From Newsgroup: alt.politics.usa

The massive public programs fraud committed almost entirely by Somali perpetrators has recently exploded in the national news. The
controversy is centered in Minnesota, where the amount of money bilked
from American taxpayers could prove to be as high as $9 billion. But
the scandal is spreading to other states as well. When Ryan Thorpe and
Chris Rufo published an article in the November 2025 issue of City
Journal linking the fraud to the funding of Al-Shabaabua Somali-based
Sunni Islamist organization that is designated a terrorist group by
several nations, including the U.S.uPresident Trump took notice and
announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Somali
immigrants. In late December, YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a 42-minute
video that showed him knocking on the doors of Somali-run day care
centers in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area that seemed to have no
children in attendance. The video went viral, quickly garnering more
than 130 million views on X and 2.5 million views on YouTube. But while
this story is new to most Americans, it is anything but new to
Minnesotans and others who have been paying it the attention it
deserves.

***

Long known for having a largely Scandinavian population, Minnesota is
now home to the largest Somali population in North America, numbering
roughly 100,000, most of whom are congregated in the Twin Cities
metropolitan area. The seeds of this community were planted in the
early 1990s, when the State Department directed thousands of refugees
from SomaliaAs civil war to Minnesota. Except for a dip in 2008, the immigration of Somalis into Minnesota has continued unabated, augmented
by Somalis arriving from other states. The latter likely has to do with MinnesotaAs generous welfare and charity policies. As Professor Ahmed
Samatar of Saint PaulAs Macalester College was quoted as saying in a
2015 Washington Times story, Minnesota is othe closest thing in the
United States to a true social democratic state.o

The massive fraud currently in the news was not the first controversy surrounding the Somali immigrant community. Around 2015, it proved to
be a fertile source of ISIS recruits. The FBIAs Minneapolis field
office devoted substantial resources to terrorism-related issues. A
September 2015 report of the House Homeland Security Committee revealed
that Minnesota led all other states in contributing foreign fighters to
ISIS. Reviewing the public cases of 58 Americans who joined or
attempted to join ISIS, it found that 26 percent of them came from
Minnesota. Of ten Minnesota Somalis charged with seeking to join ISIS
in Syria, six pleaded guilty and three were convicted at trial in June
2016.

During the trial of the three Somalis who contested the charges, it
became clear, primarily from recordings introduced into evidence, that although they gave the outward appearance of American assimilation,
they hated America. They took advantage of educational and employment opportunities and moved into and out of the workforce at will. At one
time, all three worked at a UPS facility in a leafy Saint Paul suburb,
where they enjoyed watching ISIS videos of beheadings during their
breaks.

Foreshadowing the fraud scandals of today, the Somalis involved in
terrorism showed themselves to be sophisticated in their creative use
of social welfare benefits. Two of four Somali ISIS recruits
intercepted at New YorkAs JFK airport while en route to Syria had used
federal financial aid funds to pay for their travel. One financed his
planned trip to Syria with a $5,000 debit card withdrawal on his
student loan account.

In the decade since, the controversy over terrorist recruitment of
Somalis has receded and the Somali abuse of social welfare programs has proliferated.

Child Care Fraud
The defrauding of MinnesotaAs Child Care Assistance Program for day
care services, although brought dramatically to national attention by
Nick Shirley in late December, goes back more than ten years. Jeff
Baillon, a Twin Cities TV reporter, reported on day care frauds in 2013
and 2015. A year ago this month Jay Kolls, another local reporter, went
to two of the ten sites Shirley visited and reported that one of them
was guilty of 95 violationsuincluding ono records for 16 childrenou
between 2019 and 2023. But taxpayer funds continued to flow to these
programs.

An illustrative case that arose in 2017 involved Fozia Sheik Ali, whose
day care center in south Minneapolis was suspected of billing the
government over $1 million for bogus child care services. According to
Special Agent Craig Lisher, the FBI ofound records that she was
collecting a significant amount of money for a much larger number of
children than were actually attending the center.o AliAs case had an international component as well. She used a phone app to charge
Minnesota taxpayers for her stay at an $800 per night hotel in Nairobi,
and some of the illegally obtained funds were found to have been
transferred overseas, although the FBI declined to specify for what
purpose. Ali pleaded guilty in March 2018 to a charge of wire fraud and
was sentenced to federal prison.

