Minnesota’s public programs are now facing increased federal scrutiny as investigators continue to uncover expansive fraud tied to the state’s Somali community.
Last month, reports emerged that networks within the Minnesota Somali community ripped off state Medicaid and social services programs to the tune of more than a billion dollars. On Friday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) put the North Star State on notice after finding an additional 14 services within the state’s Medicaid program show “high-risk indicators.”
The vast majority of these fraud schemes have connections to Minnesota’s large, politically active Somali community. City Journal and The New York Times have reported on widespread fraud largely connected to a meals program, a housing program, and an autism therapy program. Of the 86 people already charged in connection with these schemes, The Times found all but eight are members of the Somali community.
Latest Investigations
As reported on Monday’s AM Update, multiple federal agencies and a congressional committee are now formally investigating Minnesota’s social programs. In a video posted on X, Dr. Oz explained that “when CMS became aware of the housing program situation, Minnesota insisted it could clean up its own mess,” but, “a few months ago, it admitted it could not.”
He said the feds “stepped in to shut down the fraud-infested housing initiative,” and now they are “taking action on more than a dozen other programs.” Oz said the message to Democrat Gov. Tim Walz is “clear”: “Either fix this in 60 days or start looking under your couch for spare change because we are done footing the bill for your incompetence.”
Oz specifically called out the Somali community and accused Walz of being too afraid of potential political backlash to do anything to stop the alleged fraud. “Minnesota politicians get elected with Somali votes and keep the money flowing,” Oz accused. “This isn’t just fraud, it’s political patronage at public expense.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, meanwhile, is overseeing a probe into whether any of the stolen money made its way to Al-Shabaab, an Islamic terror organization based in Somalia. City Journal reported 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,” and multiple sources told the outlet that Somalis in the U.S. send money back to their home country, where the terror group takes a cut.
Defenders of the Somali community, including Minnesota’s most famous Somali, Congresswoman Ilan Omar, said there is no evidence of that during an appearance on Face the Nation Sunday. When asked how “confident” she is that the claims are “false,” Omar attempted to divert blame.
“I’m pretty confident at the moment because there are people who have been prosecuted and who have been sentenced,” she said. “If there was a linkage in that the money that they had stolen going to terrorism, then that is a failure of the FBI and our court system in not figuring that out and basically charging them with these charges.”
Host Margaret Brennan then pointed out that nearly all the convictions have involved members of the Somali community, but Omar said Somalis are actually the victims. “I want to say, you know, this also has an impact on Somalis because we are also taxpayers in Minnesota,” she claimed. “We also could have benefited from the program and the money that was stolen. And so, it’s been really frustrating for people to not acknowledge the fact that we’re also, as Minnesotans, as taxpayers, really upset and angry about the fraud that has occurred.”
Nothing New
On Monday’s edition of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn was joined by County Highway editor-at-large Walter Kirn, who grew up in Minnesota and said this ever-growing story is not news to anyone with ties to the state.
“All aspiring investigative journalists in America who can get a car, and have low needs, and can live on a little bit of money, get in that car and go to Minnesota right now and live there for two years… You are going to find a bottomless, connected tunnel system to the rest of American political chicanery, fraud, and corruption,” Kirn said. “It starts there, or at least it surfaces there.”
He believes the newfound national attention is a ticking time bomb for the likes of Walz, Omar, state Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (all Democrats). “Minnesota as it exists now politically – in terms of people, celebrity congresspeople, and so on that are on our TV all the time – is about to face a meteor that is going to destroy it,” Kirn predicted. “The corruption is so bad. The levels of financial malfeasance are so high.”
To that point, Megyn ran through some of the numbers as they are known right now. “The housing program in Minnesota was supposed to cost $2.6 million annually last year. Instead, it paid out over $100 million,” she said. “The autism program was… around $3 million in 2018. It ballooned to nearly $400 million by 2023.”
Fox News reported on Friday that whistleblowers told lawmakers the total amount of fraud could actually be over $8 billion.
That is why Kirn said terms like “fraud” and “corruption” don’t properly describe what has transpired in Minnesota. “Fraud is when you steal like a tenth of what there is and secretly embezzle it and use it for something else. Fraud isn’t when the thing grows by multiples of 400 and every bit of it is corrupt,” he explained. “That is a form of industry, and this is their industry. They don’t make computer chips, they don’t make car stereos… they make giant checks out of nothing that they distribute to people for hundreds of millions, for billions of dollars, so much so that there’s extra to go abroad. This is their product.”
More to Come?
What is currently being unearthed in Minnesota may turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg as far as this kind of corruption is concerned. NewsNation investigative reporter Rich McHugh has a new report out about a whistleblower alleging a similar taxpayer-funded Medicare scheme in Maine.
“If this thing leads to cascading revelations, it’s going to be blue state after blue state,” Megyn predicted.
Kirn agreed that it could prove to be very enlightening. “Washington is too frickin big a corrupt enterprise for us to even see one tiny part of it,” he said. “But this Minnesota thing will allow us to sort of watch in almost a stadium version how our politics works, how our people lie, how the money gets sucked up, and how it gets redistributed.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Kirn by tuning in to episode 1,208 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.