Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Monday that his department will investigate allegations of massive fraud across multiple programs administered by the state of Minnesota.
“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 posted on X.
“Thanks to the leadership of @POTUS @realDonaldTrump, we are acting fast to ensure Americans’ taxes are not funding acts of global terror. We will share our findings as our investigation continues,” he wrote.
Allegations of massive fraud were initially leveled last month in a report by City Journal, which alleged, “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.”
“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,” the report said.
“The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” the report quoted one of its sources as saying.
“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,” a former official who investigated the flow of cash to Somalia said.
“For every dollar that is transferred from the Twin Cities back to Somalia, Al-Shabaab is… taking a cut of it,” he said.
Glenn Kerns, a retired Seattle Police Department detective who worked on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force for 14 years, said the Somali financial network stretched from Minnesota to Seattle and Somalia, where as much as $20 million was sent abroad in one year.
“The amount of money was staggering,” Kerns said.
He said that when he looked into the Minnesota sources of cash heading to Somalia, “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.”
The report further noted that Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, which was projected to have an annual cost of $2.6 million and ran up a $61 million tab for the first six months of this year, is among programs riddled with fraud.
In September, eight people were indicted on charges related to fraud in the program.
Six are part of the Somali community.
The report noted that 56 people have pleaded guilty in a $250 million fraud scheme with an agency called Feeding Our Future, which has forged connections with Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali, and her office.
Further, allegations have been made about a $14 million autism scam involving Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program. In the scam, parents enrolled their children to receive autism services, getting a kickback in the process.
Meanwhile, scammers allegedly billed the state for autism services that were not necessary.
The report noted that “one in 16 Somali four-year-olds in the state had reportedly been diagnosed with autism—a rate more than triple the state average.”
“This is not an isolated scheme,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said. “From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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