FWIW - How Fraud Swamped Minnesota's Social Services System on Tim Walz's Watch (NYT)

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/fraud-minnesota-somali.html

https://archive.ph/QfSVr

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch
Prosecutors say members of the Somali diaspora, a group with growing political power, were largely responsible. President Trump has drawn national attention to the scandal amid his crackdown on immigration.
By Ernesto Londoño
Nov. 29, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

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.

...

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Over a billion in taxpayers’ money stolen.

This is not something Democrats can ignore

[chowder66]

1. While sickening, fraud was rampant nationwide.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Much of the theft was brazen, even simple.

Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren’t cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.

Criminals and gangs grabbed the money. But so did a U.S. soldier in Georgia, the pastors of a defunct church in Texas, a former state lawmaker in Missouri and a roofing contractor in Montana.

All of it led to the greatest grift in U.S. history, with thieves plundering billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief aid intended to combat the worst pandemic in a century and to stabilize an economy in free fall.

much more....
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-billions-in-covid-19-pandemic-relief-aid-was-stolen-or-wasted

[albacore]

5. Grifting is a part of every culture and every period of history. nt

[MichMan]

6. In Michigan, a state contractor hired to process unemployment claims funneled million to associates in fake claims

She was eventually fired, but in a complete show of incompetence, was allowed to keep her state issues computer and log in password . Then continued stealing from taxpayers for another month working from home until the idiots finally figured out they should retrieve it and cancel her log in abilities. She stole $3.8 million before being stopped.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/10/28/state-contractor-brandi-hawkins-sentenced-role-3-m-fraud-scheme/6177000001/

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. There are several things going on here.

* This issue is being flogged as an immigration scandal, and specifically a "Minneapolis is Somalia" lie, when it's much more about privatization efforts pushing government services to be outsourced to nonprofits without oversight.

* This makes Walz super weak as a candidate in his effort to get a third term as governor next fall, which weakens the entire ticket (includes a senate seat, AG, secretary of state and auditor).

* If the media covered things like wage theft as thoroughly and as sensationally as they do these kinds of things, this would be a much different world.

[snowybirdie]

3. I cannot accept

any information being sent out by this administration. They lie so much that it's impossible to determine fact from propaganda. Especially when they mention former democratic candidates. Could be true, could not. Or the truth is somewhere in the middle.

[Celerity]

4. A Somali-American former investigator: why you're hearing about fraud in my community (July 2024)

https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/07/17/a-somali-american-investigator-heres-why-youre-hearing-so-much-about-fraud-in-my-community/

The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, where I previously worked as a fraud investigator, announced last year its largest ever Medicaid fraud case, charging 18 people with stealing $9.5 million. Not long after, the AG charged three people with stealing nearly $11 million, again in Medicaid funds. In May, eight were charged with defrauding Medicaid of $2.6 million. Last month, the AG charged five people with stealing more than $10 million. These cases — all charged in the past year — carry a combined dollar amount greater than the sum of all 261 criminal convictions for Medicaid fraud secured by the attorney general since October 2018.

You may not have read or seen much about these cases, but you’ve surely heard about the five people found guilty last month of multiple charges in the first trial in what has become known as the Feeding Our Future fraud. In total, 70 people have been charged in the scheme to bilk the federal government of more than $250 million meant to feed hungry children during the pandemic. The Reformer reported that almost half the defendants who were charged in the federal meals program had other businesses that received funds from the state.

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. We began arriving in the U.S. to escape civil war and famine in the early 1990s. Minnesota, with its unforgiving winters, became an unlikely magnet for many of my people. But word spread that Minnesota is an inviting place, with generous social programs and a history of welcoming immigrants. Minnesota is now home to the largest Somali population in the United States. The vast majority of us are working people, joining the throngs of immigrants who have come before us from all over the globe, in search of freedom and opportunity.

Somalis set up a plethora of businesses and nonprofits to meet the needs of our community. Many of these businesses and nonprofits rely on taxpayer-funded programs that provide services to low-income Minnesotans. My fellow Minnesotans have wondered — almost always privately — why so many fraud stories have centered on the Somali community. My experience as a fraud investigator has taught me that fraud occurs when desire meets opportunity.

snip

[MichMan]

9. 59 people have already been convicted so far

Charges started in 2022 under Merrick Garland

[LymphocyteLover]

7. Sad story with a lot of angles. I hope it doesn't hurt Dems in Minnesota.

It's a bit hard to know the exact amount of fraud going on here with so many numbers thrown around.

[MichMan]

8. Attorney representing some of the defendants stating there was little or no oversight

Mr. Pacyga, who also has represented other defendants in the fraud cases, said that some involved became convinced that state agencies were tolerating, if not tacitly allowing, the fraud.

“No one was doing anything about the red flags,” he said. “It was like someone was stealing money from the cookie jar and they kept refilling it.”

[travelingthrulife]

10. This is why Trump said this money would not be tracked.

He invited people to commit fraud. How about all the rich people that applied for and used it illegally? I imagine Trump did it himself.

[leftstreet]

11. DURec

Privatizing federal programs, with no oversight, has consequences

[MichMan]

13. These were state programs with no oversight, not federal

[leftstreet]

14. Ah

I should have made that distinction.

Probably best to just say "taxpayer" dollars being privatized with no oversight

[617Blue]

12. NYT with a pre-emptive strike on Gov Walz's presidential ambitions. Par for the course.

[BannonsLiver]

17. He was never going to be president with or without this story.

[DFW]

15. It happens all the time in Europe, too

In the Netherlands, they finally caught a Romanian who had registered for welfare under 15 different names, and only got caught when some case worker noticed that he kept coming in ever more expensive cars each month. The penalty for unarmed theft in this part of the world, is usually a slap on the wrist and "bad boy, don't do it again (they will)."

My wife, when she was active as a social worker, wanted to strike child money benefits for a Lebanese immigrant in Duisburg, the center of the Lebanese mafia in Germany. He at first got an apartment for him and his "wife," and never showed up for work or appointments, saying he didn't feel good. He did, however, feel good enough to rent a second apartment, where he lived by himself, while his wife and 15 children lived cramped in the apartment next door. He went to court to save his benefits from being stricken. The social services showed up with one lawyer from the social services. The Lebanese guy showed up with three well dressed lawyers from a big fancy firm and about twenty big bouncer-types in the public, making evil faces at the judge--all the while claiming to be a poor, helpless welfare case who was being dumped on unfairly. The judge got the message, cut short the testimony from my wife and the other social worker, and decided for the Lebanese guy.

Billions in taxpayer money disappear here, too, and to similar schemes, and for the same reasons. To the perps, it's here for the taking, and if the Europeans don't stop it, well, that's their fault. The difference is that here, no one ever goes to jail for it.

And THEN they wonder how come the anti-immigrant far right party gets increasing numbers of followers. It boggles the mind.

[dalton99a]

18. +1.

[ForgedCrank]

16. This entire

thing is a disaster for us. We can pretend and make excuses, but it's going to hurt and we need to distance ourselves from this sort of thing as much as possible and take the common sense side, even if it hurts.
I just can't believe that this was allowed to fester for so long. A lot of people have been prosecuted already, but the bad news just keeps piling on. I really do hope we can handle this in quick fashion so it has time to fade before next fall.

[MichMan]

19. Apparently there were quite a few state employees that said they expressed fraud concerns but were ignored.