How Many Somali Fraud Schemes Are Running In Minnesota?
Around $250 million was handed out by the Minnesota government to provide meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic from 2020 onward.
Instead, it was pocketed by corrupt business owners, including Salim Ahmed Said. He’s the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where [Rep Ilhan] Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.
Said was found guilty in August of stealing over $12 million for serving 3.9 million “phantom” meals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He blew much of the money on a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-a-month shopping habit at Nordstrom, according to prosecutors.
. . . Most of the money in Minneapolis was funneled through the now-defunct nonprofit Feeding Our Future.
It allowed both nonprofits and for-profit businesses to be reimbursed with taxpayer money for feeding kids by dramatically loosening oversight, waiving site inspections, and allowing bulk take-home food, with almost no verification.
This is often identified as the Feeding Our Future scandal. Then there's a housing assistance program that so far doesn't have a comvenient name:
In August, 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 allegedly defrauding the program, which was run through the state's Medicaid service, by enrolling as providers and submitting millions in "fake and inflated bills."
Prosecutors said the housing stabilization program was susceptible to fraud because it intentionally had "low barriers to entry" and few recordkeeping 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.
The link goes to great lengths to avoid associating it with a particular ethnic group, but it finally gives the game away:
And in late September, a person was charged with defrauding a third state program — in this case, one that provides services to children with autism. Her company was 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.
She 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.
The same person, Asha Farhan Hassan, was also charged in September with running a fraudulent food distribution site as part of the Feeding Our Future scheme.
This link gives more detail on the autism fraud case, but again, it goes to great lengths to avoid using the word "Somali":
A 28-year-old Minneapolis woman is now facing federal wire fraud charges tied to a $14 million autism fraud scheme.
. . . Investigators say the 28-year-old woman, who ran Smart Therapy LLC, billed for EIDBI services only to pocket tax-payer money, but never actually helped those children.
In a troubling twist, parents were paid to keep their children enrolled. On the high end, kickbacks reached more than $1,000 per child.
It appears that Asha Farhan Hassan was involved with all three of these schemes, Feeding Our Future, housing assistance, and autism, and the participants were largely or exclusively Somali. A November 19 story in City Journal brought the Minnesota fraud schemes to national attention:
{T}his “network” of “fraud schemes,” which “form a web” that has stolen “billions of dollars in taxpayer money,” involved many members of Minnesota’s Somali community. The Feeding Our Future, HSS, and autism-services cases are far from the only examples. At least 28 fraud scandals have surfaced since Walz was elected governor in 2019. Most of the large-scale fraud rings, according to two former FBI officials who spoke with City Journal, have been perpetrated by members of the Somali community.
. . . Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Somalia fraud story is the scale, with total costs running into the billions of taxpayer dollars. That raises the question: What happened to all that money?
The Somali fraud rings have sent huge sums in remittances, or money transfers, from Minnesota to Somalia. According to reports, an estimated 40 percent of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad. In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government’s budget for that year.
But this brings is to al-Shabaab:
Our investigation reveals, for the first time, that some of this money has been directed to an even more troubling destination: the al-Qaida-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab. According to multiple law-enforcement sources, Minnesota’s Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of “hawalas,” informal clan-based money-traders, that have wound up in the coffers of Al-Shabaab.
The City Journal report got results:
The Trump administration is looking into whether Minnesota tax money found its way to al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization and al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday. And on Wednesday, House Oversight committee chairman Rep. James Comer announced he is launching an investigation into the widespread fraud allegations.
Bessent wrote on X that the Treasury is "investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans' tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab."
On one hand, Christopher Rufo, co-author of the original City Journal piece, concludes,
Though this story was particular to Minnesota, disruptive mass immigration is a national phenomenon. During the four years of the Biden administration, America imported millions of foreigners, many illegally. Some of these have brought, or are trying to bring, negative aspects of their home culture to the United States.
Indeed, cultural incompatibility was a campaign theme during the 2024 election. Venezuelan gangs took over apartment buildings in Colorado. Haitian migrants overwhelmed deindustrialized towns in the Rust Belt. The Somali fraud story is another point in this plotline.
On the other, so far, nobody has yet tied money from the Somali fraud to either Ilhan Omar or Tim Walz. But money has simply got to be involved. Minnesota state workers suggest that Walz has systematically enabled the fraud:
Whistleblowers alerted Walz to the fraud in its early stages, hoping for a partnership to stop it. Instead of a partnership, they got retaliation.
Employees from the Minnesota Department of Human Services say the state's massive fraud scandal leads straight back to the governor. They claim “Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota,” insisting they warned him early but “got the opposite response.” Instead of help, they say Walz “systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression,” backed by certain DFL allies and “an indifferent mainstream media.”
This could also affect the Democrats' 2028 lineup, of which I'll have more to say.