Disgraced welfare director bowed to Phil Bryant’s wishes


Phil Bryant had discovered his sure man.

Whether or not the governor wished grant funds directed to his favored distributors, a companion to proselytize for his faith-based initiatives, or for somebody to preserve monitor of his wayward distant relative, Bryant’s welfare director John Davis was keen to ship for his boss.

It typically took not more than a quick textual content message — despatched privately — to get issues achieved.

“Sure sir,” Davis would reply.

“Your the most effective,” Bryant would say.

Credit score: Graphic by Bethany Atkinson

The previous Mississippi governor appointed Davis to oversee the state’s roughly $1 billion public security internet for the poor in 2016.

Textual content exchanges not too long ago obtained by Mississippi Right now expose the governor’s backchannel affect on that company, which is in the center of an enormous scandal auditors say cost Mississippi taxpayers tens of tens of millions of {dollars}.

Officers are accusing Davis of turning the federal block grant program known as Non permanent Help for Needy Households, mostly identified for offering the meager month-to-month “welfare verify” to very poor households, right into a slush fund.

However the aversion to offering direct money assistance to the needy – inflicting welfare rolls to drop 75% and opening the door for Davis to use the majority of the cash in nonsensical methods – was the governor’s. 

Over time, the company’s different aim of serving to people “discover self-sufficiency,” turned distorted by bloated, deceptive campaigns posing as workforce coaching, parenting and youth growth programs for poor households.

The adjustments in coverage, Bryant’s affect, Davis’ eagerness to please, a cult-like environment and lax oversight from state and federal authorities all contributed to the welfare company’s failures.

From January 2016 to June 2019, when Davis served as director of the Mississippi Division of Human Companies and reported immediately to Bryant, auditors say at least $77 million in that company’s taxpayer funding was misspent, tens of millions of which have but to be discovered. The governor has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the scandal. 

The state may have used that cash to provide a low-income family with a 12 months’s value of lease, electrical energy, little one care, diapers, month-to-month transportation stipends, and 9 meals a day – and have achieved the identical for 2,600 extra households. The quantity of people who may have benefitted from that is sufficient to fill each seat in the brand new volleyball stadium at the College of Southern Mississippi – which was bought with welfare funds – eight occasions.

Davis, who has pleaded not responsible, is going through state embezzlement and fraud costs, a $96 million demand for compensation from the state auditor, a possible federal indictment, doubtless civil litigation, the chance of severe jail time and public scorn.

Alternatively, Bryant, who finally compelled Davis out of his job, has emerged unscathed.

Textual content messages, nevertheless, shed new mild on Bryant’s involvement in the best way Davis ran his department, spent welfare {dollars} and circumvented company controls that ought to have prevented favoritism in grant awards.

Half 1: Phil Bryant had his sights on a payout as welfare funds flowed to Brett Favre

Non permanent Help for Needy Households is a federal block grant Congress licensed throughout the 1996 welfare overhaul. States have broad discretion to spend this annual pot, $86.5 million in Mississippi, on programs satisfying 4 functions: 

  • Present direct assistance to needy households
  • Promote job preparation and work
  • Stop out-of-wedlock pregnancies 
  • Encourage two-parent households

Investigators from the workplace of State Auditor Shad White, a Bryant appointee, obtained these texts greater than two years in the past via cellphone knowledge dumps – however the story they inform had been hid till now. Mississippi Right now has reviewed a whole lot of pages of written communication, that are reprinted right here precisely as they seem with out correction.

Bryant additionally tried to make his personal enterprise deal with an organization that was paid $2 million in allegedly stolen welfare funds, in accordance to different texts Mississippi Right now first reported. NFL legend Brett Favre had requested the cash.

READ MORE: Brett Favre used fame and favors to pull welfare {dollars}

However the governor’s title doesn’t seem in White’s 104-page report describing in meticulous element the misdeeds of welfare officers and contractors, save for a line about him alerting the auditor to potential fraud. As a substitute, White credited Bryant because the whistleblower in the welfare scandal.

White, who has stopped publicly discussing the audit due to a gag order in the legal case, informed Mississippi Right now final October that he believed it was the welfare director’s obligation to reject any improper requests from the governor, not the governor’s accountability to know company spending rules. 

