Tag: welfare

What Rep. Ilhan Omar Likely Knew of the $1 Billion Welfare Fraud in Minnesota

The massive $1 billion in welfare fraud in Minnesota is causing many to ask what Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar knew and when she knew it about the fraud committed right under her nose by the Somali community in Minnesota.

Reports say that Omar has many close ties to organizations, businesses, and individuals named in the various cases that have uncovered massive fraud of Minnesota’s overly generous welfare schemes, cases that total up to more than a billion dollars in stolen taxpayer money.

For example, Omar has held events and parties at the Minneapolis eatery named Safari Restaurant, an establishment that has been named in some of the investigations looking into the fraud. The owners of this restaurant, Salim Said and Aimee Bock, have already been convicted in the Feeding Our Future case that defrauded $250 million from the state in child food aid.

Omar was reportedly very close to these business owners. The congresswoman held her 2018 congressional victory party at the restaurant with the full participation of its owners and introduced the bill that led to the fraud that enriched them, yet Omar has claimed to know nothing about any of it, Chadwick Moore reported for the New York Post.

Said was found guilty in August of ripping off the state for $12 million in funds that were supposed to be earmarked to feed needy children. The money was stolen from the 2020 MEALS Act, which Omar introduced and saw passed with bipartisan support.

Indeed, Omar was seen on a video recorded in that very restaurant as she touted the program.

That isn’t all. One of Omar’s own campaign officials has also pleaded guilty in one of these cases.

Omar campaign official Guhaad Hashi Said, who is also a Democrat activist, pleaded guilty to running a fake food aid organization called Advance Youth Athletic Development. He claimed to have helped feed 5,000 children with the organization and pulled in $3.2 million in fraudulently awarded funding.

Said worked for Omar from 2018 to 2020 and one of his duties was to turn out the vote in the Somali community. He was a constant presence around Omar throughout that time.

Omar also received donations from several of those involved in these cases. In 2022, she returned $7,400 in direct donations from these convicted fraudsters.

Yet, she maintains she knew nothing, saw nothing, and had no part in the fraud.

Indeed, Omar recently sponsored an op ed in the New York Times published under her name and insisting that Trump’s focus on the massive theft of tax dollars by Minnesota’s Somali community is just “bigotry.”

Keep reading

USDA Will Withhold SNAP Funds From 21 States That Refused To Provide Data

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says she will be moving to stop federal funding to 21 non-compliant states that have refused to provide data from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

In February, the Trump administration had asked all states to provide their SNAP data to the federal government as part of the administration’s efforts to root out waste and fraud in the welfare program.

29 mostly Republican-led states provided the data and revealed 500,000 cases of duplicate benefits as well as 186,000 deceased individuals’ Social Security numbers in use.

But 21 mostly Democrat-led states, including California, Minnesota and New York,  have dug in their heels and refused to provide the information, citing concerns over privacy.

Secretary Rollins told reporters that if a state refuses to share data on criminal use of SNAP benefits, “it won’t get a dollar of federal SNAP administrative funding.”

Rollins said that cooperation is needed from all states in order to root out fraud in the SNAP program and that action is impending for those states that refuse to provide names and immigration status of aid recipients.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Rollins said, “We asked for all the states for the first time to turn over their data to the federal government to let the USDA partner with them to root out this fraud, to make sure that those who really need food stamps are getting them, but also to ensure that the American taxpayer is protected.”

Rollins accused former president Joe Biden of trying to “buy an election” by ramping up food stamp funding by 40% last year.

Roughly 42 million recipients currently use SNAP benefits to help buy their groceries, at an annual cost to taxpayers of nearly $100 billion a year.

Keep reading

ICE “Strike Teams” Deployed To Minneapolis After Bombshell Somali Welfare-Fraud Report Linked To Overseas Terror

Investigative journalist Christopher Rufo, whose City Journal expose revealed how Minnesota’s Somali community stole billions in taxpayer funds, with money ultimately flowing to a foreign terrorist network, notes that just weeks after his bombshell report, ICE has now mobilized in Minneapolis.

