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your support. So, what the heck is going on up
in Sama, I mean Minnesota? Like the Somali's got it
going on up there? Man. They they found that soft
underbelly of Minnesota benefits and they have just been just
going to town cutting it open, just drinking from the
lifeblood of the left wing welfare state. Minnesota is drowning
in fraud. That's how the story started over Its City Journal,
a piece by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Ruffo. I started
watching this burst onto the scene during my vacation last week,
where yes, I somehow another contracted some congestion in my chest.
It's still there, and so I apologize for the rough
sounding nature of my voice, although it does make it
somewhat gravelly sounding, which I've always wanted as a broadcaster. Anyway,
billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration
of Governor Tim jazz Hands Walls Democratic. I added the
jazz hands there, but he does do the jazz hands.
Have you noticed that? But he does the waving. It's
like jazz hands. Anyway, Democratic state officials overseeing one of
the most generous welfare regimes in the are asleep at
the switch, and the media, duty bound by progressive pieties,
refused to connect the dots. Although I will say the
New York Times has now got onto this story, so
credit where it is due. The New York Times is
now covering the story. City Journal broke the story, although
to be fair, like we kind of already knew a
lot of this like two years ago, which is weird
because do you remember Governor Tim Walls was put on
the presidential ticket to be the VEEP for Kamala Harris,
and nobody talked about this story, this scandal, which has
now exploded because now there are even more dots to connect.
And as Christopher Rufo just tweeted out within the hour,
the Somali fraud story reveals a truth that liberals would
prefer to ignore. And this is why I think. I
think he's exactly right. I think this is why people
are uncomfortable talking about this story. It's because of the
racial dynamic, the cultural dynamic. There is a cultural dynamic
at play, and he articulates it. Christopher Rufo articulates it thusly,
when Nordic welfare state culture and Somali piracy culture collide,
the result is mass looting of the public treasury. I'm
old enough to remember when a state representative from Mecklemburg County,
a Democrat, Carla Cunningham, in a debate on the floor
in the General Assembly in Raleigh a few months ago,
and she pointed out that not all cultures are equal,
and her felt, hello, Democrats lost their minds. How dare
she say such a thing. And you'll recall there was
another state lawmaker from Mecklenburg County. I forget his last name,
it's tedros something, or maybe his last name is Tedros
but I had him on the show. His legislative assistant
sent out a press release condemning Carla Cunningham. So I replied,
and I said, I'd love to have him on the show,
and she booked. It don't know if that'll ever happen again,
because I kept asking whether or not his assertion could
be supported by some evidence. Make your case that all
cultures because he was mad that she said all cultures
are not equal, and he was mad she said that,
and I said, well, do you believe that that's true?
And then he kept saying about, oh, it's the context
of this argument, it's the context of the bill, it's
the context of the debate and all of this. And
he could never articulate why she was wrong to say that,
And of course she was not wrong to say that.
In fact, there was a story out of Minneapolis. I
believe it's Minneapolis, Saint Paul. Yeah, Saint Paul Minnesota rather
because the name of the Islamic Center is the Saint
Paul Islamic Center, which I did have to do a
double take on that. Yeah, the Saint Paul Islamic Center
put out a statement in defense of one of their
members who just got arrested for raping a thirteen year old,
and they put out the statement saying that he wasn't
aware he had not fully assimilated to the American culture.
He's a Somali so they apparently the Islamic Center of
Saint Paul has apparently not gotten the memo that all
cultures are equal, so because they're like, oh, no, he
didn't know. He's from Somalia. He didn't know that that's
not allowed here. All cultures are not equal. That's not
to say better or worse in total right, because some
cultures may have very good things about them and very
bad things. And if you're going to do an assessment
and compare, then you got to look at the totality
of the culture. In many cases, this is back to
the City Journal story. In many cases regarding the fraud,
it was allegedly perpetrated by members of Minnesota's sizable Somali community.
Federal counter terrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in
stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they
ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al Shabab.
