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.’
How Somali fraudsters ran riot allegedly stealing more than $1BILLION of taxpayers’ money on Tim Walz’s watch: ‘We’re losing our way of life’
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