State sponsored terror: Fraud schemes sent Minn. – Latest News
Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer {dollars} have been stolen during the administration of Gov. Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officers, overseeing one of probably the most beneficiant welfare regimes within the nation, are asleep on the change. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to attach the dots.
In many instances, the fraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota’s sizeable Somali group. Federal counterterrorism sources affirm that thousands and thousands of {dollars} in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, the place they finally landed within the arms of the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Al-Shabab.
As one confidential source put it: “The largest funder of Al-Shabab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”
Our investigation reveals what occurs when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart forms, when imported clan loyalties collide with a political class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism are cynically deployed to protect prison conduct.
The predictable result’s graft, with taxpayers left to foot the invoice.
Medicaid an straightforward mark
If you have been to design a welfare program to facilitate fraud, it might in all probability look a lot like Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program.
The HSS program, the primary of its form within the nation, was launched with a noble aim: to help seniors, addicts, the disabled and the mentally ailing secure housing. It was designed with “low barriers to entry” and “minimal requirements for reimbursement.”
Some of the funds wound up within the coffers of al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Al-Shabab. AFP through Getty Images
Before this system went stay in 2020, officers pegged its annual estimated price at $2.6 million. But prices rapidly spiraled out of control. In 2021, this system paid out more than $21 million in claims. In the next years, prices shot up to $42 million, then $74 million, then $104 million. During the primary six months of 2025, payouts totaled $61 million.
On Aug. 1, Minnesota’s Department of Human Services moved to scrap HSS, noting that cost to 77 housing-stabilization suppliers had been terminated this yr on account of “credible allegations of fraud.”
Joe Thompson, then the appearing Minnesota US lawyer, went even additional, stating that the “vast majority” of the HSS program was fraudulent.
On Sept. 18, Thompson introduced prison indictments for HSS fraud in opposition to Moktar Hassan Aden, Mustafa Dayib Ali, Khalid Ahmed Dayib, Abdifitah Mohamud Mohamed, Christopher Adesoji Falade, Emmanuel Oluwademilade Falade, Asad Ahmed Adow (under) and Anwar Ahmed Adow — six of whom, in accordance with a US Attorney’s Office spokesperson, are members of Minnesota’s Somali group.
Thompson made clear that that is simply the primary spherical of fees for HSS fraud that his workplace will probably be prosecuting.
“Most of these cases, unlike a lot of . . . Medicaid fraud cases nationally, aren’t just overbilling,” Thompson mentioned at a press convention saying the indictments.
“These are often just purely fictitious companies solely created to defraud the system, and that’s unique in the extent to which we have that here in Minnesota.”
‘Racism’ protection
On Sept. 18, the identical day that the HSS fraud fees have been introduced, the US Attorney’s Office reported that a man named Abdullahe Nur Jesow had change into the 56th defendant to plead guilty within the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.
Founded in 2016, Feeding Our Future was a small Minnesota nonprofit that sponsored day cares and after-school applications to enroll within the Federal Child Nutrition Program. The organizations that Feeding Our Future sponsored have been primarily owned and operated by members of the Somali group, in accordance with two former state officers with connections to law enforcement.
In 2019, Feeding Our Future acquired $3.4 million in federal funding disbursed by the state. In the months after the COVID-19 pandemic started, nevertheless, the nonprofit quickly elevated its quantity of sponsored websites.
Feeding Our Future claimed it was serving to feed youngsters. AP
Using pretend meal counts, doctored attendance data and fabricated invoices, the perpetrators of the fraud ring claimed to be serving 1000’s of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged youngsters. In 2021, Feeding Our Future acquired almost $200 million in funding.
In actuality, the money was getting used to fund lavish life, buy luxurious autos and buy real estate within the United States, Turkey and Kenya.
In 2020, Minnesota officers raised considerations in regards to the nonprofit’s speedy enlargement. In response, Feeding Our Future filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination associated to excellent website purposes, noting that it “caters to . . . foreign nationals.”
“That’s the standard operating playbook for that cohort: when in doubt, claim racism, claim bias,” says David Gaither, a former Minnesota state senator and a nonprofit chief. “Even if the facts don’t point to that, it allows for many folks in the middle, or on the center-left, to stay silent.”
Gaither believes the mainstream media, alongside Minnesota’s Democratic institution, have long turned a blind eye to fraud within the Somali group. This, in flip, allowed the issue to metastasize.
“The media does not want to put a light on this,” Gaither mentioned. “And if you’re a politician . . . if you don’t win the Somali community, you can’t win Minneapolis. And if you don’t win Minneapolis, you can’t win the state. End of story.”
The fraudsters have leveraged their growing political affect to domesticate close ties with Minnesota’s elected officers.
Several people concerned within the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to, or appeared publicly with, Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minneapolis.
Omar’s deputy district director, Ali Isse, advocated on behalf of Feeding Our Future. Omar Fateh, a former state senator who just lately ran for Minneapolis mayor, lobbied Walz in help of this system. And one of the accused, Abdi Nur Salah, served as a senior aide to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
Just days later, on Sept. 24, Thompson introduced his workplace’s first indictment in one more fraud case. This time, the scheme concerned federally funded autism providers for kids.