As one confidential source said, quote, the largest funder of
Al Shabab is the Minnesota taxpayer. The City Journal investigation
shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding
heart bureaucracy. When imported clan loyalties collide with a political
class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism
are cynically deployed to shield criminal behavior, and there's evidence
of that. There's direct evidence that that's why whistleblowers were
retaliated against and shut down, and people didn't want to
talk about it because the somalis said, that's racist. And
the predictable result is, if you were to design a
welfare program to specifically facilitate fraud, it would look like
the Minnesota Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services Program or HSS. It
would look like this program. Okay. It was the first
of its kind in America, and it was launched with
the noble goal to help seniors, addicts, the disabled, and
the mentally ill. It was designed to help them secure housing.
It was designed with low barriers to entry. It was
designed with minimal requirements for reimbursement. Before the program went
live in twenty twenty, officials pegged its annual estimated price
tag to be two point six million dollars. Two point
six million dollars. Costs went out of control, as you
might imagine, last year, not two point six million. No, No,
the total was one hundred four million dollars. It went
from two point six to twenty one million, to forty
two million, to seventy four million to one oh four million.
It was on track this year to reach like one
hundred and twenty five million dollars. On August first, Minnesota's
Department of Health and Humans Services moved to scrap this program.
They said payment to seventy seven providers. These housing stabilization
providers had already been terminated due to credible allegations of fraud.
Joe Thompson, who was the acting US Attorney for the
District of Minnesota, Hey, went even further, stating that the
vast majority of the HSS program was fraudulent. Which makes sense. Look,
I understand, you know government program rolls out, they're like
price tag two point six million dollars, and I'm thinking, okay,
it's going to be double that. But even if I
triple that, even if I put it at ten million,
that's still nowhere near the one hundred and four million
it that it was paying out last year. That explosive
growth is a sign of fraud. This isn't just overbilling, No, No,
people created entirely fictitious companies specifically to defraud the system,
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last a lifetime. So up in Minnesota, a Somali's created
this massive UH fraud network where they were not just
over billing through this H eight sorry HSS program, a
housing program. They had made up companies that were specifically
designed to defraud the system. The perpetrators often targeted people
recently released from rehab. They would sign them up for
medicaid services that they had no intention of providing, which
sounds a lot like the scandal involving that guy here
in Charlotte with heels Charlotte right, Cedric something or other,
who was one of the pals of our indicted now
former Charlotte City Council Member Tijuana Brown, the former acting
US Attorney for the District of Minnesota, said, I spent
my career as a fraud prosecutor, and the depth of
the fraud of Minnesota takes my breath away. Here's one
case Feeding our Future FOF, or FOFF as I call it.
There have now been gosh, I think it's I think
it's actually top like seventy defendants fifty six have pleaded
guilty in the two hundred and fifty million dollar fraud scheme.
Feeding Our Future was founded in twenty sixteen. It was
a very small Minnesota nonprofit sponsored daycares and after school
programs to enroll in the federal child nutrition program. So
I think this is to the point I saw on
the text line. Yeah, Eric said, as long as the
Minnesota taxpayer is paying for all that fraud, it's not
my problem. They keep voting for people like Waltz, so
let them have at it. Right. But here's the thing,
it's Federal Child nutrition program money, okay. So Feeding our
Future nonprofit that sponsored daycares and after school programs to
enroll in the federal child nutrition program in twenty nineteen,
so three years after it was created, FOF received just
under three and a half million dollars in federal funding
that was dispersed by the state. So the Feds send
the money to the state and the state distributes. In
the months after the COVID nineteen pandemic, began. However, the
nonprofit rapidly increased its number of sponsored sites. They used
fake meal counts, so they made up the numbers. They
doctored attendance records, they fabricated invoices, and the perpetrators of
the fraud ring claimed to be serving thousands of meals
a day, seven days a week to underprivileged children. Two
years later, FOF received nearly two hundred million dollars in
funding federal funding. In reality, though, the money was being
used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and by
real estate in America, Turkey sorry to Kia is how
they pronounce it now, as well as Kenya. In twenty twenty,
Minnesota officials began raising concerns about the nonprofits rapid expansion.
In response, the group filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination
related to outstanding site applications, noting that feeding our future
caters to foreign nationals. People were afraid of being called racist.