“How it started   …   How it’s going,” Rufo wrote on X on Tuesday evening. 

Rufo cited a report from the New York Times that said the Trump administration launched a massive ICE enforcement operation in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area, set to target hundreds of illegal alien Somalis. 

According to an official with knowledge of the deportation operation and documents obtained by the NYT, about 100 federal agents have been deployed to the Minneapolis-St. Paul region as part of a new “strike team” to deport Somali illegal aliens who are a net drain on public resources.

Keep reading

Hundreds of Minnesota Gov’t Staffers Say Gov. Tim Walz Hid Somali Fraud and ‘Attacked Whistleblowers’

Nearly 500 employees in Minnesota’s state government say Democrat Governor Tim Walz ignored their constant warnings about massive fraud by Somalis of the state’s aid programs.

The staffers in the state’s Department of Health Services also say that Walz retaliated against them for exposing the corruption in the state’s Somali community.

The group of state employees have been operating an X account for several years where they have warned the public of the cases of fraud and theft they are finding in the aid program. In years past they warned the former Democrat vice presidential nominee and the citizens of Minnesota of the widespread issues they have uncovered. But in a new post, the group is saying that not only has Walz ignored their warnings, he has punished them for raising the alarm.

“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota,” the group said in a November 29 post referencing a New York Times article on the crimes. “We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud, but no, we got the opposite response.”

They added, “Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz, certain DFL members, and an indifferent mainstream media. It’s scary, isolating, and left us wondering who we can turn to.”

Keep reading

Treasury to probe whether Somali terror group al Shabaab receiving Minnesota welfare money: Bessent

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced an investigation into Somali terror group al Shabaab allegedly receiving Minnesota welfare money,

“At my direction, @USTreasury is investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab,” Bessent posted on X on Monday.

“Thanks to the leadership of @POTUS @realDonaldTrump, we are acting fast to ensure Americans’ taxes are not funding acts of global terror. We will share our findings as our investigation continues.”

Bessent reposted a City Journal article from last month that alleged millions of dollars from Minnesota state welfare programs had “ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab,” citing law enforcement sources, CBS News reported.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s (D) office directed the news outlet to remarks last week in which the governor said he welcomes an investigation into where defrauded welfare money went and would work with investigators.

In 2019, a report by Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor said it was “unable to substantiate” allegations that Child Care Assistance Program funding is going to terrorist groups, but it didn’t rule it out, saying it’s “possible” that state funds may have been sent overseas and eventually found its way to terrorists.

Keep reading

NY Times Admits Somalis Are ‘Raised in a Culture of Stealing’ Following Massive Welfare Fraud in Minnesota

Even the far-left New York Times has admitted that Somalians are raised in a culture of widespread theft and graft in their country as the news of massive welfare fraud among the Somali community in Democrat Gov. Tim Walz’s Minnesota grows.

The paper’s opening line for its Nov. 29 article gets straight to the point, reading, “The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.”

There have been an astounding series of cases of hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud in state welfare, housing, healthcare, food, COVID relief and other programs, much of it centered on members of the Somali community.

The fraud has been so endemic in Minnesota that even the usually far-left Times is joining Breitbart News and calling it out. Indeed, the paper even noted that early on many liberals waved off the fraud as a “one-off abuse,” but as each new case rolled out from federal prosecutors the sense of alarm has grown and the blame is undeniable.

“Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided,” the Times reported.

The paper does not spare exposure of the Somali community.

Macalester College professor Ahmed Samatar, a Somali native, said that the fraud among Minnesota’s Somali migrants should not be surprising. The Times added that “Somali refugees who came to the United States after their country’s civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt government was widespread.”

The fraud has been so deep that it has undermined all of the state’s welfare programs.

“No one will support these programs if they continue to be riddled with fraud,” federal prosecutor Joseph H. Thompson told the media. “We’re losing our way of life in Minnesota in a very real way.”

