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Brett Favre is paying back over $1 million to the state of Mississippi, money he was paid for speaking appearances he didn’t make, according to the state auditor.
Favre will pay back the $500,000 immediately, with $600,000 more coming in installments. This came as a result of a state audit which revealed numerous “questioned” costs that came out of the state welfare budget.
Favre doesn’t face criminal charges, and he hasn’t commented on what happened.
What’s funny about all this is: Even before the audit, this story has been out there for a while. It’s just not that many people in the sporting world have been talking about it.
Earlier this year, Mississippi Today dropped a bombshell of a story revealing that the Mississippi Community Education Center, a nonprofit that gets most of its funding from the state welfare fund, had spent $5 million renovating the volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi.
If you’re wondering what a new volleyball stadium does to help people who are on welfare, well, that’s a really good question.
You might also be wondering what that has to do with Brett Favre.
Favre is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. His daughter is on the volleyball team there. In an interview by the AP, Favre boasted about raising funds to build the stadium, and while some of the money was raised from individual donors, $5 million came from the state’s welfare budget.
Mississippi Today also reported that the Mississippi Community Education Center gave over $2 million of state welfare money to a company called Prevacus, which does concussion research and makes medical devices.
Favre invested in Prevacus, per Sports Illustrated. He sat on the advisory board.
Now we learn that Favre allegedly received over $1 million of state welfare money to make speeches he never attended.
“Upon a cursory review of those dates, auditors were able to determine that the individual contracted did not speak nor was he present for those events,” the auditor’s report said.
It’s good that Favre is paying up. But there are still a TON of questions remaining, and one of the biggest ones is why one of the poorest states in the union saw fit to spend millions of dollars out of the state’s welfare fund to build a volleyball stadium and invest in concussion research.
These are fine and noble causes, but Mississippi taxpayers didn’t know they were paying for it, and a lot of needy people could have used that money.
Thursday’s Big Winner: Murder Hornets
Honestly, I give up. We’ve posted a couple stories about murder hornets and they’ve done, like, exponentially more traffic than anything else on our site, so here, you jackals: More murder hornet content.
Keep it up I’m going to turn this into a bee blog. I’ll do it. I swear to god I’ll do it.
Quick Hits: Barkley and MJ, X Æ A-12, Big Ben
– Charles Barkley finally opened up on his fallout with Michael Jordan.
– Grimes and Elon Musk explained their child’s name, X Æ A-12.
– Ben Roethlisberger got called out by Jay Glazer for his … not so strenuous offseason routine.
[jwplayer lJYZKjgW-q2aasYxh]