Report links Minnesota welfare fraud to terrorist funding

By Elyse Apel
The Center Square

New reports allege that millions of taxpayer dollars have been fraudulently stolen from the Minnesota welfare system and then sent to the Somali-based terror group Al-Shabaab.

This is according to original reporting from Chris Rufo and Ryan Thorpe that was published in City Journal. The article detailing the fraud was first published on Wednesday, but is already receiving national attention.

It details how, over the past few months, the then-acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joe Thompson, was investigating several different cases of fraud in the state. Thompson called it a “crisis.”

One of his investigations included Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, which the state moved to terminate at the beginning of August. In September, Thompson announced federal charges against eight for their roles in a “massive” housing stabilization fraud scheme that was taking money from that program.

“Today we announce the first wave of charges in a massive fraud in Minnesota’s housing stabilization program,” said Thompson. “I want to be clear on the scope of the crisis. What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending. I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away. The fraud must be stopped.”

Following that announcement, there have been multiple other indictments brought for fraudulent welfare schemes, as reported by the article.

Another one of those was an alleged autism fraud scheme, where millions in kickbacks were funneled via fraudulent autism diagnoses from the state’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program to families.

Just as claims under the MHSS program were ever increasing, so were autism claims to Medicaid. In 2018, there was $3 million, the article reports. In 2023, there was $399 million. That is a 13,200% increase.

Over the same period, autism providers in the state were increasing—with many of those being within the Somali community. According to the report, providers increased from 41 to 328. That is a 700% increase.

The article alleges that those millions of dollars in Minnesota taxpayer funding from the many different fraudulent schemes was then funneled to households in Somalia, with some of that money then ending up in the pockets of al-Qaida-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab.

“Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia,” the article states. “As one confidential source put it: ‘The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.’”

So far, Democrats have been largely silent on the article’s reports, but Minnesota Republicans are already speaking out.

“As Tim Walz helped create this system and shrugs his shoulders every day when a yet another fraud story is revealed, Minnesotans’ hard-earned tax money is funding terrorists,” said U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-MN.