MinnesotaAs Office of the Legislative Auditor issued a detailed report
on child care fraud in 2019. On the question of how much had been
stolen, the report restricted itself to amounts established in
convictions. Because convictions were few and far between, that only
came to between $5 million and $6 million. But the report concluded,
citing the lax administration of the day care program, that the level
of fraud was likely higher. Indeed! And the laxity continues. Jim
Nobles, the legislative auditor at the time of the 2019 report, wrote a
recent column in The Minnesota Star Tribune decrying the opermissive
approacho of MinnesotaAs state government that makes it oeasy for
fraudsters to stealo and questioning why nothing had been done over
many years to oimplement standard financial controls and oversight.o

Feeding Our Future Fraud
In that same Star Tribune column, Nobles wrote: oWe now know that the
fraud scheme used in the stateAs child care program has been used
frequently in other state human service programs.o A dramatic example
of this is the case that has become known as the Feeding Our Future
fraud.

Feeding Our Future is a nonprofit organization that served as a sponsor
of sites like day care centers and restaurants that participated in two federal nutrition programs. During the peak Covid period, from April
2020 until January 2022, Feeding Our Future and its sites and their
vendors found it remarkably easy to bilk these programs by filing false
claims for reimbursement supported by false meal counts, fake rosters,
and bogus invoices.

Aimee Bock was the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future
as well as the ringleader of the fraud scheme. As the sponsor of more
than 250 Feeding Our Future sites around the state, Bock certified the accuracy of the ludicrously inflated meal claims she submitted for reimbursement. While Feeding Our FutureAs sites and vendors are mostly Somaliuas are those who have so far been convicted in the trials
involving Feeding Our FutureuBock is white, adding a multicultural
liberal element to the massive fraud.

The free food programs were administered by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and funded by the federal Department of Agriculture.
Operating under the law adopted by Congress on account of Covid, the
MDE proved a remarkably easy mark. Feeding Our Future sites multiplied
like rabbits, and funds kept rolling out the door. In 2021 alone,
Feeding Our Future siphoned off nearly $200 million of taxpayer money.

It is important to note that suspected fraud was often never fully investigated because government overseers were easily scared off by
absurd claims of racismucharges that continue to be leveled even today.

In February 2021 the FBI passed on allegations of fraud in the programs
to the MDE. In April 2021 a frustrated MDE official tipped off the FBI regarding her own suspicions. FBI forensic accountant Pauline Roase
followed up in the ensuing months by collecting relevant bank records
to track the flow of funds. FBI Special Agents Jared Kary and Travis
Wilmer followed up in the field. In the last six weeks of the
investigation they posted surveillance cameras outside twelve Feeding
Our Future sites that were supposedly feeding thousands of kids a day.
The kids were nowhere to be seen.

On January 20, 2022, the investigation went public when federal agents
raided sites in the largest such operation ever conducted in Minnesota.
The following September, United States Attorney Andrew Luger called a
press conference to announce the charges brought against the first 47 defendants in the case. Charges have now been brought against a total
of 78 defendants. The latest of the 78 cases were charged this past
November.

In the cases resolved so far, there have been 50 guilty pleas, seven
guilty verdicts, and two acquittals. Five fugitives remain at large.
One defendant has died. Thirteen unresolved cases await trial. Bock was convicted on seven counts of wire fraud, conspiracy, and federal
programs bribery and will be sentenced to a long prison term. The total
fraud in these cases comes to some $300 million.

Medicaid Fraud
The Feeding Our Future fraud cases opened a window on scams involving
several Minnesota Medicaid programs. After the FBI executed search
warrants in one such case in July of last year, then-Acting United
States Attorney Joe Thompsonuwho until very recently was leading both
the Feeding Our Future and the Medicaid fraud prosecutionsucalled a
press conference in September to announce criminal charges against the
first eight Medicaid fraud defendants, all of whom are Somali.

These initial cases were tied to MinnesotaAs Housing Stabilization
Services (HSS) program, the purpose of which was to help people with disabilities find housing using Medicaid funds. oMost of these cases,
unlike a lot of Medicare and Medicaid fraud cases nationally, arenAt
just overbilling,o Thompson said at the press conference. oThese are
often just purely fictitious companies solely created to defraud the
system, and thatAs unique in the extent to which we have that here in Minnesota.o The press release distributed at the press conference
suggested that the HSS program seems to have been designed to
facilitate fraud: oBy design, the Program had low barriers to entry for
new providers and for beneficiaries. The Program also had minimal
requirements for reimbursement.o