One of the first such cases centered around an organization called “Feeding Our Future,” run by a group of Minneapolis-area Somali migrants. Prosecutors say that the organizers bilked $250 million from the state in child food assistance funding.

In a different case, tens of millions were stolen from Minnesota’s autism treatment program, again by Somali migrants. There is also the case of more than $550 million stolen from the state’s coronavirus pandemic relief program.

Keep reading

ICYMI: MN AG Keith Ellison CAUGHT ON TAPE Promising Favors to Somali Immigrant Fraudsters — Including Now-Convicted Defendants — In Exchange for Campaign Cash

A 54-minute secret recording from a December 11, 2021, closed-door meeting inside Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s official state office is resurfacing amid explosive revelations that 70 Somali community members in Minnesota participated in stealing $250 million in federal COVID child-feeding funds.

On the tape released by American Experiment earlier this year, Ellison sympathizes with, encourages, and ultimately promises assistance to a group of Somali-American business leaders, many of whom would later be charged or convicted in the largest COVID relief fraud scheme in U.S. history.

The fraudulent operation, centered around the notorious nonprofit Feeding Our Future, stole an estimated $250 million in federal child nutrition funds, money intended to feed poor children but instead used to purchase luxury homes, foreign real estate, jewelry, and lavish lifestyles.

The audio reveals Ellison mocking state agency oversight, vowing to “fight” on behalf of the very operators who investigators say were deeply involved in a web of wire fraud, money laundering, and fake meal claims across Minnesota.

Soon after (on December 20, 2021), Keith Ellison’s campaign and that of his son Jeremiah Ellison received campaign donations from individuals linked to Feeding Our Future.

Among those donors was Gandi Yusuf Mohamed, a person publicly identified as tied to laundering over $1.1 M in program funds.

Keep reading

The Somali fraud ring that turned money for hungry children into luxury empires… and why Tim Walz and the Democrats looked the other way for an unfathomable reason

Minnesota once prided itself on its Scandinavian-style safety net – high taxes, generous benefits and a shared belief that no child should ever go hungry.

But that image lies in ruins after a billion-dollar fraud spree that siphoned taxpayer money away from the needy and poured it straight into luxury mansions, high-end cars, overseas real estate and designer lifestyles.

What authorities first hoped was a one-off pandemic scam has now been exposed as something far bigger – and far uglier.

Federal prosecutors say that over the past five years, scores of scammers – many operating inside Minnesota’s Somali diaspora – stole more than $1 billion intended for feeding children, helping homeless families and providing autism therapy.

Instead, the money bankrolled G-Wagons, Teslas, Porsches, lakefront homes, Dubai shopping sprees and beachside resorts abroad.

Minnesotans are livid – and scared. Because this wasn’t a small-time hustle – it was a full-scale hijacking of the state’s famously trusting, famously generous social-services machine.

For decades, Minnesota welcomed immigrants, and poured taxes into the public good. The state drew tens of thousands of Somali refugees fleeing civil war. Most built families, careers and political influence.

But investigators say a small number saw something else: an open-tap of easy money. 

Keep reading

MINNESOTA SCANDAL EXPLODES: Over 480 DHS Employees Accuse Gov. Tim Walz of Orchestrating Massive Cover-Up — Retaliated Against Whistleblowers to Shield Somali Illegal Fraud Ring That Stole Over $1 Billion

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is under fire after employees from the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) issued a bombshell statement accusing the far-left governor of orchestrating a sweeping cover-up to shield a sprawling Somali immigrant fraud ring that stole more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds and punishing whistleblowers who tried to stop it.

According to DHS insiders, Walz not only ignored early warnings but actively retaliated against agency employees who sounded the alarm.

They now accuse his administration of using political intimidation, monitoring, threats, and agency manipulation to suppress evidence and silence witnesses.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, 70 members of the Somali community in Minnesota were involved in stealing $250 million in COVID funds that were intended to feed children.

