Intercepted: An update on Brett Favre and the Mississippi welfare fraud scandal

With no Green Bay Packers game on the horizon for this weekend, as the team is on a bye, we’re focusing this week’s edition of Intercepted on the Mississippi welfare fraud case that involves former Packers quarterback Brett Favre. While Favre hasn’t been charged in the criminal case, at least as of yet, he has been named in the civil case.

To break down where those two cases stand, Mississippi Today’s Anna Wolfe shared her time with Acme Packing Company to explain how federal welfare funds were used to pay for Favre’s dream of a new Southern Mississippi volleyball arena and where the story might go from here. Despite the fact that Favre and former governor of Mississippi Phil Bryant haven’t yet been charged in the criminal case, the federal investigation is currently continuing forward with several co-conspirators already accepting plea bargains in exchange for cooperation in the case.

The biggest questions remaining, at least for Favre’s situation, are: 1) Did Favre know he was assisting in the misallocation of funds? and 2) Can further discovery cement that Favre did know? Released text messages haven’t been kind to Favre, who at one point even suggested that the state use prison labor to keep the cost of building the arena down. In another, he asked Nancy New, who ran a nonprofit at the time and has already pleaded guilty to charges in the case, “If you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?” That, in and of itself, isn’t enough to land Favre behind bars, but this story appears to have a few chapters left in it.

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