Tag: welfare

Minnesota Dem Candidate Peggy Flanagan  Claims She’s ‘Appalled’ by Massive Welfare Theft — But ‘25-Year Friend’ Standing Next To Her In Viral Hijab Video Now Under Medicaid Fraud Investigation

Minnesota’s Democrat Senate nominee keeps telling voters she is “appalled” by the state’s historic welfare theft. The problem is the woman standing next to her in that viral hijab video, the one Flanagan called a friend of nearly 25 years, is now running an autism center the state has kicked off Medicaid and placed under investigation.

Nimco Ahmed, CEO of Minneapolis-based Milestone Development Center, appeared beside then-Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan at Karmel Mall in December 2025.

Flanagan, a Catholic, wrapped herself in a hijab for Somali TV and declared the Somali community “part of the fabric of the state of Minnesota.” Then she gestured to Ahmed and talked about their friendship of “almost 25 years.”

That same Ahmed is a longtime DFL activist, a former DFL state director, and president of the Somali American Coalition.

She is also listed as CEO of Milestone. Minnesota Department of Human Services officials have now confirmed open investigations into Milestone and a second provider, Spectrum Therapy Center.

Both were terminated from the Medicaid program months ago during the state’s Revalidate 2026 review. Both providers have appealed the decision, Fox News reported.

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Denver Socialist Mayoral Candidate Says Prior Arrest for Theft of Food Stamp Benefits ‘Actually Qualifies’ Her to Hold Office 

Shontel Lewis, a Democratic Socialist running in the Denver mayoral election, has a unique spin on her prior arrest for the theft of food stamps. She says it makes her more qualified to hold office.

In 2008, while she worked at the Department of Human Services East Food Stamp Office, Lewis used that job to take public benefit money that belonged to other people.

According to the police affidavit reported by the Denver Post, she searched EBT systems for inactive accounts that still had money and reissued benefit cards from those accounts.

She then gave cards to a roommate to use for food and cash benefits.

Investigators tied her to at least five to seven cases accessed over about five months starting in March 2008.

Although she initially denied wrongdoing, she later admitted it and said she was struggling financially. Initially, she was charged with more serious counts, but pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft. A felony theft count was deferred and later dismissed in 2011.

She served 18 months of probation and was ordered to pay more than $6,000 in restitution.

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Maduro Ally Pleads Guilty In Miami To Scheme That Stole Venezuelan Welfare Funds

The former minister of industry for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a global money laundering conspiracy that skimmed millions from a Venezuelan public welfare program.

According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) news release, Alex Saab, 54, who was extradited from Venezuela in May and charged days later, conducted a decade-long scheme that defrauded a Venezuelan welfare program for food and medicine, netting hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and associates.

Saab, a Colombian businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments before federal district Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.

“Criminals like Alex Saab who stole from the people of Venezuela and worked to exploit and misuse American financial institutions to fund illicit activities will be held accountable,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the news release.

Saab is accused of bilking the welfare program known as Local Committee for Supply and Production, or CLAP (Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción).

The ex-minister admitted to using a system of bribes and illegal payments to public officials. Entities controlled by conspirators in the scheme would be rewarded with lucrative contracts from the Venezuelan government to import food and medicine under CLAP.

Saab and his conspirators did not fulfill the contracts and would instead use fake companies, false invoices and shipping records, and other fraudulent documents to unlawfully obtain millions while concealing their association with the scheme, the DOJ said.

Saab further admitted he used shell companies outside his country to launder the illegal proceeds around the world, including in the United States.

DOJ Assistant Attorney General Andrew Duva said Saab exploited the American financial system to profit off Venezuelans, creating a “complex web of front companies, shell accounts, and false records to perpetuate his scheme.”

Saab previously was in U.S. custody until former President Joe Biden released him in December 2023 as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela. The deal included the Venezuelan regime’s release of 30 prisoners, including 10 Americans.

“The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela celebrates with joy the liberation and return to his homeland of our diplomat Alex Saab, who until today was unjustly kidnapped in a U.S. jail,” the Venezuelan government said following the prisoner-swap deal.

