Dec 1, 2025 06:54 AM
When the New York Times takes notice of scandal in a state led by a prominent democrat, you know that the brown anal extrusions have finally hit the fan!
This appears to have been one of the largest frauds in US history, currently at $1.2 billion and rising. Minnesota isn't the largest state, with a total 2025 social services budget of $16.8 billion (half the state's $32 billion in general fund spending), so $1.2 billion is big money in that context. (Minnesota prides itself on its Scandinavian style welfare state.)
What people are really talking about is that this extraordinarily large fraud was discovered by the Biden DOJ who investigated it and began a series of successful prosecutions. But does anyone remember Minnesota governor Tim Waltz being asked a single question about it during his Vice Presidential campaign? Did the establishment media ever report on it at all? The establishment journalists must have known about it by then.
Well, now that Tampon Tim lost the 2024 election and is politically expendable, the New York Times finally ran a big story on it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/fr...-ios-share
The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.
Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At first, many in the state saw the case as a one-off abuse during a health emergency. But as new schemes targeting the state’s generous safety net programs came to light, state and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.
Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.
Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating...
...Critics of the Walz administration say that the fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of alienating the Somali community in Minnesota...
...The first public sign of a major problem in the state’s social services system came in 2022, when federal prosecutors began charging defendants in connection to a program aimed at feeding hungry children. Merrick B. Garland, attorney general during the Biden administration, called it the country’s largest pandemic relief fraud scheme.
The prosecutors focused on a Minneapolis nonprofit organization called Feeding Our Future, which became a partner to dozens of local businesses that enrolled as feeding sites.
State agencies reimbursed the group and its partners for invoices claiming to have fed tens of thousands of children. In reality, federal prosecutors said, most of the meals were nonexistent, and business owners spent the funds on luxury cars, houses and even real estate projects abroad...
...Behind the scenes, as federal investigators sifted through bank records and interviewed witnesses, they said they realized that the meals fraud was not an isolated incident. In September, prosecutors charged nine people in two new plots tied to public funds meant for those in need.
In one case, hundreds of providers were reimbursed for assistance they claimed to have provided to people at risk for homelessness, though federal authorities said services weren’t provided.
The program’s annual cost ballooned to more than $104 million last year, the authorities said, from a budgeted projection of $2.6 million when it began in 2020. Two of eight people charged in the scenario have pleaded guilty; six others have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.
In another program, aimed to provide therapy for autistic children, prosecutors said providers recruited children in Minneapolis’s Somali community, falsely certifying them as qualifying for autism treatment and paying their parents kickbacks for their cooperation...
Ms. Hassan is of Somali ancestry, as are all but eight of the 86 people charged in the meals, housing and autism therapy fraud cases, according to prosecutors...
...Red flags in the meals program surfaced in the early months of the pandemic, but the money kept flowing.
In 2020, Minnesota Department of Education officials who administered the program became overwhelmed by the number of applicants seeking to register new feeding sites and began raising questions about the plausibility of some invoices.
Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit group that was the largest provider in the pandemic program, responded with a warning. In an email, the group told the state agency that failing to promptly approve new applicants from “minority-owned businesses” would result in a lawsuit featuring accusations of racism that would be “sprawled across the news.”...
...A report by Minnesota’s nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor about the lapses that enabled the meals fraud later found that the threat of litigation and of negative press affected how state officials used their regulatory power...
...“There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc” for Democrats, said Mr. Magan, who is among the few prominent figures in the Somali community to speak about the fraud.
...Mr. Thompson, a career prosecutor who served as interim U.S. attorney for several months this year, and who declined to discuss his own political preferences, said he believed that race sensitivities had played a major role in the rise of fraud. As pandemic assistance was disbursed, the state was also reeling from the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, he said.
“This was a huge part of the problem,” Mr. Thompson said during an interview in the summer. “Allegations of racism can be a reputation or career killer.”...
![[Image: G7BZYAMXYAAg1Fa?format=jpg&name=small]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G7BZYAMXYAAg1Fa?format=jpg&name=small)
To add fuel to the fire, some 480 employees of the Minnesota Department of Human Services wrote an absolutely scathing open letter, alleging...
https://x.com/Minnesota_DHS/status/1994993895428461006
Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz, certain DFL members and an indifferent mainstream media. It’s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to.
In addition to retaliating against whistleblowers, Tim Walz disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance...
...Agency leaders appointed by Tim Walz willfully disregarded rules and laws to keep fraud reports quiet - even to the extent of threatening families of whistleblowers...
Biased mainstream media such as WCCO and MPR showed absolutely no interest in covering fraud happening in our own state. Programs, especially in behavioral health and disability services were built without any guardrails against fraud, all in an attempt to extract more funding from legislature and the federal government.
As staff, we firsthand witnessed and observed fraud happening yet we were shutdown, reassigned and told to keep quiet. Sometimes more. Leadership did not want to appear to discriminate against certain communities and were unwilling to take action, such as stopping fraud, that would have an adverse impact on their image. To date, no single agency leader has been held responsible for their role in fraud...
It is a structure created and maintained by Tim Walz who has created an environment of inter-related agencies and institutions including the media - that help foster fraud through retaliation and turning a blind eye in exchange for political gain in the form of high power agency leadership jobs or other perks.
Fundamentally, Tim Walz is dishonest, lacks ethics and integrity, has poor leadership abilities, and has never taken any accountability for his role in fraud...
...Thank You NY Times for bringing the plight of Minnesota to the national stage.
