Louisiana's National Guard Foundation Lost $680K to Fraud
Summary
Louisiana lawmakers appropriated $25 million to the Louisiana National Guard Foundation across four straight years, 2021 through 2024, for solar and resiliency energy projects at Guard installations. In March 2025 the foundation signed a research-and-development contract under the newest, $10 million appropriation, then paid the contractor $5,000,000 on delivery of a business plan. A spoofed email impersonating the foundation's own attorney redirected that entire payment in a single day. The foundation recovered $4,319,524; as of the auditor's October 2025 report, $680,476 was still missing, no insurance claim had been filed, and no suspect had been identified -- while the same audit found no internal-control weakness worth reporting.
One payment, one spoofed email
The money came from a $10 million appropriation the Louisiana Legislature made under Act 776 of the 2024 Regular Session⧉ for a 'resiliency project' -- research into environmentally friendly ways to handle industrial waste and energetic materials at Guard installations. In March 2025 the foundation signed a project agreement with a contractor⧉ to produce a research-and-development plan, then made one payment -- the entire first half of the $10 million -- on delivery of that plan: $5,000,000, wired in one transaction. That is the payment the spoofed email hijacked.
View data as table
| Payment stolen by the spoofed-email wire fraud | $5,000,000 |
|---|---|
| Recovered | $4,319,524 |
| Still missing, as of the Oct. 9, 2025 audit report | $680,476 |
The foundation's own mandatory fraud disclosure⧉ is spare: the theft ran its course in one day, the matter was referred to the New Orleans Police Department, and the investigation was still open as of the auditor's October 9, 2025 report -- with no suspect named and no charges filed. The same disclosure states that, as of that date, no restitution had been made and no insurance claim had been filed for the difference. The foundation's stated fix was narrow: it says it 'enhanced wire protocols that were already in place' -- protocols that did not stop this transfer.
Four years, one foundation, $25 million
The resiliency appropriation was not the state's first bet on this foundation. Louisiana lawmakers had already appropriated $5 million a year, three years running, for a related solar-microgrid program at the same installations: $5 million under Act 119 of 2021⧉, $5 million under Act 170 of 2022⧉, and $5 million under Act 447 of 2023⧉ -- each routed through the same foundation to the same solar developer, which holds a ten-year exclusive right to build on Guard property under a 2022 master development agreement. Add the $10 million resiliency appropriation and the state committed $25 million to this one foundation across four consecutive legislative sessions.
View data as table
| 2021 -- Act 119 of the 2021 Regular Session (solar) | $5,000,000 |
|---|---|
| 2022 -- Act 170 of the 2022 Regular Session (solar) | $5,000,000 |
| 2023 -- Act 447 of the 2023 Regular Session (solar) | $5,000,000 |
| 2024 -- Act 776 of the 2024 Regular Session (resiliency) | $10,000,000 |
A clean audit, in the same report
The CPA firm's opinion on the foundation's FY2025 financial statements is unmodified⧉ -- the clean bill auditors issue when nothing in the statements themselves is materially wrong. The same report's formal findings section checks 'No' for material weakness, 'None reported' for significant deficiency, and states there were no internal-control or compliance findings of any kind for the year -- the standard audit machinery that is supposed to catch a control failure like this one found nothing to flag, even as the fraud sat disclosed a few pages away. The $680,476 still missing equals roughly 9.3% of the $7,346,311 the foundation spent, in total, on every program it ran that year.
- A spoofed email impersonating its own attorney cost the Louisiana National Guard Foundation the entire $5,000,000 first payment on a state-funded resiliency contract, in a single day.
- $4,319,524 was recovered; $680,476 was still missing as of the auditor's October 9, 2025 report, with no insurance claim filed and no suspect identified.
- That payment was drawn from a $10 million 2024 appropriation that followed three prior years of $5 million state appropriations to the same foundation for a related solar program -- $25 million in state money to one organization since 2021.
- The audit that disclosed the fraud also gave the foundation's FY2025 financial statements an unmodified opinion and reported no internal-control weakness of any kind for the year.
The report states two related but not identical dollar figures for the recovered money: Schedule 2, the mandatory fraud disclosure, puts the recovered amount at $4,319,524; Note 13, describing the same payment, separately states that $4,319,573 was held in escrow as of June 30, 2025 -- a $49 difference the report does not explain, and this piece does not resolve. The $680,476 unrecovered figure used throughout is calculated from the Schedule 2 amount ($5,000,000 minus $4,319,524), since that schedule is the report's dedicated fraud accounting. Readers with information about this case can contact the Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Fraud Hotline.
Sources(1) ▾
- Bourgeois Bennett, LLC (Certified Public Accountants), filed with the Louisiana Legislative Auditor, Louisiana National Guard Foundation and Subsidiaries -- Consolidated Financial Report, June 30, 2025 (2025-10-09) — The Foundation's independently audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2025, including Note 11 (Solar Projects, p.24-25), Note 13 (Resiliency Project, p.26-27), Schedule 2 (Schedule of Fraud and Misappropriations, p.31-32), the Schedule of Findings and Responses (p.35), and the Consolidated Statement of Activities (Exhibit B-1, p.5). Source for the four years of legislative appropriations, the resiliency-project contractor payment, the wire-fraud incident and its dollar figures, the auditor's unmodified opinion with no internal-control findings, and the Foundation's total annual expenses. app.lla.state.la.us · original document
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The Louisiana National Guard Foundation, a nonprofit that channels state money into solar and energy projects at Louisiana Military Department installations, disclosed in its audited financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2025⧉ that a spoofed email cost it $5,000,000 of state-appropriated money in a single day. The email impersonated the foundation's own attorney; the wire it triggered was forwarded to the foundation's financial firm, Raymond James, and out the door. $4,319,524 came back. As of the auditor's report, $680,476 had not.