Category: Minnesota somalis
Minnesota day-care exposé journalist strikes again — and part 2 names the ‘hub’ of the fraud wheel
Nick Shirley — the 23-year-old investigative journalist who exposed day-care fraud in Minnesota with a video that has now surpassed 140 million views — is back with part two.
“It’s a whole other aspect to the fraud scheme,” says BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler, who invited Shirley to “The Liz Wheeler Show” to share his latest discoveries.
In the first video, Shirley exposed numerous Somali-run day-care centers in Minnesota as fraudulent operations. Despite receiving millions (or even billions overall) in taxpayer-funded government subsidies through programs like CCAP and Medicaid, these centers provided no actual child-care services. Footage captures Shirley visiting multiple empty facilities with locked doors, blacked-out windows, no visible children, and sketchy “staff members.”
In part two, which dropped last week, Shirley shines a light on non-emergency medical transportation companies in Minnesota, which he alleges are fraudulently billing the state and Medicaid for millions of dollars in rides and services that never actually occurred.
Liz plays a clip from part two in which Shirley and his partner, Minnesota native David Hoch, enter a Somali-run business called “Safari Transportation,” which is registered as a non-emergency medical transportation company. Except when they get inside, they find that it’s a money-wiring business.
These non-emergency medical transportation centers, Shirley explains, are the hub of the wheel of Minnesota fraud. The day-care centers, autism services, assisted living, and food assistance programs are the spokes of the wheel because “in order for these people to receive these services, they need to get moved to locations,” he says.
Shirley gives the example of an adult living at an assisted living center. If he or she needs to go to the doctor, a transportation service is needed. However, many of the transportation businesses in Minnesota are simply shell companies. They submit fake paperwork for services that were never provided while billing the state.
“Like how much money are we talking?” asks Liz.
“We estimated just doing like the national average. Like each NEMT averages around 20 vehicles per company. And then each ride, each trip is around $50, and each vehicle, if they’re out doing the work, they’re doing about 10 trips a day. So we estimated around like $8 million [per day],” says Nick.
This fraud, he explains, doesn’t just rip off the Minnesota taxpayer. All Americans are affected because both “state money and federal money” is being used to reimburse these “transportation companies.”
“Their hands are in our pockets,” says Liz.
To watch the full interview, check out the episode above.
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Exclusive: Bessent tells Rufo — ‘When the bear trap snaps,’ Minnesota fraudsters and complicit officials will face justice
While fraud rings in Minnesota’s Somali community have been under federal investigation for years, it was investigative journalist and BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo’s reporting that brought the billion-dollar scandals to national attention. Back in November 2025, Rufo published a report titled “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer,” in which he and co-author Ryan Thorpe alleged that billions of taxpayer funds were being stolen through schemes in Minneapolis’ Somali community and that millions of those funds were being funneled to the Al-Shabaab terror group in Somalia.
Rufo’s reporting sparked massive federal action, including revoking Temporary Protected Status for Somalis, surging Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, freezing child-care funds, and ramping up prosecutions. Most notably, it led Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to visit Minnesota in January 2026 and launch major FinCEN probes into hawala businesses, IRS audits, and enhanced transfer reporting.
In this exclusive BlazeTV interview with Rufo, Bessent shares what his team’s investigations have revealed about Minnesota’s Somali fraud operations and what steps the Treasury is taking to ensure it stops.
Bessent says his team’s investigations confirmed that the fraud schemes were “bigger than anyone thought” and that money — either excess government-issued funds or stolen funds — are indeed being sent illegally out of the country.
One positive result of the investigations into Minnesota’s fraud rings, however, is that they will provide a “model” for future investigations in the other 49 states.
“Just because of the population sizes — California, Illinois, New York — that what’s going on [in Minnesota] is a microcosm of what’s going on there. And it’s like someone on the panel said today: Benefits have been turned into businesses. It is a cottage industry of teaching people how to form multiple LLCs, how to game the system, how to move money around,” says Bessent, pledging to “follow the money” and explore “recoveries” for cheated Americans.
Rufo calls these predominantly Somali-orchestrated fraud rings Minnesota’s “open secret.” Fraudsters were successful largely because they knew that the cultural standard of “Minnesota nice” and politicians’ “fear of being called racist” would result in the turning of blind eyes everywhere.
“What do you think the right attitude should be as you look at these frauds moving forward?” he asks.
“Clearly the governor’s office does not want to do investigations. So we just want the facts. We want to see where they lead, and we want to put the bad guys in jail,” says Bessent.
Further Minnesota’s soft-on-crime policies that “incentivize” criminality need to be addressed. “You could steal hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars, and under the Minnesota laws, you might not even get jail time. You might get a series of paroles,” Bessent adds.
“We have the ability to bring in IRS enforcement, and they don’t monkey around. So the incentive is going to be to stop this.”
