Mississippi welfare officials wanted to give state residents a hand up, not a hand out.
For some Mississippi children, that meant offering them a chance to spend time with a 1980s-era star running back.
For Marcus Dupree, it meant covering the mortgage on his 15-acre ranch, which includes a five-bedroom home, in Madison County.
Through a Mississippi Department of Human Services initiative called Families First for Mississippi, run by two nonprofits, the state chose to use welfare dollars to heavily emphasize parenthood and fatherhood as opposed to providing direct assistance to families.
So the nonprofits hired Dupree, dubbed “the best that never was” by ESPN, to mentor Mississippi children. Dupree was a heavily sought-after high school recruit who, the story goes, was swindled by his agent and eventually injured, ending his professional career just as it began. In the 2010 ESPN “30 for 30” documentary on him, Dupree is portrayed as a 18-wheeler truck driver long removed from the limelight.
Dupree has since leveraged his local celebrity to form and boost organizations, such as his own Marcus Dupree Foundation also incorporated in 2010, with the stated mission of helping underprivileged children.
In April 2018, less than a year after he partnered with the welfare-funded Families First program, the Dupree foundation purchased a five-bedroom, 4,114-square-foot residence in Flora. The county assessed the value of the property at approximately $395,000 for tax purposes while the foundation’s initial mortgage on the property totaled $64,000. One widely used real-estate site, Zillow, estimates the property’s value at nearly $900,000.
The same day, one of the Families First nonprofits, Mississippi Community Education Center, entered a six-year lease agreement to rent the ranch for $9,500. The rental payments were assigned to the bank as collateral for the loan; the agreement essentially promised to pay the mortgage for its term.
Dupree also earned at least $100,000 from the nonprofit as an employee on payroll.
The nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, founded by prominent private education contractor Nancy New, is at the center of sprawling public embezzlement allegations that rocked the state welfare department in early February.
Dupree was just one of a number of former athletes the nonprofit used welfare funds to benefit.
“I think it’s obvious to everyone following this case that some key individuals at DHS and some of the grantees simply didn’t care about the rules around spending welfare money. They were treating this money like it was their own slush fund,” State Auditor Shad White, who investigated the scheme, told Mississippi Today. “This is not to say every recipient of funds knew they were receiving welfare money. Some probably did not know. But the people handing out the money did know.”
Agents from White’s office arrested New, her son Zach New, John Davis, the former head of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, and three others in early February as part of what it called the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history.
The News are accused of stealing millions of federal dollars intended to serve the poor and all six have pleaded not guilty. The arrests did not involve Dupree or his foundation.
White said he was aware of the Dupree property but could not comment further because the investigation, which now involves the FBI, is ongoing.
The Marcus Dupree Foundation, which has no website, no profile on nonprofit databases and virtually no internet footprint besides its affiliation with Families First for Mississippi, owns a 15-acre property in Flora’s gated community called The Highlands.
The ranch deal bears resemblance to the lease agreement New signed in 2017, which effectively paid $5 million to the Southern Miss Athletic Foundation, where New served as a board member, for the construction of a new volleyball facility, Mississippi Today reported in February.
The rent agreement for the Dupree property, attached to the deed in the county land records office, says Mississippi Community Education Center would continue to secure the bank loan until March 31, 2024, unless the agreement is terminated. There is no termination filed within the deed record.
The Dupree foundation’s listed website is defunct and it does not appear to have filed the required nonprofit financial forms; no records appear on the IRS tax exempt organization search engine or on other databases Mississippi Today checked.
Approached at the property owned by the foundation on Wednesday afternoon, Dupree was doing yard work and refused to talk with reporters about his involvement with New’s nonprofit. “I was just an employee. That’s all I can say,” he told Mississippi Today before ordering the reporters to leave.
“You just don’t walk up on my property without getting shot,” Dupree said, standing next to a red gas canister and a burning pile of brush where a tree had collapsed.
It’s unclear how Human Services or New’s nonprofit, funded by government grants, mostly the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) grant known as welfare, was utilizing the property it rented. A nonprofit representative Cassandra Williams did not return several calls for this story. She sent a statement by email that did not answer any questions about the lease on the ranch or the nonprofit’s work with the Dupree foundation.
“The current staff at MCEC cannot address questions that do not pertain to MCEC directly or to current MCEC programing,” the email said.
