Patriot Brief

• Federal prosecutors say fraud in Minnesota’s social programs may reach staggering levels.

• Multiple schemes allegedly exploited housing and autism-related services.

• Authorities suggest the full scope of fraud is still largely hidden.

The details emerging from Minnesota’s social services fraud investigation read less like isolated corruption and more like systemic collapse. When a federal prosecutor openly suggests that half or more of $18 billion in spending may be fraudulent, that isn’t a warning sign — it’s an indictment of oversight that failed at nearly every level.

What’s especially damning is how brazen some of the alleged schemes were. Billing thousands of hours a year for services that couldn’t possibly have been delivered shouldn’t require a years-long investigation to flag. Nor should companies collecting millions while claiming workers were simultaneously serving multiple clients in the same hours. These weren’t clever operations hiding in the margins. They were exploiting a system that rarely asked questions.

The phrase “fraud tourists” is telling. It suggests Minnesota’s programs weren’t just vulnerable, but attractive targets for out-of-state operators who recognized how easy the money was. And while much attention has focused on specific communities, the real failure lies with the bureaucracies that allowed massive payouts with minimal verification.

This case also raises an uncomfortable political reality. Much of this occurred under leadership that expanded social spending while promising accountability. What prosecutors are now uncovering suggests accountability was mostly theoretical. If the iceberg analogy holds, taxpayers may only be seeing the tip — and the final bill could be far worse than anyone wants to admit.

From Western Journal:

Six people were charged this week in the federal investigation of fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs.

“Every day we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

“The magnitude of the fraud in Minnesota cannot be overstated. Staggering amounts of money have been lost,” he said.

Fourteen programs have been under scrutiny, many involving the Somali immigrant community in the state.

The amount of fraud that has taken place is “the $18-billion question,” Thompson said. “The answer is far too much.”

Thompson said that since 2018, he estimated  “half or more” of the $18 billion was paid out due to fraud, according to KTSP-TV.

Thompson announced indictments against what he called “fraud tourists.”

Anthony Waddell Jefferson, 37, and Lester Brown, 53, both of Philadelphia, were charged with raking in $3.5 million from the housing program through the use of fake companies.

Three other people were charged with fraud linked to the housing program.

One of them, Kaamil Omar Sallah, 26, is charged with four counts of wire fraud.

According to state records, his company, SafeLodgings, Inc., allegedly inflated its billing hours and filed claims for services that were not provided.

SafeLodgings, Inc., claimed workers provided housing services to multiple people in the same time frame.

Sallah allegedly billed Medicaid for 3,600 hours in 2024, which would amount to about 10 hours of work every day of the year.

HOLY SMOKES: The Assistant U.S. Attorney investigating the Somali fraud in Minnesota says as much as $18 billion could have been stolen from the taxpayers.

He compares it to an iceberg– “much larger than visible to the public.”

All of this happened on Tim Walz’s watch. pic.twitter.com/oqE0xRGXBl

— CJ Pearson (@Cjpearson) December 18, 2025

SafeLodgings received $1.3 million from March 2023 through August 2025.

Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf, 27, was charged with fraud in connection with the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program.

Yussuf allegedly recruited families from the Somali community to enroll in Star Autism Center, paid kickbacks to the families whose children were falsely listed as autistic, and raked in more than $6 million.

Source

Photo Credit: (Giovanna Dell’Orto / AP)