‘Schemes stacked upon schemes’: $1B human-services fraud fuels scrutiny of Minnesota’s Somali community

A series of sprawling fraud schemes involving hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from Minnesota taxpayers from COVID-relief programs to housing and autism services has placed the state s Somali group under a renewed intense spotlight raising uncomfortable questions about whether particular who discovered refuge here are robbing their new neighbors blind These swirling fraud cases and asserts that several ill-gotten gains were diverted to the Somali terrorist organization Al-Shabaab have now prompted a House analysis a Treasury Department probe and mounting political pressure on state leaders including Democrat Gov Tim Walz over why Minnesota failed to safeguard taxpayer money The fraud revelations combined with a string of violent crimes and revived terror concerns involving Somali-linked defendants have shaken community confidence and raised urgent questions about why Minnesota failed to stop the schemes sooner The developments have also deepened society unease and revived long-standing questions about assimilation oversight and constituents safety in Minnesota INSIDE LITTLE MOGADISHU MINNESOTA S BELEAGUERED SOMALI DISTRICT UNDER A CLOUD OF FRAUD AND TRUMP ATTACKSHouse Majority Whip Tom Emmer informed Fox News Digital that the fraud outrage represents a catastrophic failure of oversight under Walz and characterized chosen of the culprits involved as a Somali criminal enterprise crew People can focus on an ethnic group if they want but the real issue is the lack of leadership and accountability in the state of Minnesota with Tim Walz and his administration This wasn t about Somalis this was about regime incompetence and lack of accountability Emmer explained We have been trying to sound the alarm on this fraud for more than three years The centerpiece disgrace is the Feeding Our Future matter where approximately million intended to feed low-income children during the pandemic was siphoned away in what federal prosecutors describe as the largest pandemic-relief fraud scheme charged in U S history A few of the shell companies and meal sites were operated by Somali Minnesotans prosecutors say though the alleged ringleader Aimee Bock is a White American That sprawling situation has now grown to at least defendants according to the U S Attorney's Office in Minnesota Prosecutors say criminals also bilked millions of dollars from Minnesota s Housing Stabilization Services campaign which pays for help finding and keeping housing as well as the state s autism-services effort by billing for appointments therapy and casework that never took place Former Acting U S Attorney Joseph Thompson described the scams as schemes stacked upon schemes that drained tens of millions of dollars from Medicaid At least specific of those defendants also have ties to the Somali district It feels never-ending Thompson declared in September when announcing that eight people had been charged with defrauding the housing stabilization services project of around million in total I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away The fraud must be stopped Thompson noted the eight were part of the first wave of prosecutions in the scenario The fraudsters in multiple instances spent the cash on luxury cars lavish lifestyles and purchasing property at home and in places like Kenya State Sen Jordan Rasmusson the lead Republican on the state Senate's Human Services Committee explained Fox News Digital he believes the Feeding Our Future disgrace grew to historic levels because state leaders were afraid to investigate Somali-run nonprofits and unwilling to confront obvious fraud Concerns of political correctness halted the Walz administration from doing the investigations they needed to protect Minnesota s tax dollars Rasmusson mentioned He commented state DHS dysfunction from the time that Governor Walz took office created an context where criminals were able to exploit human-services programs for years The administration has been asleep at the wheel he revealed A widely circulated DHS whistleblower account alleged that staff who raised internal fraud concerns were ignored reassigned or sidelined which tracks with Rasmusson s account Bock the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future and Salim Reported a local restaurant owner were exposed guilty of their roles in the scheme with prosecutors stating that they splashed their cash on luxury homes and cars as well as their lavish lifestyles They claimed to have served million meals for which they fraudulently received nearly million in federal funds according to the U S attorney's office in Minnesota It's unclear how plenty of Somalis were involved in the scheme as prosecutors don't release the nationalities of defendants One witness reportedly claimed that Declared disclosed a gang affiliation and threatened to kill that person if they revealed the fraud to officers Thompson revealed Additionally five people were also charged with offering a cash bribe to a juror and preparing written arguments for the juror One argument read We are immigrants they don t respect or care about us In when the Minnesota Department of Learning grew suspicious and tried to stop the flow of funds Feeding Our Future sued alleging racial discrimination A judge ordered the state to restart reimbursements a ruling prosecutors stated enabled the scheme to escalate The lawsuit drew political advocacy from Somali-American State Sen Omar Fateh who appeared at a area celebration of the ruling and later acknowledged receiving and returning campaign donations from individuals indicted in the incident While studying the shame federal agents discovered that one scammer Asha Farhan Hassan had pocketed about but was also operating a much larger scheme defrauding the state s autism-treatment campaign of roughly million Hassan billed Medicaid for fake therapy sessions used untrained staff and paid parents to a month to keep their kids in the campaign She sent hundreds of thousands of dollars abroad including to purchase real estate in Kenya prosecutors revealed The scale of effort enhancement stunned federal personnel The Housing Stabilization Services initiative was projected to cost million annually but paid