John Davis, 54, spent his entire profession in the Mississippi Division of Human Companies, beginning as a low-level social employee at the county DHS workplace in Brookhaven, the place he grew up. By 2005, he was promoted to the state workplace, the place he served immediately over the very program he’s now accused of defrauding.

In a typical 12 months, MDHS manages round $1 billion in federal security internet funds, about $150 million of which it contracts to different organizations, together with non-public nonprofits. Earlier than Davis took over, the TANF program was catching flak not for making giant purchases, however for extreme underspending. When he turned director, the company had amassed roughly $40 million in further TANF {dollars} from previous years, creating the chance for what occurred subsequent.

A lot of the misspending recognized by auditors in the welfare scandal occurred on the nonprofit level as Davis’ department enforced few controls. The alleged rip-off primarily concerned TANF funds the state funneled via a program Bryant touted known as Households First for Mississippi.

On this Sept. 7, 2016 file picture John Davis, then govt director of the Mississippi Division of Human Companies, solutions lawmakers questions at a listening to at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photograph/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

In audit experiences, Davis is painted as a tyrant, as a pacesetter who intimidated people with his unilateral management over funding and his capability to fireplace workers at will – a legislative change to the department that started his first 12 months as director. However Davis wasn’t the one company worker controlling MDHS’s funds and accounting, which was in disarray. For authorized opinions and help issuing subgrants, he relied on savvy attorneys who may write grants to match funding functions and make expenditures with out triggering a crimson flag in an audit.

His texts additionally point out that the burden of holding the purse strings, and the barrage of requests and wheedling he obtained as a result of of it, wore on Davis.

“I attempt to keep away from him as a lot as doable trigger he’s all the time asking for cash,” he as soon as texted, referring to subgrantee and former soccer participant Paul Lacoste, who ran a welfare-funded boot camp-style health class typically attended by lawmakers and political staffers free of cost.

Davis didn’t have the posh of ignoring the governor, so he leaned into his position as an excellent ole boy.

Gov. Bryant and his spouse, Deborah Bryant, typically flattered Davis utilizing language that appeared extra familial than professional.

Simply eight months into Davis’ time period as director, Bryant’s spouse assured him of the governor’s affection and assist: “He LOVES you,” she wrote.

The lifelong authorities bureaucrat – a never-married, self-proclaimed “easy nation boy” in his late 40s, doughy and balding – appeared to feed off the reward.

And Davis was not shy about exhibiting his devotion to Bryant – a well-liked, charismatic politician who dressed in costly fits and personalized cowboy boots.

Credit score: Graphic by Bethany Atkinson

As soon as in 2018, when the federal human companies workplace rejected Mississippi’s proposal for a meals stamps-funded workforce venture that benefitted a distinguished native trucking firm, Davis despatched an electronic mail to a national affiliation requesting “URGENT ASSISTANCE” to reserve it. “My Governor, Phil Bryant has promoted this program,” he wrote.

He ended his message with, “My Governor is counting on me.”

Bryant additionally enlisted Davis’ help to current an award to a enterprise “who has partnered efficiently with Households First,” emails present, and he finally gave the award to that trucking firm.

Davis and Phil Bryant shared an evangelical power, invoking God and Christianity in their public messaging or turning government-related speeches into what gave the impression of sermons.

The governor and the company bureaucrat had been the front-line defenders of a 2016 legislation to shield the “sincerely held” non secular beliefs that marriage is between one man and one lady; that people shouldn’t have sex exterior such unions; and that an individual’s gender is ready at start.

Bryant and Davis additionally loved sharing the corporate of celebrities. The governor flaunted his proximity to nation musicians, actuality TV personalities or star athletes like Favre, a high-profile participant in the welfare audit. He snapped selfies with actress Jennifer Garner, who represents an worldwide humanitarian nonprofit that obtained tens of millions in TANF funds from the welfare company Bryant oversaw.

Davis, in the meantime, had turn into shut to the family of well-known retired WWE wrestler Ted DiBiase Sr., generally known as the “Million Greenback Man” – who was keen to promote the company’s self-help rules via evangelism.

