As the breadth of Minnesota’s massive welfare and COVID-19 fraud continue to come to light, the Trump administration has launched its own investigation into where the money went.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said his department will look into claims that scammers funneled money to the Somalia-based terror group Al-Shabaab. Several parties, including the House Oversight Committee, are also probing Gov. Tim Walz’s failures to stop the fraud.
“At my direction, @USTreasury is investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab,” Bessent shared on his X account on Monday.
The money — reportedly over $1 billion in total — was stolen as part of a series of massive Minnesota welfare fraud schemes that have been linked to Minnesota’s Somali community.
The state distributed millions of dollars in COVID relief funds and taxpayer money intended to feed needy children and provide housing and autism services, but instead the founders of nonprofits and sham companies embezzled the money and spent it on real estate, vehicles and lavish lifestyles.
The fraud allegations have been largely overlooked by mainstream media and Democratic leaders in Minnesota. Last month, the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal reported that some of the fraudsters sent money back to Somalia, which landed in the hands of al-Qaida-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab.
The fraud dates back years and involves Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, Feeding Our Future and other social services programs, including one that recruited Somali children into autism therapy services.
The investigation, conducted by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo, connected the various schemes — and Walz’s silence — back to the Somalis political influence in the state.
Several individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to, or appeared publicly with, Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minneapolis.
Omar’s deputy district director, Ali Isse, advocated on behalf of Feeding Our Future. Omar Fateh, a former state senator who recently ran for Minneapolis mayor, lobbied Governor Tim Walz in support of the program.
And one of the accused, Abdi Nur Salah, served as a senior aide to Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey.
“This ‘network’ of ‘fraud schemes,’ which ‘form a web’ that has stolen ‘billions of dollars in taxpayer money,’ involved many members of Minnesota’s Somali community,” Thorpe and Rufo wrote. “The Feeding Our Future, HSS, and autism-services cases are far from the only examples. At least 28 fraud scandals have surfaced since Walz was elected governor in 2019. Most of the large-scale fraud rings, according to two former FBI officials who spoke with City Journal, have been perpetrated by members of the Somali community.”
Back in April, the Minnesota Reformer also ran a commentary on an unearthed audio recording from December 2021 that was entered into evidence during a trial for the Feeding Our Future scandal.
Attorney General Keith Ellison can be heard criticizing state agencies for being too hard on government contractors, say they were discriminating against East African vendors.
Tim Walz and Minnesota AG Keith Ellison are now under congressional investigation for allegedly “allowing widespread fraud to occur.” pic.twitter.com/KJ3bmfWO8r
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) December 4, 2025
But a report published Tuesday by the Minnesota Reformer refutes any claims by Thorpe and Rufo that the money supported terrorism, calling Rufo a “right-wing propagandist” and poking holes in his reporting.
The Reformer maintains federal prosecutors have charged 78 people related to the Feeding Our Future scandal, but has “yet to charge a single person with terrorism financing, however, even though the office has a previous history of charging Somalis for ties to al-Shabaab and ISIS.”
On Tuesday, at President Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said there was widespread visa fraud in Minnesota, particularly in the Twin Cities area, represented by Somalian-born Rep. Ilhan Omar.
In September, immigration officers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted over 1,000 site visits across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and found evidence of fraud, non-compliance or national security concerns in 275 cases — roughly 44 percent of cases interviewed.
“Officers encountered blatant marriage fraud, visa overstays, people claiming to work at businesses that can’t be found, forged documents, abuse of the H-1B visa system, abuse of the F-1 visa, and many other discrepancies,” said USCIS Director Joseph Edlow during a press conference.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is headed there next for a targeted enforcement operation, according to several reports.
Last month, Trump announced that he wanted to end Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants living in Minnesota.
At the end of an hours-long televised cabinet meeting, Trump said they complain and don’t like America, adding: “I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK.
“Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country.”
In a report by local out KMSP FOX 9, Walz said he welcomes the federal investigation into state fraud allegations, adding, “you commit fraud in Minnesota, you’re going to prison.”
But the Walz turned the blame back on the Trump administration, saying, “sitting on the sidelines and throwing out accusations, and let’s be very clear, demonizing an entire population and lying to people about the safety and security of this state, is beneath that.”
Sens. Jordan Rasmussen, R-Fergus Falls, and Paul Utke, R-Park Rapids, expressed support for the federal investigation and said Minnesotans deserve to where and how these fraudulent dollars were spent.
“Whether fraud was being used for personal enrichment, or being siphoned by terrorist organizations overseas, the reality is that no other state has seen these brazen fraud schemes stealing more than a billion dollars from public funds,” they said in a statement to KMSP FOX 9.
According to the City Journal report, which cited unnamed sources, Minnesota’s Somali community has established an elaborate network of fraud rings that have sent huge sums in remittances, or money transfers, from Minnesota to Somalia.
They operate through a network of “hawalas,” informal clan-based money-traders, that have been traced to Al-Shabaab networks in Somalia.
City Journal reported that various reports estimate 40 percent of households in Somalia get remittances, or money sent by a foreign worker from abroad. The Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government’s budget for that year—in 2023 alone, per the report.
Al-Shabaab routinely took a cut — regardless of the sender’s intentions, based on investigations in the United States.
Glenn Kerns, a retired Seattle Police Department detective who spent 14 years on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, went on record with City Journal and said that the Somalis set up a sophisticated money network, spanning from Seattle to Minneapolis.
Somalis were transporting large sums of cash—one network sent $20 million abroad in a single year—on commercial flights from the Seattle airport to the hawala networks in Somalia.
Kerns worked the case for five years, and his investigation eventually expanded to Minnesota. “I went down to [Minnesota] and pulled all of their records and, well shit, all these Somalis sending out money are on DHS benefits. How does that make sense? We had good sources tell us: this is welfare fraud,” Kerns told City Journal.
A confidential source and former official who worked on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force told Thorpe and Rufo that “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”
“Every scrap of economic activity, in the Twin Cities, in America, throughout Western Europe, anywhere Somalis are concentrated, every cent that is sent back to Somalia benefits Al-Shabaab in some way,” the unnamed official said.
One of the most publicized fraud cases involves the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, which received federal funding disbursed by the state. The $250 million scheme used fake meal counts, doctored attendance records and fabricated invoices to increase its funding for the Federal Child Nutrition Program, which skyrocketed from $3.4 million in 2019 to $200 million in 2021 during the COVID pandemic.
Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program is at the center of another scam. The program launched in 2020 with a $2.6 million price tag. Costs quickly spiraled out of control, and 77 housing-stabilization providers received $104 million in 2024. During the first six months of 2025, payouts totaled $61 million, City Journal reported.
Minnesota’s Department of Human Services terminated the HSS program this year due to “credible allegations of fraud.”
The most recent indictment filed in Minnesota by U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson is another scheme involving federally funded autism services for children.
Asha Farhan Hassan, who was also charged in the Feeding Our Future scam, is alleged to have played a role in a $14 million fraud scheme perpetrated against Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program.
Hassan, a member of Minnesota’s Somali community, and her co-conspirators “approached parents in the Somali community” and recruited their children into autism therapy services even if they didn’t need them.
