Category: Minnesota
Minnesotans Begged GOP Rep To Stop The Somalis Over A Decade Ago — He Told Them It Was Impossible
‘We did not ask for those Somalis’
Tim Walz scurries to defend record after video alleges new Somali-linked fraud
On Friday, independent video journalist Nick Shirley published a video on X that he claims shows widespread fraud involving purported day-care centers in Minnesota. Shirley wrote that he “uncovered over $110,000,000 [in fraud] in ONE day.” The video is the latest public allegation of fraud tied to Minnesota’s Somali community and comes as failed Democrat vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faces renewed scrutiny over the issue.
In the video, Shirley and his team are seen traveling Minnesota and visiting addresses where federally funded day-care centers are supposed to exist. When he arrived, he often found buildings with no children and seemingly no active day-care facilities.
‘There are not enough words to describe the breathtaking failure that has happened under the watch of @GovTimWalz.’
In a clip from Shirley’s video that Education Secretary Linda McMahon shared over the weekend, Shirley is shown standing outside a day-care facility identified as “Quality Learing [sic] Center.” The sign appears to misspell the word “learning.” Shirley says that when he attempted to enter the building during regular weekday hours, it was closed and its windows were blacked out. He also claims the center received $1.9 million in government funding.
In sharing the clip on X, McMahon wrote, “There are not enough words to describe the breathtaking failure that has happened under the watch of @GovTimWalz.”
RELATED: Somali fraud inspires Democrats to assimilate to Somalian culture
Blaze Media Illustration and Getty Images
Walz’s office pushed back over the weekend against Shirley’s allegations. Fox News Digital reported Sunday that a spokesperson for Walz said the governor has spent years working to “crack down on fraud” and has taken steps to strengthen oversight of state programs, including launching investigations into several facilities.
The spokesperson also pointed to the state legislature’s role in overseeing the programs and said that at least one business highlighted in Shirley’s reporting had already been shut down by Walz’s administration.
Despite the response, criticism continued. In addition to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Vice President JD Vance praised Shirley’s work, writing on X, “This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 [Pulitzer] prizes.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X that the bureau is aware of the allegations circulating online. Patel wrote that the FBI had already deployed additional personnel and “investigative resources” to Minnesota to address “large-scale fraud” involving federal programs, even before the issue gained widespread attention on social media.
“Fraud that steals from taxpayers and robs vulnerable children will remain a top FBI priority in Minnesota and nationwide,” Patel wrote.
Patel also cited previous arrests and convictions as evidence of the bureau’s ongoing efforts to combat fraud in the state.
BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo disputed Patel’s characterization, calling it “misleading.” In a post on X, Rufo said Patel was taking “credit for investigations and convictions that occurred under the Biden Administration,” adding that the unresolved question concerns alleged fraud that has not yet resulted in charges. “When do we see arrests, mugshots, and new prosecutions?” Rufo wrote.
Rufo previously reported on alleged fraud involving Minnesota welfare and health programs earlier this year. As independent journalists such as Shirley continue to highlight the allegations, scrutiny of Minnesota officials, including Walz and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has intensified.
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‘Fraud Tourism Industry’: Criminals Flocked to Minnesota To Cash In On ‘Easy Money’ Fraud Schemes, Federal Prosecutor Says While Announcing New Charges
Minnesota has “developed a fraud tourism industry” that entices scammers to travel to the North Star State to exploit “easy money” taxpayer-funded programs, Joe Thompson, the federal prosecutor behind the Somali fraud convictions, said Thursday. He unveiled charges against six new defendants, including two who were based in Philadelphia.
The post ‘Fraud Tourism Industry’: Criminals Flocked to Minnesota To Cash In On ‘Easy Money’ Fraud Schemes, Federal Prosecutor Says While Announcing New Charges appeared first on .
‘A Magnet for Fraud’: Criminals Flocked to Minnesota to Cash In On ‘Easy Money’ Fraud Schemes, Federal Prosecutor Says While Announcing New Charges
Minnesota has “developed a fraud tourism industry” that entices scammers to travel to the North Star State to exploit “easy money” taxpayer-funded programs, Joe Thompson, the federal prosecutor behind the Somali fraud convictions, said Thursday. He unveiled charges against six new defendants, including two who were based in Philadelphia.
The post ‘A Magnet for Fraud’: Criminals Flocked to Minnesota to Cash In On ‘Easy Money’ Fraud Schemes, Federal Prosecutor Says While Announcing New Charges appeared first on .
DHS torpedoes Ilhan Omar’s latest tall story: ‘Categorically FALSE’
In a Sunday interview with WCCO-TV, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of pulling over her son on Saturday and pressing him for proof of citizenship. Others who have trouble with the truth, namely Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and the liberal media, were quick to make hay of Omar’s allegation.
“Congresswoman Omar’s son was pulled over by ICE while he was following the law, on his way home from Target,” Walz said in a post on X. “This isn’t a targeted operation to find violent criminals, it’s racial profiling.”
‘It is shameful that Congresswoman Omar would level accusations to demonize ICE as part of a PR stunt.’
The Department of Homeland Security stopped the narrative in its tracks, noting that the Democrat ethno-nationalist’s sob story appears to be yet another tall tale.
DHS noted on Tuesday that “ICE has absolutely ZERO record of its officers or agents pulling over Congresswoman Omar’s son.”
“With no evidence, it is shameful that Congresswoman Omar would level accusations to demonize ICE as part of a PR stunt,” continued the agency. “Allegations that ICE engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.”
“What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. — NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity. Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, DHS law enforcement uses ‘reasonable suspicion’ to make arrests,” added the DHS.