out more than million last year The autism initiative s budget jumped from million in to nearly million in according to Dr Mehmet Oz the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services The unraveling fraud schemes intensified scrutiny of Walz s administration with critics arguing basic safeguards were ignored even as theft ballooned A fresh City Journal article claimed selected stolen welfare money has flowed to Al-Shabaab in Somalia through informal hawala networks That assessment has intensified scrutiny and stirred old fears given that about young Somali-Americans left Minnesota in the late s to join the terrorist group with one Shirwa Ahmed becoming the first known American Islamist suicide bomber when he detonated a car bomb in Somalia in October Rasmusson stated he was concerned about money ending up with terrorists Because there s more than a billion dollars that s been stolen and a crucial portion of those dollars have been directed overseas there are concerns this money could be either directly or indirectly funding terrorist organizations like al-Shabaab Rasmusson narrated Fox News Digital Former Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek who testified before Congress about Somali-American radicalization mentioned Minnesota ignored early warning signs once before We really got a wake-up call in Stanek mentioned Young people were going back to Somalia to participate in terrorist training camps and terrorist actions when they had no clear ties back to their beliefs They were born here in the U S but felt a need or were radicalized to go back Minnesotans had no idea what was even going on until the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force stepped in He reported the threat has declined but not disappeared I m not saying it still doesn t happen because I know it does he noted Last year Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material assistance to ISIS after twice trying to journey to Somalia For multiple Minnesotans the fraud cases are only the latest chapter in a longer pattern of violence and instability tied to small pockets of the Somali neighborhood Community unease has also grown in recent days in response to a string of fresh violent crimes tied to the locality in the Twin Cities Somali national Abdimahat Bille Mohamedis a man with two previous sex crime convictions was charged this week with kidnapping and raping a woman at a hotel while on probation In July Qalinle Ibrahim Dirie a Somali migrant was jailed for years for sexually assaulting a child The incident sparked fury when a local mosque gave a character-reference letter praising the pedophile's good conduct and urged leniency During a two-week stretch over the summer a -year-old was killed in a mall shooting while two high-school graduation ceremonies left a -year-old father with a head wound and a -year-old man injured All three incidents involved members of the Somali-American society according to reports while Emmer explained the incidents were gang-related In May Michael Lual Nhial who had a history of erratic and aggressive behavior was charged with killing David Chant a -year-old man who used walking sticks to get around and was discovered beaten to death at a park in Burnsville a city miles south of downtown Minneapolis Stanek commented Somali-related violence began surfacing between and initially involving first-generation immigrants but later drawing in U S -born youth with majority shootings traced back to a small infrastructure of repeat offenders young men cycling through probation and short jail terms Groups such as the Somali Outlaws and th Street Gang were never tightly organized criminal syndicates but loose crews of young men whose crimes stemmed more from personal rivalries than organized criminal enterprises he noted Minnesota does not track crime by ethnicity and violent crime statewide has fallen but the visibility of Somali persons in these cases has amplified and revived old narratives about crime within Minnesota s Somali region DEMOCRAT MAYOR BLASTED FOR VOWING TO MAKE MAJOR CITY SAFE HAVEN FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS Rasmusson announced Walz has lost the confidence of Minnesotans and the legislature in his ability to lead given the size of the fraud and the administration s repeated failure to intervene when irregularities were clearly visible He pointed to one glaring example investigators missed They were claiming to feed kids a day seven days a week in a population of only people he disclosed And so you don t need to be an FBI analyst to figure out that there s supposedly fraud occurring But group leaders are pushing back saying Minnesota s Somali population is overwhelmingly law-abiding and hardworking and that a handful of offenders are being used to smear an entire neighborhood They say the above incidents do not define them and that bulk Somali immigrants in the state are hardworking and deeply patriotic toward the United States Jaylani Hussein executive director of CAIR Minnesota described Fox News Digital that while the crimes are real and serious he rejects the idea of collective blame for criminal activity Hussein did not defend the crimes but placed their actions in the broader context of American immigrant history drawing parallels to Irish and Italian communities once linked to organized crime We have a history in this nation of identifying crime and associating it with communities whether it s the Italian mafia or Irish gangs Hussein disclosed Crime is an individual act It s an act of betrayal of our trust When someone steals money from food at a school they re not stealing from anybody else they re stealing from their own region from children who need it Especially in the Somali-American society which is still a poor group Rasmusson declared the failures were so critical that Walz who intends to run for a third term in may no longer be able to lead the state The Walz administration has failed and they ve utterly failed to protect Minnesota taxpayers he declared And I think he s lost the confidence of Minnesotans and the legislature in his ability to lead as governor of this state And I think that he should recognize the position that he s in and that it will be very challenging for him to have the confidence of Minnesotans again