Saab was removed from his position earlier this year by acting leader Delcy Rodríguez, who previously served as Maduro’s vice president until he was captured by U.S. forces in an overnight raid on Caracas in January.

Saab was initially charged in July 2019 on money laundering counts.

He was detained about a year later in the Republic of Cabo Verde at the request of the U.S. government and was eventually extradited to American custody.

“President Biden granted Alex Saab clemency while he was awaiting trial in [Miami], and Saab was released from federal custody and returned to Venezuela. But that was not the end of the story,” said U.S. Attorney Jason Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida.

Quiñones’s office secured a new indictment against Saab in January 2026, and by May he was back in Miami federal court.

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USDA Says Crackdown On SNAP Fraud Prevented $5.8 Billion In Taxpayer Losses

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced nearly $6 billion in total savings tied to efforts to eliminate fraud in the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Rollins outlined the wins in a Sept. 15 post to X, saying that $5.8 billion in taxpayer losses have been prevented by the anti-fraud initiatives implemented during President Donald Trump’s second term.

This was done through the shutdown of nearly 1,840 illegal SNAP devices that processed Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and the disqualification of 5,335 fraudulent retailers.

“Those who defraud SNAP are stealing from taxpayers and taking resources away from Americans who genuinely need assistance,” Rollins said. “We have zero tolerance for this abuse, and we will continue pursuing bad actors and protecting the integrity of the program.”

There are several ways an ineligible person can be counted in SNAP, including illegal immigrants being certified in error or by fraud, and deceased household members continuing to receive benefits.

This comes just over three months after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report in early June about their discovery that 185,986 deceased people in 29 states were receiving food stamps.

Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 directing federal agencies to obtain lawful and “unfettered access” to data from federally-funded programs such as SNAP to facilitate an audit of government spending.

The SNAP integrity team was created in May 2025 to review state SNAP data against federal databases to identify potential fraud.

The maximum monthly food assistance offered through SNAP is set for its annual increase in line with the cost-of-living adjustment in October.

The benefit ceiling for a family of four will reach $1,023 for most of the nation, which is an increase from the current maximum of $994. Total benefits vary based on family size and income. In May 2026, the average monthly benefit received by U.S. households was $344.51.

The overall cost of the monthly SNAP benefits have fallen in recent years, from $13.4 billion in October 2022 to $6.8 billion in May 2026, largely because pandemic emergency allotments largely ended in 2023 and fewer people on the program.

Separate state cost-sharing penalties for high payment-error rates, enacted by the Republican-led Congress in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are scheduled to begin in October 2027. More than 40 states and territories recorded SNAP payment-error rates above 6 percent in fiscal year 2025, the level that triggers the penalty.

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Rand Paul: Blue State Democrats Using Welfare System to Bribe People for Their Vote

Tuesday on FNC’s “The Will Cain Show,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) discussed alleged welfare corruption across the country and argued that some states used it to incentivize voting for Democrats.

“How do we exist as a nation, Senator, if we essentially are open to the world and give welfare to everyone that wants to come to the United States?” host Will Cain asked.

Paul replied, “No, we can’t. And, actually, a whole population of these people came. Not only they’re receiving welfare, but became experts at stealing welfare, so many of the folks in Minnesota. Now we found in L.A. I think they had 432 hospice centers in L.A. When they cut off their money, the Trump administration cut the money off, only 12 of them complained. That means the rest of them were just worried about being caught. They’re fleeing somewhere not to be caught. But that means 80, 90 percent of these things are fraud. We found the ‘Learing Center,’ the adult learning centers, all the stuff that Nick Shirley found in Minneapolis. So a big problem of this is that the federal government funds it and the state governments police it. So if you’re policing something you don’t pay for, do you really care if it’s wasted?”

“So it’s mostly blue states — New York, Minnesota, California, where the Democrats bribe people to get their vote. They say, here, you can all have welfare, and we’re not going to check to see whether you need it or not or whether you’re stealing it, because Uncle Sam, the federal taxpayer, is going to pay for it. It’s a terrible system, and I propose that we shift this all back to the states, so the payment and the policing would be at the state and they would bankrupt themselves if they didn’t police the system.”

