Minnesotans have a right to be furious. This fraud wave did not come out of nowhere. It grew in broad daylight while state leadership shrugged, delayed, and looked the other way. Governor Tim Walz did not commit these crimes, but under his watch the system became a soft target. That is what “sleeping at the wheel” looks like.
Let’s say the quiet part clearly. Many of the most prominent defendants in Minnesota’s recent fraud scandals have been Somali American. Feeding Our Future, the massive pandemic meals scam, involved many Somali-run sites and operators, and prosecutors say about $250 million was stolen; convictions and guilty pleas keep stacking up. The Housing Stabilization Services Medicaid case followed the same pattern, with federal prosecutors charging eight men, six of them Somali, before the state shut the program down because costs and fraud allegations spiraled out of control. And now the autism program is under federal scrutiny, with the first major case alleging a $14 million scheme; the defendant is Somali American and was also tied to Feeding Our Future.
None of that means the Somali community is to blame. A small criminal slice is not a whole community. Most Somali Minnesotans are honest families who came here for opportunity, and they are getting burned twice: first by crooks in their midst, and then by the backlash and suspicion those crooks create.
But the fraud itself was predictable because the numbers were screaming. In Minnesota’s Medicaid autism benefit (EIDBI), spending didn’t just rise, it exploded. The state reports nearly $700 million paid out since 2017, including about $229 million in 2024 alone. Provider counts jumped from 41 in 2018 to 328 by 2023. And overall payments surged roughly 3,000 percent in five years, a growth curve so extreme it should have triggered emergency oversight long before the FBI got involved.
Here is the populist truth: compassion without competence is not compassion. It is a blank check. When government lets fraud metastasize, taxpayers get robbed, programs get shut down, and trust collapses.
And in the end, the cruelest part is who loses. Fraud doesn’t just waste money. It drains the pool and leaves fewer resources for the kids with real autism needs, the disabled adults who truly need housing help, and the families who play by the rules.
Leave a Reply