry, the USDA child nutrition programs exploded during the pandemic. Rules requiring kids to eat meals on site were suspended to ensure social distancing. Approved organizations, known as sponsors, were able to distribute a week’s worth of meals at a time, or up to 14 per child.And with kids learning virtually at home, the Summer Food Service Program — which requires little to no verification or documentation that kids are receiving the meals — was expanded year-round.For each meal claimed, the federal government would pay as much as $4.50. The bigger the volume, the bigger the reimbursement and the larger the margins. Sponsors like Influence Church bought food by the truckload from distributors like U.S. Foods, which could provide each meal for less than the federal government was willing to reimburse.From its base of operations on its Bellefontaine Neighbors campus, Influence Church was trucking food as far as Sikeston, Joplin and Kansas City, claiming over $1 million a month at times. Some days, the church campus near the intersection of Bellefontaine Road and Quiet Drive would have a half dozen leased trucks on its parking lot and a sign advertising “free food” along Bellefontaine Road.In July 2021, it claimed a high of $2.6 million in meal reimbursement, the equivalent of over 575,000 meals, or 18,000 a day.Missouri DHSS officials were the first in the country to opt out of the grab-and-go meal waivers, citing concerns with program integrity. Sarah Walker, the bureau chief of Missouri’s Community Food and Nutrition Assistance program, told the Post-Dispatch last month that ballooning claim numbers and concerns about fraud prompted the state to require nonprofits to serve meals to children on site as the programs did pre-pandemic.Since that decision, “there is not a week that goes by” without someone requesting assistance from Influence Church, West said.“Many families have very low food security: they worry food will run out, they cannot afford a balanced meal, they cut the size of meals or skip meals,” West wrote. “We are still assisting our community with healthy and safe food, snacks, and beverages, but ending the ‘grab and go’ option has made it harder for those in need to obtain food.”Even before pandemic grab-and-go rules, a USDA Inspector General report noted one of the child nutrition programs was easy to cheat, particularly by claiming nonexistent employees working for the program to justify expenses. And Missouri officials, admittedly, don’t have the staff to keep up with the hundreds of organizations that participate in the programs.State officials can ask for receipts to ensure food was actually purchased for the program, but it’s difficult to go much deeper than that. On-site visits were cut back during the pandemic. The state doesn’t ask for employee W-2s to verify payroll.“A lot of that is just on their word,” Walker, the head of Missouri’s program, said. “We don’t have the staff either to go in and dig that deep into every sponsor.”In November 2021, Missouri DHSS officials during a visit to one of Influence Church’s sites noted that the program lacked documentation proving “reimbursement is being used solely for the operation of the food service,” according to documents obtained from the state under an open-records request. Officials also noted that the number of children at the site they visited in Sikeston had just 58% of the daily average number of kids the church claimed it was serving in September 2021.Even so, DHSS accepted church explanations for the difference and the official “corrective action plan” that Rochelle West, the pastor with the accounting background, filed with the state.In May 2022, the last month of grab-and-go in Missouri, Missouri officials in one of their few close reviews of the church found it had claimed meals worth $235,000 more than what reviewers said should be paid.Darnell West said the discrepancy was due to a “misunderstanding” where the church served meals in several areas beyond the last day of school, the cut-off date for the program. The church checked the last day of school on district websites but the schools had changed the dates without updating the websites, he wrote.“We did not intend to serve or claim additional meals,” West wrote. “We were simply trying to make sure kids in need were fed through the last day of school.”By July 2022, after grab-and-go ended and kids had to physically eat meals on site, the church claimed just $31,000 in federal reimbursement — a tiny fraction of the $2.6 million it had claimed in the same month a year before.Sponsors around the state have said participation in the program has dropped off precipitously since grab-and-go ended.Melissa Weissler, head of St. Louis-based Operation Food Search’s USDA child nutrition programs, understands the worry about fraud but thinks there could be a compromise. Some children truly can’t eat on site, she said, so perhaps the state could allow one meal could be taken off-site rather than the week’s worth allowed under pandemic-era rules.“A lot of the people who participated in our meal program while those waivers were in place probably wouldn’t have and didn’t participate previously,” Weissler said.Missouri officials believe new rules on the types of sponsors allowed into the program are likely in the wake of high-profile scandals and widespread concerns of program abuse around the country.In a statement, a USDA spokesman said the agency “is continually working to improve federal administration and oversight of its programs and provide states and local operators with the resources and tools they need to operate programs with integrity.”Influence Church has cut back since the program wound down. It closed a south St. Louis campus and a Festus campus within the last year and scrapped plans for an Orlando, Florida, location.West said declines in in-person attendance prompted the closures, and the church hopes to reopen the locations, including Orlando, “when the timing is right.” Now the church is focused on a new effort that would lead to a move for one of its congregations and even locations in Liberia and Guyana.To pay for it, Influence Church will rely on parishioner contributions.
    
    
            
    
        
        
                    
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ST. LOUIS COUNTY — An approaching helicopter quickly drowned out the chatter of parents and their children enjoying a warm Sunday morning on the grounds of an unassuming church along Interstate 55.The Bell 407 chopper descended to the church’s parking lot near Meramec Bottom Road in south St. Louis County, landing just beyond the crowd. Out climbed the Rev. Darnell West, who made his way to a side entrance of the church, where one of his three congregations was waiting.It was a week before Halloween, so West spoke of death and eternity to the more than 100 people gathered inside the dimly...

A local church became one of Missouri’s biggest free meal providers, with $29M from taxpayers

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