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12 Foreign-Born Operators From Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan Charged in $10 Million San Diego ‘Ghost Daycare’ Scam — Kids Only Showed Up When the Inspector Did

American taxpayers just got another look at how the childcare subsidy machine actually works in Gavin Newsom’s California.

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that 12 naturalized citizens and lawful permanent residents, originally from Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, have been charged in a more than $10 million home-daycare fraud scheme in San Diego.

Prosecutors say the defendants obtained California licenses to run home childcare, signed up with Child Development Associates and the YMCA to collect federal and county subsidies meant for low-income working families, then knowingly submitted false attendance records claiming they were watching children on days and at times when they were not.

They signed those forms under penalty of perjury. The money still showed up as direct deposits.

More than 250 federal, state, and local officers arrested all 12 defendants in a coordinated Thursday-morning raid and executed search warrants at the San Diego-area homes they claimed were daycare facilities.

U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon put it bluntly: “Today is a bad day for home daycare fraud. These fraudsters may have criminally gamed the system before. But today, the game is over.”

IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman said investigators “uncovered patterns of deceit that revealed twelve ghost daycare operations billing for children who were never present,” and that proceeds went to luxury homes, overseas wire transfers, and large cash withdrawals.

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Vance: 870K suspected COVID-loan fraudsters barred from future federal assistance

Vice President JD Vance announced Monday that the federal government will suspend roughly 870,000 individuals suspected of defrauding pandemic-era small business programs, permanently barring them from receiving future government-backed loans.

Speaking at an FBI field office in Kansas City, Missouri, Vance described the administrative crackdown as a blunt message of accountability, stating that borrowers who stole from taxpayers would no longer be eligible to borrow money or participate in programs administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

The sweeping suspensions stem from a multi-agency operation that flagged an estimated $39 billion in suspected fraudulent activity across 45 states and U.S. territories.

The announcement was made alongside key administration officials, including Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler. It accompanied a broader Justice Department campaign targeting fraud in emergency aid initiatives like the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) scheme.

Officials revealed that recent enforcement drives have resulted in criminal charges against nearly 80 individuals for schemes involving fake businesses, falsified payrolls, and identity theft, alongside dozens of guilty pleas and sentences connected to hundreds of millions in intended losses.

Authorities emphasized that barring these individuals from federal assistance — including disaster loans and SBA contracting programs — is a crucial first step toward curbing systemic abuse.

The enforcement surge highlights ongoing efforts to claw back billions of dollars distributed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic under highly relaxed safeguard protocols.

Oversight watchdogs, including the SBA’s Inspector General, have previously estimated that total fraudulent disbursements across pandemic emergency relief channels exceed $200 billion.

Justice Department officials attributed the continued wave of prosecutions years after the programs closed to expanded staffing, increased federal resources and improved cross-agency data sharing, assuring the public that federal investigators will continue pursuing fraudulent networks both domestically and abroad.

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Children of the Somali Dictator Responsible for the Deaths of 200,000 People Quietly Living Off American Taxpayers in Ohio Suburbs Alongside Victims of His Regime

The children of former Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, whose brutal regime has been linked to the deaths of as many as 200,000 people, are reportedly living quiet suburban lives in Columbus, Ohio.

According to an investigation by the New York Post, Barre’s son, Ayanle Mohamed Siad, and daughter, Deka Mohamed Siad, settled in the United States after their father was overthrown in 1991.

Their presence has reportedly caused deep pain within Columbus’ Somali community, which includes refugees and families who suffered under Barre’s 21-year military dictatorship.

“Siad Barre and his men committed so many war crimes, so I was shocked to see his son in the mosque enjoying his freedom,” Ali-Guban Mohamed, whose family members were reportedly executed by Barre’s forces, told the Post.

Barre seized power in a 1969 coup and ruled Somalia through repression, political persecution, and military violence. His regime’s campaign against the Isaaq people in northern Somalia included mass killings, destroyed cities, poisoned wells, and widespread displacement. Estimates of those killed range as high as 200,000.