It was the perks Davis offered to the wrestler’s son, Brett DiBiase – together with a fraudulent $48,000 contract and allegedly sending him to rehab on the welfare program’s dime – that prompted the preliminary investigation, blowing the bigger welfare scandal large open. Brett DiBiase pleaded responsible to a felony throughout the welfare scheme in 2020. 

The opposite son, Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., is the topic of a sealed federal civil investigation associated to his work with the department.

Bryant had some prior connection to the wrestlers, however inside a authorities workplace that blended office and family, Davis developed notably shut relationships with the sons. 

Since 1987, Ted DiBiase Sr. has performed a basic WWE villain identified for utilizing his wealth to manipulate his opponents. In scripted, efficiency wrestling, they call this individual a “heel.” He began a Christian ministry, via which he will get paid to communicate at church buildings, in 2001. Whereas he retired from wrestling in the Nineties, he nonetheless performs the character in skits on the program at present. 

The WWE is characterised by its portrayal of staged occasions and over-the-top storylines as actual. These actors keep in character out of the ring, typically even off digital camera in an try to blur the road between actuality and fiction. 

Davis and Teddy DiBiase swapped Christian devotionals, traveled out of state and exercised at the gymnasium collectively. Davis often texted the older brother, “I like you.” The welfare director flew throughout the nation to go to Brett DiBiase whereas he was in drug rehab, mentioned his treatment choices with a specialist and known as him the “son I by no means had.” When not collectively, they shared lengthy, late-night cellphone calls, cellphone records present.

The welfare department employed the DiBiases, and their ministry, known as Coronary heart of David, for varied “mushy companies,” reminiscent of to create a cellphone app to attain troubled teenagers and ship them Bible verses. The plan was to incentivize youngsters to use the app by promising customized movies from Ted DiBiase Sr. or the governor, proposals present. The app by no means occurred. Their programs, in accordance to audits, usually delivered few outcomes and they didn’t report any outcomes to the state, in accordance to Mississippi Right now’s records requests.

Former Gov. Phil Bryant and Ted DiBiase Jr. in 2015.

The DiBiases obtained greater than $5 million from the welfare program in a roughly two-year span – $3.9 million of which the state auditor has demanded they return, alleging they didn’t fulfill the phrases of their contracts. Attorneys for the wrestlers declined to remark.

The DiBiases invited Bryant and his spouse to the premier of a documentary that Teddy DiBiase made about his father. On the crimson carpet, the picture op backdrop contained each Coronary heart of David and Households First for Mississippi’s logos. Teddy DiBiase additionally sat on the advisory council for an initiative Deborah Bryant chaired and gave motivational speeches at the governor’s Wholesome Teenagers Rallies.

In 2015, then-Gov. Phil Bryant visited the Canton, Mississippi set of the movie Teddy DiBiase Jr. was making an attempt to produce and discover traders for, in accordance to a lawsuit DiBiase filed towards the movie producers for breach of contract. DiBiase’s companion on the movie, Nicholas Coughlin, additionally obtained welfare cash that the state auditor demanded he return.

Whereas Davis’ closeness with the youthful DiBiases, 39 and 34, has drawn scrutiny from investigators, Ted DiBiase Sr. believed Bryant was the one who elevated the wrestlers contained in the state’s welfare program.

In an interview at a 2018 comedian conference in Michigan, DiBiase Sr., 68, stated that his ministry was “chosen by our governor to be the face of his faith-based initiative for the state of Mississippi.”

Bryant denied this assertion, saying that people and organizations surrounding his administration typically exaggerated his involvement with them for clout.

A draft proposal hooked up to company emails obtained by Mississippi Right now describes a plan to incorporate parts of religion inside Households First for Mississippi as Bryant’s imaginative and prescient.

“Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant has recognized the necessity to construct capability domestically of many religion teams in Mississippi and has developed a faith-based initiative with a pacesetter chosen to work with native communities,” the doc dated Could 2018 reads. “(Households First for Mississippi) will align its efforts with the Governor’s plan and will work intently with the Governor’s religion primarily based management workforce.”

Whereas welfare cash could also be spent on programs run by faith-based establishments, the federal authorities prohibits the state from utilizing the cash for inherently non secular workout routines, like worship.

