Bill Glahn, Lou Raguse, and other members of the local Twin Cities press have been covering the massive public-programs fraud committed by a large cast of almost exclusively Somali perpetrators for a while now. For those just tuning in, Bill points out — to take one example — that KSTP’s Jay Kolls knocked on alleged daycare doors in this January 2025 story.
YouTuber Nick Shirley has brought the daycare story to a national audience with the video he posted last week. Bill posted the video here on Power Line. The delayed detonation of this story represents another rendition of the Rufo effect. Like Chris Rufo’s linked City Journal column, the Shirley video implies that something must be done. An investigation must be conducted. Perpetrators must be held to account. This implication does a disservice to what has been done by the federal authorities to date. I tried to add this perspective to the story in “Minnesota’s Somali fraud problem.”
Shirley has a local guide named David. David alludes to frauds centered on St. Paul’s Grigg’s-Midway Building. One wouldn’t know from the video that the FBI executed search warrants and the United States Attorney brought an initial set of charges arising from the Griggs-Midway Building. I wrote about the searches here in July (“Another massive Minnesota fraud”) and the charges here in September (“The fraud this time”). The linked September post includes a video of the press conference announcing the charges.
Shirley acknowledges a recent FBI raid on an Eagan or Minneapolis office building at about 26:10 of the video. You can see the FBI at work lugging boxes of evidence removed from the building. Shirley also checks out the Griggs-Midway Building itself at 29:20 of the video.
Commenting on the September press conference, I wrote that the defendants charged in the case were almost incidental to the point. Then-Acting United States Attorney Joe Thompson all but shouted the point from the rooftop: “Minnesota is drowning in fraud” — fraud in Medicaid programs administered by the state of Minnesota — and, I would add, under the noses of Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison.
To put it another way, Thompson was shouting: Wake up! The volume of fraud is beyond the capacity of his office to remedy by prosecution. They can’t do it alone.
Mr. Thompson is now First Assistant United States Attorney for Minnesota. He has been making the point for a while. He is doing what can be done with a small team of prosecutors but he has sought to make it clear that the fraud involved is staggering. Those just tuning in should know that the FBI and the United States Attorney have been on the case since 2021. They could use some help. However, they are still on the case.
Most recently, on December 18 Mr. Thonmpson called what turned out to be another intense press. I posted the video below at the time and am posting it again now. With its view of the Mountains O’ Fraud committed under the averted gaze of Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, this press conference created shock waves.
Mr. Thompson announced charges against six defendants in cases arising from fraud on Minnesota’s “waivered” Medicaid programs. He warned us that the best is yet to come, so to speak, his team continues to investigate frauds that he estimates may total half of the $18 billion spent on these programs since 2018.
At the end of the press conference I asked Mr. Thompson if the ethnic cast of perpetrators in the uncharged cases matches that of the charged cases — i.e., overwhelmingly Somali. His answer was “Generaally, yes.” Mr. Thompson is an ucommonly straightforward and candid public official.
The United States Attorney posted a detailed press release related to the press conference. Two of the defendants against whom charges were announced are implicated in a case of “fraud tourism”:
[Anthony Waddell] Jefferson and [Lester] Brown devised and carried out a scheme to defraud Minnesota’s Housing Stability Services Program. Jefferson and Brown live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Jefferson and Brown heard that Minnesota’s HSS Program was a good opportunity to make money. Jefferson, Brown, and three of their associates decided to become Minnesota HSS Providers, despite living on the other side of the country and having no network in or connections to Minnesota or its communities. Ultimately, their sole connection to Minnesota was their fraudulent participation in the Housing Stabilization Services Program.
Word that the getting was good reached all the way to Philadelphia, but supposedly not to the offices of Walz or Ellison in St. Paul. What a complete and utter farce.
In the package of documents supplied to us at this briefing, by far the most important was an unsealed search warrant executed today in one of the cases under investigation. The suspected fraud in this case involved Minnesota’s Integrated Community Supports Medicaid program.
The ICS program has seen explosive growth over the five years since it began in 2021. After paying out a total of approximately $4.6 million in 2021, the program has grown to cost more than $170 million in 2024. In all, claims data shows that the Medicaid system has paid out more than $400 million for ICS services since 2021. This follows the model of the fraud uncovered so far in Minnesota’s waivered Medicaid programs.
See the numbers involved in programs under investigation as set forth in section III. of the affidavit underlying the search warrant. As I pointed out at the time, the prosecutors were sending a message.
Ultimate Home Health Services search warrant by Scott Johnson
