Minnesota’s Somali Fraud Problem

Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo are to be congratulated for the attention they have drawn to the issue of fraud committed by a large cast of Minnesota Somalis. I have devoted attention to the issue over the past eight years, including in a 2018 article I wrote for City Journal headlined “Mogadishu, Minnesota,” and in daily coverage of the two federal trials conducted so far in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud for Power Line.

The Feeding Our Future case involves some $300 million obtained by blatant, gross, and widespread fraud featuring a cast of mostly Somali perpetrators. Driven manifestly by greed, they wanted to get rich fast. The motive of greed permeates these cases.

When the second trial resulted in guilty verdicts that nailed the white ringleader of the fraud and one of her main co-conspirators, I sought to bring the Feeding Our Future case to the attention of a national audience in a Washington Free Beacon article, “From Feeding the Kids to Fleecing the Government: Inside the Country’s Largest Covid Fraud.” What I sought to do in that piece Thorpe and Rufo have done a thousand times over.

President Trump has responded by announcing termination of the Temporary Protected Status of Somali immigrants in the U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has expressed his disgust. Senator Cruz has devoted a podcast to the subject. Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth has called on United States Attorney Daniel Rosen to investigate.

I would like to add context to the Thorpe–Rufo story based on my coverage of the Feeding Our Future case and emerging fraud cases related to it. Indictments in the Feeding Our Future case have now been brought against 78 defendants. The newest of the 78 cases was charged on November 24. The 78 indictments have resulted in seven guilty verdicts, two acquittals, 50 guilty pleas, and five fugitives, with one deceased defendant. Thirteen unresolved cases await trial.

Investigation of the cases commenced in April 2021 when a frustrated Minnesota Department of Education bureaucrat tipped the FBI to her suspicions that the federal child nutrition program was being defrauded by the Feeding Our Future nonprofit and the many “sites” it sponsored. FBI forensic accountant Pauline Roase followed up in the ensuing months by compiling relevant bank records and charting the flow of funds. FBI special agents Jared Kary and Travis Wilmer investigated in the field. On January 20, 2022, the investigation “went overt” when federal authorities raided sites around the Twin Cities in the largest such operation ever conducted in Minnesota. The following September, then-United States Attorney Andrew Luger announced the first set of indictments handed up in the case with a promise of more to come.

Joe Thompson is now the First Assistant United States Attorney in the Minnesota Office of the United States Attorney. Thompson leads a team of three other prosecutors in these cases. A Minnesota native, he formerly served as Assistant United States Attorney prosecuting public corruption cases in Chicago. With 16 years of experience, he has investigated and prosecuted hundreds of cases. Having watched him in action in the two Feeding Our Future trials, I regard him as one of the best and smartest trial attorneys I’ve ever seen.

Thompson has left no stone unturned in the prosecution of these cases. Homes have been searched. Phones and documents have been seized. Witnesses have been interviewed. The FBI forensic accountants have traced the millions of dollars stolen to the extent possible. Their reconstruction of the flow of funds has been introduced into evidence that is now public record. These records show that the defendants sent millions of dollars to Kenya and China. They also sent money to Somalia—mostly in cash.

Al-Shabaab controls large portions of Somalia and collects a mafia-style street tax on all financial transactions in areas under its control. In this way, some of the Feeding Our Future and other fraud proceeds likely ended up in the hands of Al-Shabaab. That, of course, is outrageous, though there is no evidence that the perpetrators in these cases intentionally directed money to Al-Shabaab or any other terrorist organization. The defendants were not looking to fund terrorism but to enrich themselves and fund their extravagant lifestyles.

The Feeding Our Future case has opened a window on a panoply of scams committed on Minnesota Medicaid programs (so-called “waivered” programs) that appear to have been designed to facilitate fraud: Housing Stabilization Services, Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention autism services, and 12 other such programs that Governor Tim Walz has now temporarily suspended for review. Thompson himself has asserted repeatedly that the frauds altogether will amount to “BILLIONS” (as President Trump put it).

Somali community, religious, and political leaders have largely maintained their silence in the face of the fraud committed in vast disproportion by their community. State Senator and former mayoral candidate Omar Fateh is a good example. He formulaically condemned the fraud when he returned a campaign contribution from one of the perpetrators, but that’s it.

This is the larger point. Feeding Our Future and the follow-on cases represent a phenomenon that may be even more damaging than incidental support for a foreign terrorist organization: the element of pervasive public corruption.

All these frauds have occurred under the auspices of the administration of Governor Tim Walz. He has denied fault and deflected blame, going so far as to attribute responsibility to a local judge who handled a case brought by Feeding Our Future challenging the Department of Education’s temporary refusal to process (i.e., approve or deny) “site” applications that it had submitted. The judge issued an unusual public statement demonstrating the falsity of Walz’s attribution of blame.

Minnesota citizens want to know how and why this vast wasteland of scandal has come to be. This is how Thompson put it to the Star Tribune this past July: “This fraud crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the result of widespread failure across nearly every level of leadership in Minnesota: Politicians who turned a blind eye. Agencies that failed to act. Prosecutors and law enforcement who didn’t push hard enough. Reporters who ignored the story. Community leaders who stayed silent. And a public that wanted to believe it couldn’t happen here. This isn’t just a few criminals exploiting the system, this is a system that’s been begging to be exploited. We left the door wide open, and now our state has been ransacked. If we keep ignoring the truth, we’re going to lose something far more important than money. We’re going to lose the Minnesota we know and love.”

Doubt and cynicism are the order of the day in a state that once prided itself on good government.

Photo by Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images