Millions of dollars were stolen from American taxpayers and sent overseas to Somalia, and 80% of the money has not been recovered.

Seven defendants were tried in connection with the scheme on charges related to stealing more than $40 million in taxpayer funds, and five were found guilty. However, the FBI is still investigating an attempt by a Somali woman to bribe one of the jurors with $120,000 in cash.

However, the fraud extends deeper, with multiple schemes of this nature occurring over the last five years.

Per the New York Times, “Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating.”

During an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Walz responded by touting Minnesota’s “generosity” and claiming the state attracts opportunists because it is “prosperous and well-run.”

Rather than taking accountability, he dismissed concerns about foreign-led theft as lazy demonization.

Keep reading

Sweden: $375 Million in Fraudulent State Welfare Funds Siphoned Off by Foreign Criminal Gangs Ravaging the Nation

A government investigation has revealed Sweden’s catastrophic betrayal, exposing how the nation’s welfare state—forged through centuries of Swedish ingenuity, sacrifice, and national pride—has been hijacked by criminal gangs, overwhelmingly fueled by unchecked mass migration from third-world countries.

The probe finally rips the veil off a scandal that Sweden’s globalist elite—those cosmopolitan liberals and social-democratic enablers who have ruled the country for decades—deliberately buried, ignored, and denied while the rot spread unchecked through the Swedish state apparatus.

Thousands of these gang members, many with deep roots in Sweden’s migrant enclaves, have been taking state handouts for years, draining the equivalent of over €325 million ($375 million) straight from the pockets of honest, tax-paying Swedes who built this system for their own people.

These so-called “benefits”—from fake sickness payouts to unemployment welfare—have become a taxpayer-funded safety net for these foreign predators, bankrolling their empires of drug dealing, extortion rackets, and brutal violence that terrorize Swedish streets and erode the country’s national sovereignty.

What this report unmasks is a national disgrace. Sweden’s jewel of a welfare system—a beacon of excellence built by generations of Swedes—has become little more than a slush fund propping up the fake refugees and economic migrants from the Third World who are dismantling the Swede’s one and only homeland from within, all thanks to spineless, traitorous globalist elites and their open-borders insanity.

Nils Öberg, chief of the Social Insurance Agency, conceded what patriotic Swedes have known for years—these migrant-dominated crime syndicates have embedded welfare fraud into their anti-Swedish operations, treating its national treasury like their personal ATMs.

The investigation shines a bright light on the ugly reality. Foreign-born individuals and their descendents, imported en masse under reckless, delusional multicultural fantasies, dominate the ranks of these welfare-scamming gangsters, proving once and for all that mass migration isn’t “enrichment”—it’s a direct assault on Sweden’s cultural and economic integrity.

One fraudster, claiming total disability to milk the system, was caught pumping iron in gyms, jetting off on lavish trips, and orchestrating gang hits—all while living off Sweden’s generous social welfare system designed to help vulnerable Swedes.

Another unemployed migrant was exposed as the kingpin of a sprawling criminal empire with over 30 convictions, yet still collecting welfare checks courtesy of our liberal-globalist policies that prioritize migrants—mostly military-aged men from alien cultures—over native Swedes.

Thousands of these gang-linked migrants declare such small “legal” earnings that the Swedish state is obligated to pick up the tab for their child-support payments, costing hardworking families another €10 million annually in this grotesque wealth transfer from Swedes to foreigners.

Authorities also found deep infiltration of legitimate businesses by these criminal networks, where they own, run, or manipulate companies to file fake sick-pay claims. Shockingly, many of these outfits trace back to migrants exploiting Sweden’s trust-based system.

The “personal assistance” industry—long a playground for fraud—emerged as a prime target, filled with gangs using fake staffing and ownership schemes to siphon funds that should safeguard Swedish elders and the disabled, not finance foreign crime lords.

Social Insurance Minister Anna Tenje labeled the findings “astonishing,” declaring that “if Sweden is going to to break the gangs, it must throttle this supply of our common tax funds.”

Keep reading