A assessment of movies and social media posts reveals that one of the one seen programs the DiBiases carried out, a four-day sports summer season camp known as “Ignite Sports activities Camp,” had the specific aim “to attain younger males for Jesus Christ.” The camp existed for years earlier than the DiBiase ministry put its title on it. Movies from previous summers present individuals in the camp singing worship music.

In its report, the State Auditor’s Workplace additionally stated that an MDHS subgrantee operating Households First violated federal rules when it paid to stage concert events starring Christian rock musician Jason Crabb and purchased 4,000 copies of Crabb’s kids’s guide about the Ten Commandments in 2018. Impartial auditors confirmed the guide buy was indicative of abuse and waste.

Emails present Deborah Bryant requested a lunch assembly for the governor to meet with Crabb and welfare officers in February of 2019.

The following month, Gerald Crabb, Jason Crabb’s father and additionally a Christian musician and ministry founder, texted Davis to thank him for what he had achieved for him and his son.

The welfare director informed Gerald Crabb of his plan to incorporate “interior metropolis youngsters” into their venture. “You must hear them sing,” Davis wrote.

Davis stated he envisioned them placing on a live performance collection with the kids because the “opening act” and stated that the governor and his spouse had been supportive of the trouble.

“We had lunch with the Governor and First Woman,” Davis texted Gerald Crabb in March of 2019. “They’re on board.”

Ted DiBiase Jr. speaks at the Wholesome Teenagers Rally hosted by Households First for Mississippi and Gov. Phil Bryant’s workplace in 2018.

TANF, a federal block grant, is infamous in public program and coverage circles for lax pointers that give states broad flexibility to spend the cash nevertheless they want. It has the status of being a authorized slush fund, a program in which officers can defend seemingly ludicrous purchases as satisfying obscure functions in federal legislation and get away with it.

However, in accordance to the state and unbiased auditors who examined Mississippi’s spending, that notion isn’t totally true. The accountants decided that almost all of the misspending violated federal legislation both as a result of the purchases didn’t serve the needy, an apparently missed requirement of TANF pointers, or they didn’t comply with different federal grant rules governing conflicts of curiosity and unfair grant-awarding practices.

As a result of of the best way Congress wrote the legislation creating TANF, although, “there’s very, little or no capability to regulate,” stated Nisha Patel, former director of the U.S. Division of Health and Human Companies’ Workplace of Household Help, which oversees the TANF program. 

States should collect and report many particulars about the lives of poor money recipients in the welfare program in order that the federal authorities can measure their family assets and monitor what number of of them are working. However when it comes to how states spend the remainder of the cash or which non-public organizations it chooses to award the funds, the federal company barely gathers any information. States solely have to report their bills to the federal authorities in obscure classes and are usually not required to provide any supporting documentation, like subgrants or invoices.

“The information is just pretty much as good as what the state’s report,” Patel stated, and if states aren’t precisely recording their spending, “There’s no manner to verify that.”

There’s one entity that’s supposed to maintain the Mississippi welfare company accountable.

Every year on behalf of the federal authorities, the Workplace of the State Auditor audits state companies that receive federal funds. It’s the federal authorities’s primary manner of holding states accountable for their spending. Bryant served as state auditor from 1996, the 12 months Congress handed the overhaul of welfare and created the TANF program, till 2007.

In 2005, a new state legislation required Bryant to start auditing the TANF program’s efficiency – the precise outcomes of the people who had been supposed to profit from it – and the expenditures of its subgrantees. However the brand new requirement was conditional on the company having the precise funds to accomplish that, and the Legislature allowed the legislation to expire shortly thereafter. The workplace by no means carried out the audit of TANF beneath Bryant or since.

“It was too simple to put the hand in the copper kettle,” stated former chair of the health and human companies committee Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville, who authored the 2005 legislation.

Holland, a longtime champion of public programs for the poor and sick, had realized for years that the state was relying on “quote unquote political religion” that the welfare company would spend these funds properly. He even voted again in the ‘90s towards transferring the department beneath the governor’s workplace, which he stated solely decreased accountability and yielded an excessive amount of energy to one politician. His colleagues ignored his considerations.

Close to the tip of Bryant’s administration, Holland stated he raised suspicions about MDHS spending and “even bombarded in on the director at one level after having been informed in all probability 10 occasions I couldn’t see him.”