RELATED: Ilhan Omar compares Stephen Miller’s immigration rhetoric to Nazism
Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
Clinging to the congresswoman’s narrative, Omar’s office said in response to the DHS on Tuesday, “The congresswoman’s son and others were pulled over by ICE, racially profiled, and forced to prove their citizenship with a passport.”
“ICE has long operated as a rogue agency beyond reform,” continued the statement from Omar’s office. “It’s no surprise that an agency known for disappearing people also can’t keep its records straight.”
The response from Omar’s office may amount to a rock thrown from a glass house.
In the wake of border czar Tom Homan’s confirmation that the Trump administration is investigating Omar for alleged immigration fraud — possibly in connection to Omar’s marriage to her alleged brother — former Democratic congressional candidate AJ Kern told Alpha News that public records appear to indicate Omar has trouble keeping the record straight about when she was born.
While Omar has repeatedly indicated that she became a citizen at the age of 17 — a claim she even made to the Guardian this week — Kern noted that Omar “was actually 18 in the year 2000, when her father became eligible to apply for citizenship.”
Citing official documents, Kern suggested that Omar “actually wasn’t a minor when her father could apply for naturalization,” adding that “it kind of blows a hole in her story that she obtained naturalization or citizenship when she was 17.”
Emails reviewed by Alpha News show that Omar’s staff contacted the Legislative Reference Library on May 17, 2019, requesting they change the Somali-born ethno-nationalist’s date of birth from Oct. 4, 1981, to Oct. 4, 1982.
Blaze News has reached out to Omar’s office for comment.
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‘Beachhead of criminality’: Trump admin urges Walz to resign in light of ‘ghost students’ fraud scheme
Minnesota appears to be a magnet for fraudsters, particularly from Somalia.
While the problem has hardly been a secret — scores of bad actors have been charged and/or convicted in connection with various fraud schemes in the state — the Trump administration has recently taken a special interest, exploring just how bad the graft has gotten on Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Tim Walz’s watch.
Much of the focus has so far been on the alleged fraud committed by members of the Somali community in relation to coronavirus pandemic relief funding. However, Education Secretary Linda McMahon hammered Walz in a letter on Monday over student aid fraud in the Gopher State, calling on him to resign.
‘Minnesota’s political elite has turned a blind eye and even helped facilitate the laundering of money.’
“At the beginning of this year, the U.S. Department of Education became aware that fraudulent college applicants, especially concentrated in Minnesota, were gaming the federal postsecondary education system to collect money that was intended for young Americans to help them afford college,” wrote McMahon.
The education secretary referred to these fraudsters as “ghost students” because “they were not ID-verified and often did not live in the United States, or they simply did not exist.”
According to McMahon, 1,834 so-called ghost students were found to have received $12.5 million in taxpayer-funded grants and loans in Walz’s state.
In June, the Education Department flagged Riverland Community College and Century College in White Bear Lake as two of the institutions in Minnesota that were impacted by the fraud scheme.
RELATED: Tim Walz tries gaslighting Americans again — this time about Trump’s ‘garbage’ remark
Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images
The Rochester Post Bulletin reported in April that Riverland had apparently averaged more than 100 potentially fraudulent applications per year for the previous two financial aid periods.
A history instructor at Century College reportedly told state lawmakers earlier this year that he discovered in 2023 that 15% of his students were “basically an organized crime ring.”
Minnesota State College Southeast was similarly impacted, having discovered that the spike in its 2025 spring enrollment numbers was driven by 84 ghost students. While some of the apparent fraudsters at these and other institutions were locals, most were reportedly from other countries.
Ghost students will reportedly engage remotely and do the bare minimum of classwork until financial aid funds are doled out around 10 days into the semester. Once their payday arrives, they usually vanish.
“They collected checks from the federal government, shared a small portion of the money with the college, and pocketed the rest — without attending the college at all,” said McMahon. “Our new fraud prevention system has now blocked more than $1 billion in attempted financial aid theft by fraudsters, including coordinated international fraud rings and AI bots pretending to be students.”
The education secretary stressed that Walz’s “careless lack of oversight and abuse of the welfare system has attracted fraudsters from around the world, especially from Somalia, to establish a beachhead of criminality in our country.”
McMahon further suggested that Walz has done “nothing as governor to stop this criminal behavior” such that scammers have “gotten rich off federal housing, education, food stamp, and small business programs — even defrauding assistance for elder care and autistic children.”
After suggesting that “Minnesota’s political elite has turned a blind eye and even helped facilitate the laundering of money that was meant to help America’s least fortunate,” McMahon accused Walz of benefiting from the sordid state of play and implored him to resign.
Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) said that McMahon’s assessment of Walz’s “catastrophic failures” was “spot on,” adding that “it’s time for Walz to take accountability and make way for real leadership to clean up this mess.”
Walz plans to seek a third term next year.
Former health care executive and Army veteran Kendall Qualls won the non-binding Minnesota GOP gubernatorial straw poll on Saturday, winning three more votes from delegates than Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth.
While a September poll found that Walz had a significant edge over Qualls, it appears Minnesotans are fast losing faith in their governor and his ability to curb fraud in the state.
A recent KSTP-TV/SurveyUSA poll of 578 registered voters found that 69% believe Walz needs to do more to stop fraud in Minnesota. According to the poll, Walz’s disapproval rating is 48%.
“It’s pretty obvious,” Walz said during a press conference on Friday. “Fraud happened. We need to take accountability — ultimately me.”
“I take responsibility for everything,” added the governor.
Blaze News has reached out to the governor’s office for comment.
McMahon’s letter comes just weeks after Small Business Administration Sec. Kelly Loeffler announced an investigation “into the network of Somali organizations and executives implicated” in the $1 billion Minnesota COVID fraud scandal, particularly those who received SBA PPP loans.
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