MINNEAPOLIS — The event was called "I am My Ancestors' Wildest Dreams" -- an expo in February held at the Minneapolis Convention Center featuring Black influencers and artists, as well as a trade show with black-owned businesses.
It was organized by Tyeastia Green -- Minneapolis' first director of Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
She expected 20 thousand people to attend but only 3700 registered and officials say much fewer actually attended.
In the fallout that followed -- Green resigned her position and accused council members and city officials of racism.
And the city paid for an external audit to review the planning for the Black History Month expo.
"Based on our review of the information, we also found that there was no detailed plan for the expo," said Tim Voncina from Baker Tilly who presented the city's audit committee with findings from an audit.
"It's most concerning to me that most of our city dollars were spent on things in Georgia," said Minneapolis City Council Vice President Linea Palmisano, who serves as chair of the audit committee.
Of the nearly $500 thousand dollars the city spent for artists and vendors to come to the expo, roughly half -- $229 thousand -- went to Minnesotans.
The rest went out of state -- much of it to "Touched Apparel" owner Casey Ellerby, who was hand-picked by Green to curate and plan the event.
According to the audit done by Baker Tilly, 49 of the invoices turned in by vendors were created by Ellerby and that some invoices were turned in multiple times using variations of the same name.
"How do we take that next step to confirm if this was a simple clerical error made in good faith or something more serious and related to fraud?" Palmisano asked Voncina.
Voncina said a deeper dive is needed to learn the intent.
"But we found it kind of eyebrow-raising," he said.
Green declined an on-camera interview but answered questions over the phone. She said no one contacted her regarding the audit and she could have explained most of those issues.
She said the intent was to have half Minnesota artists and half out-of-state artists to bring different black "meccas" to Minneapolis.
She disagrees that Touched Apparel's owner was a bad actor and that they simply streamlined the invoicing process.
And she insists the event was destined to fail because of the city's processes not allowing her to promote it sooner.
City Council Vice President Linea Palmisano says there's a whole lot more to it than that.
"I'm not sure that all the work that was talked about happening behind the scenes in the project coordination of this event actually happened. That's the only explanation i can surmise out of this," she said.