They were literally threatened with that in a lawsuit. How
dare you withhold this federal money? You're racist? Media, alongside
Minnesota's Democratic establishment, turned a blind eye to the fraud
within the Somali community. Then This, in turn allowed the
problem to metastasize. The fraudsters leveraged their growing political influence
to cultivate close ties with Minnesota's elected officials. Several individuals
involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to or
appeared publicly with do you want to guess? Ilin Omar exactly,
the Somali born congresswoman from Minneapolis. Omar's deputy District director,
Ali Is advocated on behalf of Feeding our Future. Omar Fateh,
a former state senator who recently ran for Minneapolis mayor.
He had lobbied Governor Tim Wohole in support of the
program as well. And one of the accused, Abdi Nur Salah,
served as a senior aide to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry.
And that's just one program, the Feeding our Future. Yeah,
Feeding our Future. There's another case. One of the women,
Ashah Farhan Hassan, also Somali. She's been charged in the
Feeding Our Future scam, but she's alleged to have played
a role in a fourteen million dollar fraud scheme perpetrated
against Minnesota's Early Intensive Developmental and behavioral intervention program. She
and her co conspirators approached parents in the Somali community
and recruited their children into autism therapy services. And it
did not matter if a child had autism or or not.
It did not matter. Hassan would facilitate a fraudulent diagnosis
for them and then the kickbacks begin. You know, stories
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dot com. The Somali Somolean scandal here as I'm calling it,
maybe it'll catch on, not just with the fof the
Feeding our Future, but also the early intensive developmental and
behavioral intervention program where this woman, Asha Farhan Hassan, along
with her co conspirators, would recruit parents in the Somali
community to have their kids enroll in autism therapy services,
and if the kids did not have an autism diagnosis,
then they would fabricate one. They would make one up
for them. So to drive up enrollment, Hassan and her
partners paid monthly cash kickback payments to the parents of
the kids who enrolled, which then, of course, if you're
coming from a pirate culture and you're the parent in
this scenario and you don't feel like you're getting enough money,
well now you could threaten to leave and you can
extort the people that are running the fraud for more money,
which occurred also some of them would actually then go
off and create their own autism therapy centers which were
in name only, and they would just keep all of
the money there for the autism services. And much like
with the HSS program the housing program, the autism claims
to Medicaid in Minnesota skyrocketed. They went from three million
dollars five years ago up to three hundred ninety nine
million dollars in five years. By the time that the
fraud scheme was exposed, one in sixteen Somali four year
olds in the state had reportedly been diagnosed with autism.
And that is a rate that is more than triple
the state average, which should have been an indication like
I don't know why all these Somalis are getting autism,
Like what's up with that? Like are they all getting
like massive batteries of vaccines or something. I don't know.
No kidding, it's just a joke. I'm not saying that anyway.
So the City Journal goes on to report later on
this is a very lengthy investigative. Peace they find at
least twenty eight fraud scandals have surfaced since Tim Walls
was elected governor in twenty nineteen. Most of the large
scale fraud rings according to two forms FBI officials who
spoke with the City Journal have been perpetrated by members
of the Somali community. What happened to all of the money, Well,
some of it went to politicians in campaign contributions, obviously,
some of it got sent back to a lot of
it got sent back to Somalia. They sent huge sums
in what's called remittances or money transfers from Minnesota to Somalia.
According to reports, and estimated forty percent of households in
Somalia get remittances from abroad, like it's propping up their
economy in Somalia. Whatever you can say of the economy
of Somalia, forty percent of the households there get money
from overseas in twenty twenty three alone, the Somali diasport.
By the way, what did I see the other day
that Somalia is home to I think it's the largest
goal old reserve, like the largest gold vein on Earth,
and like the second largest uranium crop. But they can't
access it because nobody will go in there because if
they go in there, they get murdered. So they have
all these resources, but because they keep murdering each other
and then murdering anybody who comes in to try to,
you know, turn this into profitable industries. They get murdered.
That's why it's impoverished. Right, it's the crime. It's the
tribal mindset, this clan mindset. Anyway, the Somalia. In twenty
twenty three, the Somalia diaspora sent back one point seven
billion dollars. So the people from Somalia that are living
outside of Somalia sent back one point seven billion dollars.
That is more than the annual government budget of Somalia.
