THIS WILL MAKE YOU FURIOUS: Multiple fraud schemes exposed among Minnesota migrant community

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The City Journal, an independent investigative news outlet, posted a bombshell report on Wednesday exposing the massive amount of fraud allegedly being committed by the Somalian immigrant community in Minnesota, that is draining American taxpayers dry and funneling billions of dollars back to Somalia.

Multiple fraud schemes have been uncovered involving the Somalian migrants in Minnesota.

In September alone, the Justice Department released updates on three cases:

The City Journal writes:

Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots.

In many cases, the fraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota’s sizeable Somali community. Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. As one confidential source put it: “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”

Our investigation shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart bureaucracy, when imported clan loyalties collide with a political class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism are cynically deployed to shield criminal behavior. The predictable result is graft, with taxpayers left to foot the bill.

Regarding Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, the City Journal said when the program was launched in 2020, officials estimated it would cost about $2.6 million.  Instead, costs quickly spiraled out of control, as the Somalian community figured out a way to capitalize on it.

In 2021, the program paid out more than $21 million in claims. In the following years, annual costs shot up to $42 million, then $74 million, then $104 million. During the first six months of 2025, payouts totaled $61 million.

The program had to be scraped in August, and authorities figured out that the “vast majority” of the program was fraudulent.

The “Feeding Our Future” program, founded in 2016, has also been overtaken by fraud, with 56 people being indicted so far. Again, mostly involving the Somalian migrant community.  The City Journal explains:

Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and fabricated invoices, the perpetrators of the fraud ring claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged children. In 2021, Feeding Our Future received nearly $200 million in funding.

In reality, the money was being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey, and Kenya.

First Defendant Charged in Autism Fraud Scheme

On September 24, the Justice Department announced an appalling new case – a scheme to falsely diagnose children with autism in order to rake in even more money from the US government – and the first person busted is someone who was previously charged in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.

The DOJ writes:

Asha Farhan Hassan, age 28, was charged today by federal information with wire fraud for her role in a $14 million autism fraud scheme.  Hassan was also charged with participating in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, for which she received $465,000.

As set forth in the information, Hassan and others devised and carried out a scheme to defraud the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (“EIDBI”) benefit, a publicly funded Minnesota Health Care Program that offers medically necessary services to people under the age of 21 with autism spectrum disorder (“ASD”).  According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services (“DHS”) website, the purpose of the EIDBI program is “to provide medically necessary, early and intensive intervention for people with ASD and related conditions.”

From November 2019 through December 2024, Asha Hassan and others devised and carried out a scheme to defraud the EIDBI autism services program. Hassan formed and registered Smart Therapy LLC with the Minnesota Secretary of State in November 2019. Hassan listed herself as the sole owner of Smart Therapy.  In reality, other individuals also had ownership stakes in Smart Therapy but were not listed on DHS documents, including because one of the owners previously owned an adult daycare and was excluded by DHS for three years due to her conduct running the adult daycare center.  Shortly after forming the company, Hassan enrolled Smart Therapy as a provider agency in the EIDBI program.  As discussed below, Hassan also enrolled Smart Therapy in the Federal Child Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future.

To run their fraud scheme, Hassan and her partners needed children who had an autism diagnosis and an individual treatment plan.  Hassan and her partners approached parents in the Somali community to recruit their children into Smart Therapy.  Where a child did not have an autism diagnosis and an individual treatment plan, HASSAN and her partners worked with a QSP to get the recruited child qualified for autism services. There was no child that Smart Therapy was not able to get qualified for autism services.

As a recruitment tactic to drive up enrollment, Hassan and her partners paid monthly cash kickback payments to the parents of children who enrolled their children in Smart Therapy to receive autism services.  These kickback payments ranged from approximately $300 to $1,500 per month, per child.  The amount of these payments was contingent on the services DHS authorized a child to receive—the higher the authorization amount, the higher the kickback.  Often, parents threatened to leave Smart Therapy and take their children to other autism centers if they did not get paid higher kickbacks.  Several larger families left Smart Therapy after being offered larger kickbacks by other autism centers.  Hassan and her partners covered the cost of the kickback payments that Smart Therapy paid to parents through the fraudulent billings to Medicaid.

Hassan and her partners submitted millions of dollars’ worth of claims for Medicaid reimbursement on behalf of Smart Therapy.  Many of these claims were fraudulently inflated, were billed without providers’ knowledge, and were for services that were not actually provided.  

What happened to all the money the Somalians raked in from the fraud schemes?  The City Journal writes:

The Somali fraud rings have sent huge sums in remittances, or money transfers, from Minnesota to Somalia. According to reports, an estimated 40 percent of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad.

In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government’s budget for that year.

Well, ALL the money didn’t go to Somalia. Some of it went to support a Somalian immigrant serving in U.S. Congress.  The City Journal reported:

Several individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to, or appeared publicly with, Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minneapolis.

Some of the money was also allegedly funneled to Al-Qaeda. More from City Journal:

Our investigation reveals, for the first time, that some of this money has been directed to an even more troubling destination: the al-Qaida-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab. According to multiple law-enforcement sources, 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.

DMLNewsApp founder and podcast host Dennis Michael Lynch weighed in on the case.  WATCH BELOW:

Fox News host Will Cain also highlighted the case on his show Thursday evening:

READ MORE from The City Journal, and The Justice Department reports on each case below:

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