Autism ‘kickbacks’
The accused is a girl named Asha Farhan Hassan, a member of Minnesota’s Somali group, who has additionally been charged within the Feeding Our Future rip-off. She’s alleged to have performed a position in a $14 million fraud scheme perpetrated in opposition to Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program.
Hassan and her co-conspirators “approached parents in the Somali community” and recruited their youngsters into autism remedy providers. It didn’t matter, prosecutors instructed, if a little one didn’t have an autism analysis: Hassan would facilitate a fraudulent one.
“To drive up enrollment, Hassan and her partners paid monthly cash kickback payments to the parents of children who enrolled,” the US Attorney’s Office mentioned in a press release.
“These kickback payments ranged from approximately $300 to $1,500 per month, per child. The amount of these payments was contingent on the services DHS authorized a child to receive — the higher the authorization amount, the higher the kickback. Often, parents threatened to leave . . . and take their children to other autism centers if they did not get paid higher kickbacks.”
Much like with HSS, autism claims to Medicaid in Minnesota have skyrocketed lately — from $3 million in 2018 to $54 million in 2019, $77 million in 2020, $183 million 2021, $279 million in 2022, and $399 million in 2023.
FBI raid Twin Cities nonprofit Feeding our Future, in St. Anthony, Minn., on Thursday, January 20, 2022. Star Tribune through Getty Images
Over the identical period, the quantity of autism suppliers within the state spiked from 41 to 328, with many within the Somali group establishing remedy facilities, citing the need for “culturally appropriate programming.”
By the time the scheme was uncovered, one in 16 Somali 4-year-olds within the state had reportedly been recognized with autism, a charge more than triple the state average.
“This is not an isolated scheme,” Thompson mentioned in a press release. “From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network.”
What Thompson arguably hinted at, however left unsaid, ought to be apparent: This “network” that has stolen “billions of dollars” concerned many members of Minnesota’s Somali group.
Follow the money
The Feeding Our Future, HSS and autism-services instances are removed from the one examples.
At least 28 fraud scandals have surfaced since Walz was elected governor in 2019. Most of the large-scale fraud rings, in accordance with two former FBI officers, have been perpetrated by members of the Somali group.
Kayesh Magan, a Somali-American who had labored as a fraud investigator on the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and declined an interview request, recognized the issue final yr: “We must grapple with something that is uncomfortable and true: Nearly all of the defendants in the cases I’ve listed are from my community. The Somali community.”
Perhaps probably the most shocking side of the Somalia fraud story is the dimensions, with whole prices working into billions of taxpayer {dollars}. That raises the query: What occurred to all that money?
The fraud rings have sent big sums of money to Somalia.
According to reviews, an estimated 40% of households in Somalia get money transfers from overseas. In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion — more than the Somali authorities’s price range for that yr.
Our investigation reveals, for the primary time, that some of this money has been directed to an even more troubling vacation spot: the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabab.
According to a number of law-enforcement sources, Minnesota’s Somali group has sent untold thousands and thousands via a community of hawalas, casual clan-based money-traders, which have wound up within the coffers of Al-Shabab.
One source, who spoke on situation of anonymity, described the close hyperlinks between the Somali group in Minnesota and Islamic terrorist teams overseas.
Ten years in the past, the source was recruited as an “independent contractor” for a three-letter company’s investigation into the “Minnesota men” who had joined, or tried to affix, ISIS.
That yr, a Homeland Security job drive discovered that Minnesota led the nation within the quantity of Americans who had joined, or tried to affix, ISIS. Of the 58 Americans who had executed so, almost half got here from Minnesota.
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Scott Johnson, who has coated these and associated tales for years, attended a number of of these males’s trials, reporting on them for City Journal. He famous that the lads “gave the outward appearance of American assimilation,” together with being “sophisticated users of social-welfare benefits.”
‘Blowback brewing’
The relationship is ongoing.
“This is a third-rail conversation, but the largest funder of Al-Shabab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” the third source mentioned. “There is an issue here that is real, and if there is ever an event that is traceable back to these funds, or to people from this area, then this situation will take on a whole new set of optics.”
Welfare fraud is more likely to change into a main difficulty in Minnesota’s 2026 elections. Walz, now searching for a third time period, has presided over a litany of scandals and faces Republican Kristin Robbins, who has made fraud prevention central to her marketing campaign.
Gaither mentioned “political blowback is brewing” and that, as more data emerges, “it’s a real rough place to be if you’re the current administration.”
He added that law-enforcement officers and others close to the probes “will tell you off the record that we aren’t even close to being halfway there” in understanding the true scale of the fraud.
The first step to fixing a drawback is acknowledging it. By extension, which means recognizing the issue’s true source. So far, Minnesota’s governing class and its media institution have did not take that fundamental step. Minnesotans should confront the uncomfortable however unavoidable actuality: members of the Somali group have performed a central position within the large fraud now engulfing the North Star State.
Ryan Thorpe is an investigative reporter on the Manhattan Institute. Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow on the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal and the writer of “America’s Cultural Revolution.”
