Education Secretary Linda McMahon called for Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to resign over reports of massive education fraud within Minnesota’s college system.
In a letter addressed to Walz on Monday, McMahon pointed out that Walz has served as the state’s governor since 2019 and that “during that time” his “careless lack of oversight and abuse of the welfare system has attracted fraudsters from around the world, especially from Somalia.”
McMahon went on to explain that 1,834 “ghost students” in the state were discovered to have “received $12.5 million in taxpayer-funded grants and loans.”
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) speaks at a news conference on Thursday, December 4, 2025, in St. Paul, Minnesota. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)
In the letter, McMahon went on to state that given Walz’s “dereliction of the office entrusted” to him, she was imploring him “to resign and make way for more capable leadership.”
“At the beginning of this year, the U.S. Department of Education became aware that fraudulent college applicants, especially concentrated in Minnesota, were gaming the federal postsecondary education system to collect money that was intended for young Americans to help them afford college,” McMahon said in the letter.
McMahon’s letter continued in part:
We call these fraudsters “ghost students” because they were not ID-verified and often did not live in the United States, or they simply did not exist. In Minnesota, 1,834 ghost students were found to have received $12.5 million in taxpayer-funded grants and loans. They collected checks from the federal government, shared a small portion of the money with the college, and pocketed the rest — without attending the college at all.
To stop ghost students, we at the Department of Education implemented enhanced fraud controls such as mandatory identity verification for certain first-time student applicants. Our new fraud prevention system has now blocked more than $1 billion in attempted financial aid theft by fraudsters, including coordinated international fraud rings and AI bots pretending to be students.
Even one of your state’s top elected officials, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, has sought to take advantage of the federal taxpayer by advocating for broad student debt cancellation — which she has publicly acknowledged will benefit her directly. She borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to attend college as a politics major that she now does not think she should have to repay, despite her generous, taxpayer-funded salary.
As McMahon has called for Walz to resign, a petition on Change.org has received roughly 4,491 signatures calling for the resignations of Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D), Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon.
The petition states that “it is time for new leadership that can deliver on promises and rebuild the connection between government and its constituents.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also announced on Friday that the Treasury Department would be coming out with a “Geographic Targeting Order (GTO)” that would subject “certain Money Services Businesses (MSBs) to enhanced reporting requirements.” Bessent’s announcement comes as there have been reports that Minnesota taxpayer funds “may have been diverted to the terrorist organization” Al-Shabaab by the Somalian community in the state.
“Treasury will soon issue a Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) subjecting certain Money Services Businesses (MSBs) to enhanced reporting requirements with FinCEN,” Bessent wrote in a post on X. “This important tool will be used to make sure information regarding such illicit activity is quickly reported to @FinCENnews and made available to our law enforcement partners.”
Breitbart News reported that the Department of Labor has also announced that it would be reviewing the state’s “Unemployment Insurance (UI) program” in the aftermath of the reports of a “fraud ring targeting the state’s welfare system.”
