Confidence in Minnesota‘s social safety net has been shaken by fraudsters who authorities say have stolen more than $1 billion in public funds from programs meant to feed children, assist the homeless and provide autism therapy.
Over the last five years, people mostly within Somali communities have gotten rich by running companies that bill the state for millions of dollars in social services that were never actually rendered, The New York Times reported.
Federal prosecutors say of the 86 people that have been charged, 59 have been convicted so far in what they describe as three separate fraud schemes.
One central case involved the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which claimed to serve tens of thousands of meals to low-income children during the pandemic.
Prosecutors allege most of those meals never existed, and instead, the taxpayer money went to luxury homes, cars, jewelry and real estate abroad.
‘No one will support these programs if they continue to be riddled with fraud,’ Joseph H Thompson, the federal prosecutor who took on the cases, told The Times. ‘We’re losing our way of life in Minnesota in a very real way.’
Given the scale of the situation, President Donald Trump has weighed in, criticizing Governor Tim Walz for allowing Minnesota to become ‘a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.’
He said the perpetrators should be ‘sent back to where they came from.’ He later said he would be revoking the temporary protected status of the roughly 700 Somali nationals who have it, which prevents them from being deported.