NYT agrees Somali-MN fraud is real, blames libs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/fraud-minnesota-somali.html
Minnesota’s fraud scandal stood out even in the context of rampant theft during the pandemic, when Americans stole tens of billions through unemployment benefits, business loans and other forms of aid, according to federal auditors.
Outrage has swelled among Minnesotans
Critics of the Walz administration say that the fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of alienating the Somali community
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
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
autism angle
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.
Prosecutors have so far charged one provider, Asha Farhan Hassan, 29, with wire fraud. They say she and business partners stole $14 million.
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
Cooperation of Tampon Walz, gov employees
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.
Red flags in the meals program surfaced in the early months of the pandemic [ed: Walz era, some Trump but mainly Biden] [and] the money kept flowing.
& more. NYT goes forever
