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Frank
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It is well established that there is massive fraud by Somalis in the US.
Even before the video spread far across the internet, however, scandal plagued Minnesota. In 2021, federal law enforcement first probed a series of multimillion dollar fraud schemes. Those fraud schemes have led to federal charges against 92 people with 62 convicted — and counting.
President Trump and other Republican lawmakers have focused attention on the state's large Somali community, as most of the fraud defendants are of Somali descent, drawing stiff criticism from local officials, including Walz, who denounced Mr. Trump's criticism as "vile, racist lies and slander towards our fellow Minnesotans."
Feeding Our Future: The case that started it all
This COVID-era $250 million scheme — which now includes upwards of 75 defendants — revolved around a nonprofit group called Feeding Our Future. The group claimed to work with restaurants and caterers to distribute meals to schools and extracurricular programs but instead submitted fake meal count sheets and invoices, raking in millions in administrative fees and getting kickbacks from people who ran their meal distribution sites, prosecutors said.
Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock was convicted earlier this year, and several others involved in the scheme have pleaded guilty or been convicted.
Early on, Minnesota officials questioned some of the group's filings and slowed approvals of reimbursements, prompting Feeding Our Future to file a lawsuit accusing the state of racial discrimination. The state auditor's office found that "the threat of legal consequences and negative media attention" affected the state's decision-making process about regulatory action against Feeding Our Future.
What federal prosecutors called "the largest pandemic era fraud in the United States" is "just the tip of a very large iceberg," according to FBI Director Kash Patel.
Fraud in a housing program with "low barriers to entry"
This summer, state officials shut down a fairly new program designed to help seniors and people with disabilities find housing after discovering "large-scale fraud."
A month later, federal prosecutors charged eight people with defrauding the program, which was run through the state's Medicaid service, by enrolling as providers and submitting millions in "fake and inflated bills."
Another five people were charged with bilking the housing program in mid-December — including two Pennsylvanians with no clear connections to Minnesota who allegedly traveled there in what prosecutors described as "fraud tourism."
Prosecutors said the housing stabilization program was susceptible to fraud because it intentionally had "low barriers to entry" and few record-keeping requirements. They also noted that spending on the program had ballooned to more than $100 million last year, despite initial estimates that it would cost around $2.6 million a year.
Autism program fraud
In recent months, two people were charged with defrauding a third state program — in this case, one that provides services to children with autism. Both defendants were accused of hiring unqualified "behavioral technicians" and submitting false claims to the state that indicated the staff had worked with children enrolled in the program. They also allegedly paid kickbacks to parents who agreed to enroll their children in the program, in some cases sending them as much as $1,500, prosecutors said.
One of the autism services defendants, Asha Farhan Hassan, was also charged with running a fraudulent food distribution site as part of the Feeding Our Future scheme. She pleaded guilty to wire fraud in December.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph H. Thompson said the autism services case "is not an isolated scheme." In total, 14 Medicaid services are under audit and deemed "high risk" for fraud.
Fraud claims against day care centers
YouTuber Nick Shirley drew tens of millions of views in late December when he posted a video that showed him visiting federally supported child care centers around Minneapolis and finding no children present. He alleged nearly a dozen day care centers were not actually providing any service and suggested owners were pocketing the taxpayer funds.
CBS News conducted its own analysis and visited several of the day care centers mentioned by Shirley: all but two have active licenses, according to state records, and all active locations were visited by state regulators within the last six months. One was subjected to an unannounced inspection as recently as Dec. 4. Our review found dozens of citations related to safety, cleanliness, equipment and staff training, but there was no recorded evidence of fraud. Another day care shared security footage of people dropping off young children the same day that Shirley arrived and claimed the day care was empty.
Minnesota's Office of Inspector General carried out on-site compliance checks at nine of the centers and confirmed they were "operating as expected," officials said Jan. 2. Eight of the centers had children present, and one had not opened yet when it was inspected, the state said.
CBS
There is massive Somali fraud.
say it.
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