Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a civil lawsuit against the nonprofit We Push For Peace, alleging its founder siphoned more than $6 million in public money to bankroll a lifestyle of Las Vegas vacations, luxury vehicles, shopping sprees, and private business ventures, including a used-car dealership and a liquor store, while the organization meant to reduce community violence was bled dry and left unable to operate.
The lawsuit names Trahern Pollard, the nonprofit's founder and former director, and Jaclyn McGuigan, a former director who also served as treasurer. Together, prosecutors allege the pair treated charitable and government funds as a personal slush fund, then tried to cover their tracks once investigators came calling.
Ellison did not mince words about the scale of the alleged betrayal.
"Instead of helping the community, they helped themselves to millions of dollars that should have gone into the community."
That community, the one left holding the bag, had been promised something real. We Push For Peace received millions of dollars in government contracts after George Floyd's death in 2020, tasked with providing conflict de-escalation and interrupting violence in situations where police were not present. The money was supposed to fill a gap. Instead, the lawsuit says, it filled Pollard's pockets.
The complaint paints a detailed picture of how the funds allegedly moved. Pollard stands accused of diverting more than $6 million to fund his personal lifestyle. The spending allegedly included trips to Las Vegas, luxury vehicles, and shopping sprees. He also allegedly used nonprofit money to pay off child support, settle a tax bill with the IRS, and subsidize private businesses, among them a used-car dealership and a liquor store.
When confronted with paperwork, Pollard allegedly lied on official documents. Court filings describe him submitting false statements under penalty of perjury. In one instance, he reportedly labeled a child-support payment as "nonprofit overhead." In another, he described a $35,000 payout to personal friends as "Chicago payroll."
The pattern of alleged fraud in Minnesota's publicly funded programs has become difficult to ignore. State Democrats have voted to block investigations even as fraud losses across various programs climbed into the billions.
McGuigan's alleged conduct was smaller in dollar terms but no less brazen. Fox News reported that prosecutors accuse her of transferring $1,000 per week from nonprofit funds directly into her personal account. On top of that weekly draw, she allegedly stole thousands more in government grant money by labeling the payments as "administrative" expenses. All told, the lawsuit accuses McGuigan of taking roughly $500,000.
The alleged scheme did not end quietly. When the attorney general's office began investigating how We Push For Peace spent its public cash, Pollard and McGuigan tried to cover up their misconduct, the lawsuit states.
Eventually, We Push For Peace elected a new board and blocked Pollard from receiving any more money. That should have been the end of it. It wasn't.
Court documents describe what happened next: Pollard started a competing for-profit business called Change Makers and used it to drain the nonprofit's remaining revenue. The group was left no longer operational, hollowed out by the man who founded it.
The broader environment of oversight failure in Minnesota has drawn scrutiny from multiple directions. Federal authorities froze tens of millions in Minnesota Medicaid funds over fraud concerns, signaling that Washington had seen enough.
The lawsuit itself acknowledges that the exact amounts misused by Pollard and McGuigan remain uncertain. But the scale alleged, $6 million attributed to Pollard, $500,000 to McGuigan, represents a staggering share of the public money entrusted to a single community nonprofit.
What is certain is the outcome: a violence-intervention organization that was supposed to serve neighborhoods in crisis is gone. The contracts were real. The money was real. The community need was real. The services, apparently, were not.
Questions about accountability in Minnesota's state government have only grown louder. Governor Tim Walz ousted his own human services chief just one day before a confirmation hearing as the fraud firestorm widened, a move that raised more questions than it answered.
It remains unclear which specific government entities awarded the contracts to We Push For Peace, or how much total public money flowed into the organization. The lawsuit does not specify a court venue or case number in publicly available details. No criminal charges have been announced, only this civil action.
That distinction matters. Civil lawsuits seek money and injunctions. They do not put anyone behind bars. Whether criminal referrals follow will say a great deal about how seriously Minnesota's justice system treats the alleged theft of millions in taxpayer dollars.
This case does not exist in a vacuum. Minnesota has become ground zero for allegations of massive fraud in publicly funded programs, from feeding programs to Medicaid to community safety grants. The names change. The dollar figures change. The basic story does not: public money flows out, oversight fails, and someone lives well on funds meant for people in need.
Critics have pointed to a culture of institutional permissiveness. Some Republican lawmakers have called for far more aggressive accountability from the officials responsible for safeguarding these funds in the first place.
Ellison deserves credit for filing the suit. But filing a civil complaint after the money is gone and the nonprofit is dead is not the same as preventing the fraud in the first place. The contracts were awarded. The checks were cut. The oversight mechanisms, wherever they were, failed to catch a founder allegedly labeling child-support payments as overhead and calling personal gifts to friends "Chicago payroll."
The people who were supposed to benefit from We Push For Peace, residents in communities dealing with real violence, got nothing. Pollard allegedly got Vegas. McGuigan allegedly got a thousand dollars a week, deposited like clockwork. And Minnesota taxpayers got the bill.
When the money meant for the most vulnerable ends up funding someone's liquor store, the system didn't just fail. It was never really watching.