Uncovering fraud in Minnesota is like playing with Russian nesting
dolls. oMany of the owners of [the involved HSS] companies,o Thompson
said, ohad one or more other companies through which they billed other Medicaid programs such as the [Early Intensive Developmental and
Behavioral Intervention] program, the Adult Rehabilitative Mental
Health Services program, the Integrated Community Support program, the Community Access for Disability Inclusion program, [Personal Care
Assistance] services, and other Medicaid-waivered services.o The
details of these cases were almost incidental to ThompsonAs main point
uthat oMinnesota is drowning in fraud.o

oIt feels never-ending,o Thompson said. oI have spent my career as a
fraud prosecutor and the depth of fraud in Minnesota takes my breath
away.o

On December 18 of last year, Thompson called another press conference
to announce charges against six more defendants in connection with
MinnesotaAs Medicaid programs. The new cases involved allegedly
fraudulent claims in programs for housing, autism services, and
assistance for disabled adults seeking to live independently. oEvery
day we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,o
Thompson said.

The total amount of money disbursed through these programs since 2018
is $18 billion. Based on his ongoing investigations, Thompson estimated
that as much as half that amountu$9 billion!umay have been paid out on fraudulent claims. oThe magnitude cannot be overstated,o Thompson said.
oWhat we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing
crimes. ItAs a staggering, industrial-scale fraud.o Four of the six
defendants charged in December are Minnesotan Somalis, and those
involved in the uncharged cases under investigation are almost entirely Somali.

Political Responsibility
Two defendants from Philadelphia, Anthony Waddell Jefferson and Lester
Brown, undertook what Thompson called ofraud tourism.o Having heard
that MinnesotaAs HSS program presented an easy mark, they set up in
Minnesota to become fraudulent service providers. One wonders how word
of this was able to make its way to Philadelphia but not to the State
Capitol in Saint Paul, where the peopleAs elected officials are charged
with protecting the public interest.

In a Star Tribune interview, Thompson cast the net widely in terms of responsibility: oThis fraud crisis didnAt come out of nowhere. ItAs the
result of widespread failure across nearly every level of leadership in Minnesota: Politicians who turned a blind eye. Agencies that failed to
act. Prosecutors and law enforcement who didnAt push hard enough.
Reporters who ignored the story. Community leaders who stayed silent.
And a public that wanted to believe it couldnAt happen here.o

Partly because itAs a problem that the people can solve directly, I
would focus on the politicians. Three in particular.

The first is Governor Tim Walz. In November 2020, Feeding Our Future
sued the Minnesota Department of Education for suspending the
processing of Feeding Our Future site applicationsuan action MDE
officials had taken because they had good reason to suspect that
Feeding Our Future was defrauding the state. The MDE was represented in
this lawsuit by the office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,
which resolved the lawsuitunot under court order, but voluntarilyuby
backing down and agreeing to continue processing site applications. Two
years later in 2022, when the Feeding Our Future scandal erupted and indictments were announced, Walz falsely blamed a state district court judgeurather than his attorney generalufor compelling the state to
continue payments. This was only the first of many of WalzAs dishonest deflections of responsibility that continue to the present day. Walz
will never live down the frauds committed on the agencies under his jurisdiction.

The second is Attorney General Ellison himself. This past December he
released a widely mocked video in which he declared, oScammers think Minnesotans are easy targets. They are wrong.o No, it is abundantly and increasingly clear that the scammers have been rightuin large part due
to EllisonAs nonfeasance, as seen in the story of his failure to back
the MDE against Feeding Our Future in 2020. Like Walz, Ellison
continues to refuse to sit for an interview with a serious reporter to
answer questions about what he knew about the fraud and when he knew
it. Nor has anyone in the mainstream media made an issue of that fact,
which is a scandal in its own right.

The third is U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar. Even if we leave aside the
fact that she immigrated to the U.S. as a fraudulent member of the Omar
family and later married her biological brother in her own Elmi family
for further fraudulent purposes, we could still fairly describe her as
Somali Fraud Exhibit A. She sponsored the MEALS Act that facilitated
the Feeding Our Future fraud, and her congressional district served as
its epicenter. She was a friend of Salim Said, Aimee BockAs co-
defendant in the second Feeding Our Future trial. She filmed a
promotional video at SaidAs restaurant that was introduced by SaidAs
lawyer at trial, although it actually served to support the charges
against Said. Yet despite these facts, Omar claims to have known
nothing about the fraud.

***

Public programs fraud on the scale we see today in Minnesotauand to a
lesser degree (so far at least) in other statesuindicates a leadership
class that has either forgotten or no longer takes seriously the idea
that public office is a public trust. What more fitting time could
there be than the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of
Independence to restore the moral power of that idea in irresponsible
state governments like that of Minnesota?



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