The Money Was for Kids.
The Contracts Went to Her Own Family.
North Dakota handed a Fargo nonprofit $350,000in federal pandemic-relief money to run after-school programs for children who fell behind during COVID-19 school closures. Instead, prosecutors say, the money went to a family barbecue stand, a relative’s dance studio, and a brother’s record label.
On June 12, 2026, a Burleigh County jury convicted Faith Shields-Dixon — a well-known Fargo Black Lives Matter activist and president of the Faith4Hope Scholarship Fund — on all five felony counts of theft. She had rejected a plea deal that would have capped her jail time at under a year. The judge sentenced her to ten years, four to serve.
RealClearInvestigations put the case in its July 3 “Waste of the Day” column: taxpayer money meant for kids — $131,050by the Attorney General’s accounting — drained through contracts written to hand-picked relatives.
- $131,050stolengrant money misappropriated before the state halted payments — N.D. Attorney General / InForum
- 5countsfelony theft — guilty on every one — Burleigh County jury, June 12, 2026
- 10 / 4yearssentenced / to serve — Judge Bobbi Weiler, following prosecutors' recommendation
- $350,000grantthree-year COVID-relief award her nonprofit received from N.D. DPI — Dept. of Public Instruction
After a four-day trial and roughly three hours of deliberation, a Burleigh County jury on June 12, 2026 found Faith Shields-Dixon guilty of five felony counts of theft — each carrying a maximum of ten years in prison. Judge Bobbi Weiler followed prosecutors’ recommendation and imposed a ten-year sentence, suspending all but four years on the condition that Shields-Dixon comply with supervised probation after her release.
The charges alleged that between February 3, 2022 and April 10, 2023, Shields-Dixon routed state grant money from her nonprofit to businesses owned or managed by relatives. Prosecutors put the amount funneled to family-connected businesses at roughly $124,000; the North Dakota Attorney General’s office pegged the total misappropriated at $131,050 before the Department of Public Instruction cut off further payments.
“It was just smoke-screening to try to hide the purpose for which they were taking these grant dollars.”
N.D. Attorney General Drew Wrigley (R) · on the Faith Dixon conviction
The money came from the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction’s Out of School Time program — a pot of federal pandemic-relief grants totaling nearly $2,000,000, earmarked to help students who were disproportionately set back by coronavirus-era school closures. In October 2021, Shields-Dixon applied through her nonprofit, the Faith4Hope Scholarship Fund (founded in 2016), for $1,500,000 in funding.
The state did not hand over the full request. In January 2022, DPI approved a three-year grant of $350,000, covering the period from November 1, 2021 through June 30, 2024. The stated purpose was after-school programming for children in need. Prosecutors say the programming, in any meaningful sense, never materialized — and that the state later asked Faith4Hope to return roughly $70,000for “unallowable expenses.”
According to the charging documents and trial evidence, Shields-Dixon steered the grant money through service contracts to businesses run by people close to her:
Diezel Double Barrel BBQ — a family barbecue stand — billed for “culinary arts” and catering.
Revolution Records — her brother’s music and production company — received roughly $50,000 for music programming.
Be The Light Dance Studio — run by a relative, Tekeema Shields — was paid tens of thousands for dance programming.
Identity Design Studio LLC — operated by a Faith4Hope board member — also drew a contract.
Investigators concluded some of the money simply covered Shields-Dixon’s own day-to-day living expenses.
The tell was the program itself. State officials visited Faith4Hope’s office repeatedly during posted operating hours and, according to the case, found it closed, with no children present. The after-school program that justified $350,000in taxpayer money existed on paper — in the contracts — far more than it existed in a room with actual students.
A Burleigh County jury found Faith Shields-Dixon guilty on all counts after prosecutors said she and her ex-husband used state grant money meant for kids on family businesses and personal expenses.
The four-year prison term was not the state’s opening offer. In October 2025, Shields-Dixon pleaded guilty to three felony counts under a plea agreement; the state recommended eleven months of incarceration, and her defense argued for four. Restitution was expected to exceed $100,000.
Then, on December 2, 2025, she withdrew the guilty plea, telling the court she had been poorly advised by counsel, and took the case to trial. It was a costly bet. A defendant who could have served under a year instead walked out of a Bismarck courtroom convicted on every count, facing four years behind bars. Attorney General Drew Wrigley (R) said he could not recall another North Dakota case quite like it — while warning that government-program fraud of this kind is “on the rise across the country.”
The case was built by the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation — overseen by Attorney General Drew Wrigley (R) — working with the Department of Public Instruction, which flagged the misspending and referred it. Jeremy Ensrud, the Criminal Division Director in the Attorney General’s office, prosecuted. Charges were filed in Burleigh County on October 2, 2024, roughly a year after DPI raised the alarm.
“The DPI works hard to support strong programs for students while also making sure public dollars are spent responsibly and with accountability.”
N.D. Attorney General Drew Wrigley (R) · statement on the guilty pleas
Shields-Dixon was not the only one charged. Her ex-husband, Charles Dixon, pleaded guilty in November 2025 to one count of theft after admitting the culinary-grant money billed through the family food stand was not used as promised. He was sentenced to three years of supervised probation and ordered to pay more than $35,000 in restitution. The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, meanwhile, is led by state Superintendent Kirsten Baesler (R), whose agency both awarded the grant and, later, moved to claw it back.
The Shields-Dixon conviction landed in RealClearInvestigations’ “Waste of the Day” on July 3, 2026, written by investigative reporter Jeremy Portnoy. The daily feature is produced by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com — the government-spending watchdog founded by Adam Andrzejewski, who died in 2024 and whose successors continue the project. Its premise is simple: document, one case at a time, how public money vanishes into places it was never meant to go.
A single $131,050theft in Fargo is small against the backdrop of pandemic-relief spending, where watchdogs and inspectors general have estimated that hundreds of billions of dollars — by some counts approaching a trillion — were lost to fraud and improper payments nationwide. But the mechanics are identical at every scale: emergency money, rushed out the door with thin oversight, routed through a friendly nonprofit to insiders. What makes the North Dakota case unusual is not the scheme. It is that someone was actually convicted.
Waste of the Day: North Dakota grants meant to help kids recover from COVID school closures were funneled through a nonprofit to the director's own family businesses. A jury convicted. The receipts are public.
Waste of the Day: A North Dakota woman was convicted of five counts of theft for stealing $131,050 in state grants meant for after-school programs. Read the full case.
$131,050in federal money was supposed to help North Dakota children who lost ground during the pandemic. Instead it paid a barbecue stand, a dance studio, and a record label owned by the director’s own family — while state inspectors kept finding the after-school program locked and empty. A jury saw through the paperwork. The rare part isn’t the fraud. It’s the conviction.
