Michigan State University has stopped payments to sexual abuse victims because of suspicion of possible fraudulent claims.
The $10 million fund was set up earlier this year to pay for counseling services for the survivors of abuse by former MSU sports physician Larry Nassar.
Matt Mencarini is with a reporter with Lansing State Journal. He broke the story of the halted funds earlier this week. Mencarini joined Stateside’s Lester Graham to explain why exactly MSU suspended these funds.
On Tuesday, the firm MSU paid to administer the fund raised concerns of fraud to the university, and asked the university for guidance in handling the issue.
MSU instructed the firm to halt all payments made to the fund while an investigation gets underway. Mencarini said MSU has not explained this decision.
“They [MSU] decided to halt the program, or halt any money out of it, until they can figure out what happened,” Mencarini said. "There's really no timeline for how long that investigation might take, and there's really no additional information from the university at this point — what the nature of those fraud concerns was, and what vetting they were doing for the month that this program and fund had been in use.”
This post was written by Stateside production assistant Sophie Sherry.
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