Ayanle, 61, has been described by historian Mohamed Haji Ingiriis as his father’s “right-hand man.” Ingiriis told the Post that Ayanle exercised significant power during the final years of the dictatorship and at one point acted as the de facto ruler while his father was incapacitated.

“He was so powerful that he was able to appoint and dismiss regime authorities on behalf of his father,” Ingiriis said.

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Georgian National Charged for Conspiracy to Launder Proceeds of $1.3 Billion Health Care Fraud Scheme

A Georgian national has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston for allegedly conspiring to launder the proceeds of a $1.3 billion health care fraud scheme while he was illegally in the United States.

Erekle Gugava, 33, a Georgian national, was indicted on one count of money laundering conspiracy. Gugava fled the United States in July 2025, after the alleged conduct.

According to court documents, Gugava was a money launderer for the foreign-based organization that spearheaded the largest health care fraud case ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice, dubbed Operation Gold Rush. The organization, based in Russia and elsewhere, orchestrated a multi-billion-dollar health care fraud and money laundering scheme to target, exploit and steal from Medicare and other health insurers.

As alleged in the charging documents, Gugava purportedly owned ND Medical Solutions, LLC (ND Medical), a durable medical equipment company located in Pennsylvania, between February 2025 and July 2025. During the limited five-month span of Gugava’s purported ownership, ND Medical submitted at least $1.3 billion in fraudulent DME claims to Medicare, private health insurance companies that contracted to provide Medicare supplemental insurance policies, private employer-sponsored plans and union health plans. These insurers paid ND Medical approximately $6.5 million.

As part of the scheme, Gugava allegedly facilitated the deposit and transfer of fraud proceeds. Among other things, he allegedly opened several bank accounts in the name of ND Medical – for which he was the sole signatory – and deposited checks from Medicare Supplemental Insurers and other health insurers into the ND Medical bank accounts. The funds were then ultimately transferred to various overseas bank accounts for the benefit of the organization.

As alleged in charging documents, the fraudulent claims relied, in part, on the stolen identities of citizens from Massachusetts, across New England, and throughout the United States to justify the fraudulent billings. Many of these individuals, including elderly and disabled Americans, reported their concerns to Medicare and its contractors after receiving explanation of benefit forms that reflected them purportedly receiving DME that they did not in fact receive, that was purportedly prescribed by doctors whom they had never visited and purportedly delivered from ND Medical—a DME company with which they were unfamiliar.

As further alleged, the organization exploited the United States’ financial system by depositing insurance reimbursement checks from the fraud. The health care fraud proceeds were particularly susceptible to laundering because they originated from legitimate sources. Medicare and established private insurance carriers, giving the funds the initial appearance of legitimacy.

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FBI’s fifth Most Wanted Fraudster captured after alleged SNAP scam suspect arrested in India

The FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters initiative notched its fifth arrest in just three months after authorities in India arrested Manjit Singh Bedi Friday, and the bureau is working to return the alleged SNAP benefits fraud suspect to the United States, Fox News Digital has learned.

The FBI worked with Indian authorities to secure Bedi’s arrest and is actively working to return him to the U.S. to face charges, according to the bureau. 

Bedi’s arrest is the fifth through the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters initiative, which targets fugitives accused of major financial crimes.

Launched in June, the initiative has led to the arrests of five fugitives whom the FBI says are collectively accused of more than $2 billion in alleged fraud after spending nearly 4,000 combined days on the run.

FBI officials say the latest arrest underscores the bureau’s effort to pursue alleged fraudsters who fled overseas in an attempt to evade prosecution.

“Five Most Wanted Fraudsters captured in just three months is a historic success for this initiative,” FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital.

“The days of taking advantage of American taxpayers without consequence are over.”

Federal investigators allege Bedi defrauded the U.S. government out of at least $600,000 through a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) fraud scheme between March 2024 and June 2025, while operating an Asian grocery store in Tacoma, Washington.

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