Rufo then posed the question that conservatives nationwide are eagerly awaiting an answer to: Will we finally see any big names face justice?
“From [Gov. Tim Walz] on down appears to be at a minimum to have turned a blind eye. There are rumors circulating around this building right now that in fact some have been complicit in these schemes. Is that something your office is looking into?” he asks.
“That’s part of following the money. There are evidently some disturbing tapes of AG Ellison in meetings with people who donated to him calling for political favors to stop the investigations. So we’ll see,” says Bessent.
“And Chris, I can guarantee you when the bear trap snaps, we’re going to get these folks.”
To hear the rest of Rufo’s exclusive interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, watch the video above.
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Minnesota news outlet is getting wrecked online for story on Somali migrants’ economic impact on Minnesota
While more and more revelations are being made about massive fraud schemes orchestrated by members of the Somali migrant community in Minnesota, at least one station is making a valiant effort to cover up the problem.
A KSTP-TV report looked at the economic impact of Somali immigrants in Minnesota after President Donald Trump issued a fiery statement accusing them of adding nothing to the economy.
‘It’s easy to “generate” $500 million in “income” when you steal over [$1 billion] from US taxpayers.’
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” he said in response to criticism from Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota on Tuesday.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” he added. “They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing. … When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
KSTP went to the community and got its reaction to the president’s comments.
“We’re a hardworking family. We’re working seven days a week,” said restaurant owner Abdishakur Elmi, who moved to the U.S. in the 1990s.
“Me and my dad, we work hard every single day,” added his son, Abdihakin Daud.
The report went on to claim that Somalis in Minnesota generate about $500 million in annual income and pay about $67 million in state and local taxes. He added that their economic impact to the state could be about $8 billion.
Many online found the stats to be deceiving or unpersuasive.
“So they only owe, what, $933,000,000.00 for the autism center fraud alone? Excellent propaganda point,” replied Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist.
“It’s easy to ‘generate’ $500 million in ‘income’ when you steal over [$1 billion] from U.S. taxpayers. The media isn’t doing its job here,” another user said.
“As several other people have pointed out, this implies that Somali immigrants in Minnesota are large net recipients of state & local public services,” another comment reads.
“It’s bizarre to see the media and politicians defending this massive Somali fraud ring. These criminals stole over a billion dollars of taxpayer money, diverting much of it to Democrat politicians and literal terrorists. That’s bad actually. Objectively so. Stop defending this!” another detractor said.
“The whole debacle with the Somali fraud in Minnesota is pushing the media into a frenzy of news spinning to the point that they post information that is actually highly negative for the Somali community when you start analyzing it,” another user said.
A Blaze News request for comment to KSTP was not immediately answered.
Daud also told KSTP that they had received threatening calls at their restaurant.
“The guy was cussing my dad out. ‘Go back to your country. You’re a filthy Somali. You shouldn’t be in our state,'” Daud said.
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Trump administration announces investigation into massive COVID fraud scheme by Somali community, accuses Walz of obstruction
The Trump administration is investigating allegations of massive fraud by members of the Somalian community, and Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Tim Walz (Minn.) is being accused of obstruction.
Small Business Administration Sec. Kelly Loeffler announced the investigation Tuesday after several indictments involving alleged fraud in relation to coronavirus pandemic relief funding.
‘Despite Governor Walz’s best efforts to obstruct, SBA continues to work to expose abuse and hold perpetrators accountable, full stop.’
“Numerous individuals and nonprofits indicted in the $1 billion Minnesota COVID fraud scandal, including Feeding Our Future, received SBA PPP loans in addition to other state and federal funding,” Loeffler said in the post on social media.
In November, federal prosecutors announced a 78th indictment in the scam. In that latest case, a man named Abdirashid Bixi Dool is accused of falsifying records for fake food sites in order to steal more than $1 million in pandemic relief funds.
Dozens have already been convicted in connection with the Feeding Our Future scam alone.
Loeffler went on to accuse the former Democratic vice presidential candidate of obstructing efforts to investigate the scams.
“Today, I have ordered an investigation into the network of Somali organizations and executives implicated in these schemes,” she added. “Despite Governor Walz’s best efforts to obstruct, SBA continues to work to expose abuse and hold perpetrators accountable, full stop.”
Loeffler cited a report from a group of Minnesota state workers at the Dept. of Human Services accusing the governor of being complicit in the theft of government funds.
“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response,” reads a statement from the group’s social media account.
RELATED: The US is now ‘one of the worst countries’ because of Trump’s actions, says Ilhan Omar
“Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports,” the group added. “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.”
In September, Walz was subpoenaed by the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee for not being responsive enough to a request for documents related to the fraud scheme.
“This was an appalling abuse of a federal COVID-era program,” reads a statement from a Walz spokesperson at the time.
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