Feds Raid Almost Two Dozen Daycares in Minnesota. Search Warrants Executed for “Rampant Fraud.” Somalis Key Suspects

Federal agents executed search warrants at almost two dozen daycare centers in Minnesota suspected of defrauding the taxpayers.

One of the targets was the Quality Learning Center in Minneapolis, which became famous for its misspelled sign, “Quality Learing Center.”

While federal officials have been tight-lipped about the raids, they are likely linked to the Somali daycare fraud uncovered by journalist Nick Shirley, as well as autism, Medicaid, and Covid-19 food fraud.

Somalis are the key suspects in the daycare and other fraud schemes. Dozens have have been charged and/or pleaded guilty to federal crimes.

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“Federal authorities conducted early morning court-ordered searches in Minneapolis as part of a fraud investigation,” a Justice Department spokesman told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The raids were “part of an ongoing fraud investigation,” the spokesman told the newspaper.

FBI agents raided 22 locations, the newspaper continued. The raids were not related to immigration.

On X, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations disclosed the raids.

“Any abuse of American taxpayer dollars is UNACCEPTABLE,” the Homeland Security Department’s X feed said:

Today, working with our law enforcement partners, @HSI_HQ  and @HSISaintPaul executed search warrants relating to the rampant fraud of taxpayer dollars in Minnesota.

“For reasons of operational security and for the safety of our agents, we will not comment further at this time,” HSI noted.

Daycare Fraud

In a major embarrassment for the far-left, pro-fraud news media, journalist Shirley uncovered a major scandal simply by knocking on the doors of Somali-run daycares. Somalis who didn’t want to talk often answered.

On X, Shirley posted a video about his investigation and claimed to have found more than $110,000,000 in daycare fraud in one day. One daycare didn’t have any kids on the premises. Shirley also uncovered one address with 14 Somali-owned home healthcare businesses, and another address with 22 such businesses. 

As GOP Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota wrote to disgraced far-left Democratic Governor Tim Walz, “these centers are receiving public funds, including state and federal money through the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP)”:

This is especially concerning given CCAP fraud isn’t unfamiliar to Minnesota. Following reports of approximately $100 million in fraud through the CCAP in 2018, the State of Minnesota conducted a review and concluded that they could not provide a reliable estimate of how much fraud existed in the program at the time.

Emmer called for the deportation of the fraudsters.

As well, a federal prosecutor had told CBS News that his office has uncovered “industrial-scale” fraud. Somali crooks, the prosecutor said, have robbed the taxpayers of $18 billion since 2018. 

Shirley also uncovered what concerned Minnesotan David Hoch called massive fraud among Somali-owned medical transportation companies. Despite observing many vehicles linked to such companies, he never saw them transporting a passenger. Shirley released a second video that alleged about $16 million in transportation fraud. Shirley and Hoch visited the “transportation companies” and found that some addresses were at an apartment complex, a violation of Minnesota law. One address housed three companies with almost identical names. Shirley also reported some locations had no vehicles.

Food, Medicaid, Housing, Autism Fraud

In December, Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of health and human services, warned the sponsors of immigrants they must cough up the money for those who illegally enrolled in Medicaid.

“Federal records indicate that, as a sponsor for [redacted’s] immigration to the United States, you agreed to provide financial support so that [redacted] would not be excludable as a public charge who is dependent on government benefits,” the letter begins:

Records indicate that your support obligation commenced [redacted] and that [redacted] has recently been enrolled in Medicaid for at least one month. Pursuant to 8 CFR 213a.4, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is seeking reimbursement for such costs.

As the Daily Mail recounted in its exclusive on the warning, “the crackdown is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s response to mounting evidence of rampant fraud in Minnesota — much of it centered in parts of the state’s Somali community.”

That “community” also includes myriad defendants charged in other fraud schemes. 

The Feeding our Future program defrauded taxpayers of more than $250 million and involves at least 78 defendants, and 65 of whom have been convicted, two of them early this month.

In September, eight defendants were charged with defrauding Medicaid’s housing-stabilization program.

Since September, federal prosecutors have charged seven defendants in the autism and housing fraud schemes, while another pleaded guilty. 

Possibly linked to the “industrial-scale” fraud, as the federal prosecutor called it, is the number of Somalis who collect welfare.

In December, as The New American reported, the Center for Immigration Studies disclosed that almost 90 percent of Somali households receive some form of public assistance.

Immigration Fraud

Not to be ignored is rampant immigration fraud among Somalis. In October, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reported that it had uncovered fraud in nearly 50 percent of the cases it scrutinized.

The bureau’s agents discovered at least 275 cases of outright immigration fraud after “site visits and targeted verifications for applicants and petitioners with pending immigration benefits who matched specified risk criteria.”

The operation, USCIS reported, targeted “more than 1,000 cases that had fraud or ineligibility indicators.” As well, agents “conducted over 900 site visits and in-person interviews, and found evidence of fraud, non-compliance, or public safety or national security concerns in 275 cases — 44 percent of cases interviewed.”

Somali fraud is no surprise. The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Somalia as the second-most corrupt country on the planet.

H/T: New York Post