![[Image: G7CamKRXEAABmaH?format=jpg&name=small]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G7CamKRXEAABmaH?format=jpg&name=small)
This appears to have been one of the largest frauds in US history, currently at $1.2 billion and rising. Minnesota isn't the largest state, with a total 2025 social services budget of $16.8 billion (half the state's $32 billion in general fund spending), so $1.2 billion is big money in that context. (Minnesota prides itself on its Scandinavian style welfare state.)
What people are really talking about is that this extraordinarily large fraud was discovered by the Biden DOJ who investigated it and began a series of successful prosecutions. But does anyone remember Minnesota governor Tim Waltz being asked a single question about it during his Vice Presidential campaign? Did the establishment media ever report on it at all? The establishment journalists must have known about it by then.
Well, now that Tampon Tim lost the 2024 election and is politically expendable, the New York Times finally ran a big story on it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/fr...-ios-share
The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.
Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At first, many in the state saw the case as a one-off abuse during a health emergency. But as new schemes targeting the state’s generous safety net programs came to light, state and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.
Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.
Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating...
...Critics of the Walz administration say that the fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of alienating the Somali community in Minnesota...
...The first public sign of a major problem in the state’s social services system came in 2022, when federal prosecutors began charging defendants in connection to a program aimed at feeding hungry children. Merrick B. Garland, attorney general during the Biden administration, called it the country’s largest pandemic relief fraud scheme.
The prosecutors focused on a Minneapolis nonprofit organization called Feeding Our Future, which became a partner to dozens of local businesses that enrolled as feeding sites.
State agencies reimbursed the group and its partners for invoices claiming to have fed tens of thousands of children. In reality, federal prosecutors said, most of the meals were nonexistent, and business owners spent the funds on luxury cars, houses and even real estate projects abroad...
...Behind the scenes, as federal investigators sifted through bank records and interviewed witnesses, they said they realized that the meals fraud was not an isolated incident. In September, prosecutors charged nine people in two new plots tied to public funds meant for those in need.
In one case, hundreds of providers were reimbursed for assistance they claimed to have provided to people at risk for homelessness, though federal authorities said services weren’t provided.
The program’s annual cost ballooned to more than $104 million last year, the authorities said, from a budgeted projection of $2.6 million when it began in 2020. Two of eight people charged in the scenario have pleaded guilty; six others have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.
In another program, aimed to provide therapy for autistic children, prosecutors said providers recruited children in Minneapolis’s Somali community, falsely certifying them as qualifying for autism treatment and paying their parents kickbacks for their cooperation...
Ms. Hassan is of Somali ancestry, as are all but eight of the 86 people charged in the meals, housing and autism therapy fraud cases, according to prosecutors...
...Red flags in the meals program surfaced in the early months of the pandemic, but the money kept flowing.
In 2020, Minnesota Department of Education officials who administered the program became overwhelmed by the number of applicants seeking to register new feeding sites and began raising questions about the plausibility of some invoices.
Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit group that was the largest provider in the pandemic program, responded with a warning. In an email, the group told the state agency that failing to promptly approve new applicants from “minority-owned businesses” would result in a lawsuit featuring accusations of racism that would be “sprawled across the news.”...
...A report by Minnesota’s nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor about the lapses that enabled the meals fraud later found that the threat of litigation and of negative press affected how state officials used their regulatory power...
...“There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc” for Democrats, said Mr. Magan, who is among the few prominent figures in the Somali community to speak about the fraud.
...Mr. Thompson, a career prosecutor who served as interim U.S. attorney for several months this year, and who declined to discuss his own political preferences, said he believed that race sensitivities had played a major role in the rise of fraud. As pandemic assistance was disbursed, the state was also reeling from the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, he said.
“This was a huge part of the problem,” Mr. Thompson said during an interview in the summer. “Allegations of racism can be a reputation or career killer.”...
To add fuel to the fire, some 480 employees of the Minnesota Department of Human Services wrote an absolutely scathing open letter, alleging...
https://x.com/Minnesota_DHS/status/1994993895428461006
Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz, certain DFL members and an indifferent mainstream media. It’s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to.
In addition to retaliating against whistleblowers, Tim Walz disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance...
...Agency leaders appointed by Tim Walz willfully disregarded rules and laws to keep fraud reports quiet - even to the extent of threatening families of whistleblowers...
Biased mainstream media such as WCCO and MPR showed absolutely no interest in covering fraud happening in our own state. Programs, especially in behavioral health and disability services were built without any guardrails against fraud, all in an attempt to extract more funding from legislature and the federal government.
As staff, we firsthand witnessed and observed fraud happening yet we were shutdown, reassigned and told to keep quiet. Sometimes more. Leadership did not want to appear to discriminate against certain communities and were unwilling to take action, such as stopping fraud, that would have an adverse impact on their image. To date, no single agency leader has been held responsible for their role in fraud...
It is a structure created and maintained by Tim Walz who has created an environment of inter-related agencies and institutions including the media - that help foster fraud through retaliation and turning a blind eye in exchange for political gain in the form of high power agency leadership jobs or other perks.
Fundamentally, Tim Walz is dishonest, lacks ethics and integrity, has poor leadership abilities, and has never taken any accountability for his role in fraud...
...Thank You NY Times for bringing the plight of Minnesota to the national stage.
![[Image: G-BjsuJboAAOnMn?format=png&name=small]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G-BjsuJboAAOnMn?format=png&name=small)