City Journal reports some of this money now has been
directed to an even more troubling destination, the al Qaeda
linked Islamic terror group Al Shabab. According to multiple law
enforcement sources, Minnesota Somali community has sent untold millions through
a network of hawaas, those are informal, clan based money
traders that have wound up in the coffers of al Chebab,
Whether intentionally or not. When you're dealing with these hawalas,
these money traders, al Shabab is getting a cut, intended
or not. You know, if you're sending money, you fled Somalia,
you're working, you're law abiding, you're doing everything right. You're
not engaged in fraud, but you're sending money back through
these jualas you're funding al Shabab. Every cent that is
sent back to Somalia benefits al Shabab in some way.
They're taking their cut. Finally, City Journal reports ten years
ago Minnesota led the nation and the number of Americans
who had joined or attempted to join isis. Of the
fifty eight Americans who had done so, nearly half of
them came from Minnesota. Coincidence, welfare fraud also likely to
become a major issue in Minnesota's twenty twenty six elections.
Governor Tim Walls is seeking a third term, and he
has presided over a litany of scandals. He is facing
Republican challenger Kristin Robbins, who has made fraud prevention central
to her campaign, as she should. If this has cost
Minnesota and federal taxpayers billions of dollars, which there are
some estimates that show this could be somewhere in the
neighborhood of three to four billion dollars, like you should
make this the focal point of your campaign. Political blowback
is brewing. In fact, it has already blown back. There's
a Twitter account for the Minnesota Department of Human Service employees,
and they took a flamethrower to jazz hands. Tim Walls
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So the Minnesota Department of Human Service employees put out
a press release basically on Twitter and they said Tim
Walls governor is one hundred percent responsible for massive fraud
in Minnesota. We let him know of fraud early on,
hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud, but no, we
got the opposite response. Tim Walls 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 Walls, certain DFM members, Democrat, Farmers, Labor.
What's it called. It's the socialists, it's the basically, it's
the Democrat Party up there, the DFL, as well as
an indifferent mainstream media. It's scary, isolating, and left us
wondering who we can turn to. In addition to retaliating
against the whistleblowers, Tim Walls disempowered the Office of the
Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance.
Media and politicians supporting Tim Walls or the DFL agenda
attacked whistleblowers who were trying to raise red flags on
fraudulent activities. This is a cascade of systemic failures leading
all the way up to Tim Walls. They always say
Tim Walls. He's got one of those names where he
can't just say Walls, you gotta say Tim Walls. Agency
leaders appointed by Tim Walls willfully disregarded rules and laws
to keep fraud reports quiet, even to the extent of
threatening fail families of whistleblowers. These same leaders are not
qualified for their jobs, instead getting leadership jobs via Tim
Walls's friendship. So state government were left floundering. DFL lawmakers
refused to acknowledge fraud and deflected any serious conversation to
stop fraud. Biased mainstream media such as WCCO, which I
believe is the TV station up there, as well as
MPR which is Minnesota Public Radio. Oh, where have you gone,
Lake wilbe Gone? They showed absolutely no interest in covering
fraud happening in our own state. Programs, especially in behavioral
health and disability services, were built without any guardrails against fraud,
all in an attempt to extract more funding from the legislature.
And the federal government. Right, that was the play makes sense.
And by the way, I've talked about this for years,
you would think that the people who advocate for the
growth of government programs and services would be the biggest
hawks when it comes to watching out for fraud, because
any dollar that is diverted away from the mission of
the program or the service is a dollar that is
not then being used to help the people that you
say you care so much about that you advocated for
the creation of the program or service. Right, the biggest
advocates for the programs should be the biggest hawks against fraud.
Yet they never seem to care. Reassess your assumption if
you don't understand the outcome, reassess your assumption. The assumption
is that they actually care about helping these people through
the programs and services. But that's not actually the case.
That's not the case. They're getting the dopamine hits, they're
getting the rush, the self pleasure sure of having other
people know that they care. That's the juice they want.
As staff, they say, we first hand witnessed and observed
fraud happening, yet we were shut down, reassigned, and told
to keep quiet. Sometimes more leadership did not want to
appear to discriminate against certain communities and were unwilling to
take action such as stopping fraud that would have an
adverse impact on their image. So this is the their
racist charge. That's why the fraud investigations were stymied, one
of the reasons at least. It is an absolute shame.
All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you
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