“I informed him, I stated, ‘Director, this factor is fixing to be like strolling from hell to Texas. It’s gonna bust large open. There’s an excessive amount of hanky panky going on with this cash and too little accountability,’” Holland stated. “And he simply merely stated, ‘I’ve acquired it beneath management, Mr. Chairman.’ And I stated, ‘I don’t assume you do however I rattling certain hope you do.’”

The lawmaker added, “This was probably the most monumental top-down scandal I feel I’ve skilled in my 36 years in authorities.”

Auditor White has laid most of the blame in the welfare scandal at the ft of Davis and his nonprofit subgrantees, although Davis’ department follows plans authorized by the governor. Some state companies have boards overseeing their operations, however others, like MDHS, reply immediately to the state’s high official.

Within the case of the misspending by nonprofit founder Nancy New, a central determine in the scandal, White despatched letters demanding compensation to all of her nonprofit Mississippi Group Training Heart’s board members – who may very well be held accountable in civil court docket. However in the case of the governor’s workplace, which oversees MDHS, no such calls for had been made.

The auditor defined to Mississippi Right now in October that it isn’t the governor’s position to understand how TANF funds might or is probably not spent.

White posed a hypothetical: A governor meets with his human companies director and asks for the department to use welfare funds to construct, let’s say, a community backyard – an unallowable buy beneath TANF rules.

White stated it’s the director’s accountability to reject the request and clarify that the cash is probably not used for that goal.

On the flip aspect, White requested, “Is it the governor’s accountability in that hypothetical that I simply arrange to know all the TANF regs? The reply is not any.”

“If that’s the governor’s accountability,” he continued, “then it’s not possible to be the governor of the state of Mississippi or any state, since you would have to be an knowledgeable in TANF regs, MEMA regs, DPS regs, and each federal grant that’s drawn down by any of these entities. It could be not possible.”

Close to the tip of Davis’ administration in 2019 – across the similar time he was asking New by textual content message to wire cash to the Malibu, Calif., facility the place Brett DiBiase was in rehab – there’s an instance of Davis telling the governor “no,” at least for a time. 

Bryant was searching for funding for a kids’s growth clinic. Davis informed the governor by electronic mail that his attorneys decided it might be towards federal guidelines to put TANF or another MDHS funds towards the program.

“Thanks John. Let me know if I can help discover funding. We all the time need to observe the foundations,” Bryant responded.

However even then, Davis finally “discovered a manner to fund” the group anyway, he informed the governor in a textual content every week later.

Credit score: Graphic by Bethany Atkinson

“Maybe he did,” Bryant stated when Mississippi Right now reminded him of this alternate. “And I hope it was correct and authorized and moral and ethical.”

The director hadn’t even seen an software from the group earlier than making the choice, in accordance to emails Mississippi Right now obtained.

The dialog about whether or not a program matches the needs of a selected pot of funding, and whose accountability it’s to know these guidelines, ignores one other obvious downside with this situation: A governor and company director can’t merely resolve up entrance, on their very own, which organizations to give grant cash, in accordance to a lead auditor in White’s workplace. 

“A director can’t unilaterally direct cash to a subgrantee due to the required pre-award conditions and steps required in Uniform Grant Steering,” director of the auditor’s finance and compliance division Stephanie Palmertree informed Mississippi Right now in an electronic mail. “Additionally, all federal monies are guided and audited on the idea of ample inside management, which might require an software process at a minimal.”

White informed Mississippi Right now in October that he had not seen proof of Bryant directing Davis to fund particular distributors.

And but, the notion that Bryant may “discover” methods for MDHS to fund particular organizations  — and all he had to do was ask Davis to accomplish that – is obvious in their written communications possessed by the auditor’s workplace for greater than two years.

Bryant deflected when requested about whether or not his requests put strain on Davis to grant his wishes.

“I wouldn’t decide organizations and say ‘fund this one,’ ‘fund this one,’ ‘fund this one,’” Bryant stated. “I feel a query from me saying, ‘Can we fund these people?’ is simply that, a query.”

Coverage advocates don’t see it that manner.

“I’ve been saying all alongside that all of these TANF subgrants which are suspect – Nancy New, all of them – it was the governor who was the wizard behind the scenes,” stated Carol Burnett, founder of the Mississippi Low-Revenue Baby Care Institute. “That’s my opinion.”

Burnett’s opinion is an educated one; she was a division director in the Mississippi Division of Human Companies in the early 2000s and has direct data about how the company operates.

“The factor about TANF and the governor in Mississippi is: it’s an enormous pot of cash and the governor has complete management over it,” Burnett stated. “The governor simply had to have been concerned in these choices.”

The U.S. Division of Health and Human Companies, which administers the federal funds to Mississippi, has denied a number of Mississippi Right now requests for an interview, even to focus on common insurance policies and controls throughout the program. It has stated via written statements that the company is ready till its Workplace of the Inspector Normal has accomplished its investigation earlier than it levies penalties towards the state for the misspending. The company did inform Mississippi Right now in 2020 that Mississippi could have to pay again the misspent funds with its personal state {dollars}, not future TANF funds.

Officers from the native FBI workplace declined to reply whether or not its investigation is ongoing.

On June 19, 2019, Davis knowledgeable Bryant he could be testifying in Washington about the state’s meals assistance and public security internet programs. The welfare director informed Bryant that members of the Home Agriculture Committee “like what Mississippi is doing” and wished to hear about “what we’ve got achieved to be so profitable.”

“Proud of the job you’re doing,” Bryant responded by textual content.

The following day, Davis represented a starkly conservative voice on a panel earlier than Congress, whereas Nancy New and Teddy DiBiase sat behind him on the primary row. Mississippi had simply eradicated a coverage that expanded eligibility for meals benefits, which had the effect of kicking people off the program.

To justify the coverage change, Davis stated the state was serving to increase people out of poverty in different methods. He named one instance: “Legislation of 16,” the self help programs Teddy DiBiase Jr. taught to workers at MDHS and different public companies. The wrestler was paid tens of millions in welfare funds to ship these motivational lectures.

Nancy New and Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr. pay attention as Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes testifies earlier than Congress on June 20, 2019 about why eligibility for meals assistance ought to stay expanded to serve extra low-income people. Then-Mississippi Division of Human Companies Director John Davis was additionally testifying that day about why his state had eradicated that coverage and how DiBiase’s self-help programs had been assembly the wants of poor Mississippians. Credit score: Courtesy of Home Ag Democrats YouTube web page

Utilizing little greater than buzzwords in his testimony, Davis inflated Mississippi’s “family-centered, multigenerational approach” of “serving to the family holistically” and aiding people in “discovering true self sufficiency.” Congress members praised his idea. Davis was positioning Mississippi’s security internet department as a national chief.

When he returned to Mississippi on June 21, he obtained a textual content from the governor. Bryant pressed Davis on whether or not he and company workers had stayed at Trump Plaza throughout their journey and who paid for the rooms. Households First typically used welfare funds to pay for these sorts of journey bills, which means they weren’t mirrored in MDHS spending experiences. Davis’ secretary truly held onto the New nonprofit’s bank card, texts present, so she may use it to guide flights and lodge rooms.

Credit score: Graphic by Bethany Atkinson

A textual content Davis obtained later from his colleague says MDHS paid for the rooms this time. But, Davis informed Bryant he paid for the rooms out of his personal pocket.

“Wow that’s an costly place..” Bryant wrote.

“Sure sir. I’m single and no kids. Was on my bucket checklist,” Davis stated.

Bryant then informed Davis to come to his workplace. The dialog occurred on the identical day Bryant reportedly relayed the preliminary tip of misspending to State Auditor White. A number of days later, investigators from the auditor’s workplace gave Davis a polygraph check the place they requested if he’d obtained any kickbacks from the DiBiases, in accordance to an examination report. Inside about two weeks, Davis introduced beneath strain his abrupt retirement from MDHS.

In August, after Davis left workplace and the auditor’s investigation was nicely underway, Davis despatched the governor one other textual content.

“I’ve been ask by the regional workplace in Atlanta to help some states with modeling their programs after Mississippi,” Davis wrote.

The disgraced former bureaucrat wished the governor’s blessing. “That’s sounds nice,” Bryant responded.

That is Half 2 in Mississippi Right now’s collection “The Backchannel,” which examines former Gov. Phil Bryant’s position in the operating of his welfare department throughout what officers have known as the most important public embezzlement scheme in state historical past.

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