This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A new research project is charging that Minnesota state taxpayers are the biggest single source of funding for the Muslim terror network of al-Shabaab.
The research, published in the City-Journal, reveals that an investigation has confirmed what many suspected would happen when "a tribal mindset meets a bleeding-heart bureaucracy."
The state, under Democrat Gov. Tim Walz, who was on board in Kamala Harris' catastrophically failed 2024 presidential bid for her party, already is "drowning" in fraud. "Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots," the report said.
The new, and major, fraud scheme "has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota's sizeable Somali community," the research explained. "Federal counterterrorism 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-Shabaab."
The report noted one source confirmed, "The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer."
"If you were to design a welfare program to facilitate fraud, it would probably look a lot like Minnesota's Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program. The HSS program, the first of its kind in the country, was launched with a noble goal: to help seniors, addicts, the disabled, and the mentally ill secure housing. It was designed with 'low barriers to entry' and 'minimal requirements for reimbursement.' Nonetheless, before the program went live in 2020, officials pegged its annual estimated price tag at $2.6 million," the research charged.
But costs in 2021 alone totaled $21 million, and since then annual totals have been $42 million, $74 million, $104 million.
State officials there noticed the "credible allegations of fraud, and decided to shut it down, and just weeks ago, acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson confirmed criminal fraud indictments against Moktar Hassan Aden, Mustafa Dayib Ali, Khalid Ahmed Dayib, Abdifitah Mohamud Mohamed, Christopher Adesoji Falade, Emmanuel Oluwademilade Falade, Asad Ahmed Adow, and Anwar Ahmed Adow.
Six of those are in the state's Somali community.
"Thompson made clear that this is just the first round of charges for HSS fraud that his office will be prosecuting," the report said.
"Most of these cases, unlike a lot of Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud cases nationally, aren't just overbilling. These are often just purely fictitious companies solely created to defraud the system, and that's unique in the extent to which we have that here in Minnesota," Thompson confirmed.
He said many schemes operate out of rundown offices with perpetrators targeting people out of rehab and putting them on government benefits for services the companies have no intention of providing.
"What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending," Thompson said. "I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away."
Already, there have been 56 people who admitted gjuilt in a $250 million "Feeding Our Future" fraud, the report confirmed.
That purportedly was to provide daycare assistance, but it used "fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and fabricated invoices" to demand reimbursement of nearly $200 million.
"In reality, the money was being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey, and Kenya," the report confirmed.
David Gaither, a former state lawmaker warned that the legacy media, "alongside Minnesota's Democratic establishment, have long turned a blind eye to fraud within the Somali community."
That allows problems to explode in size.
The "fraudsters" even had cultivated appearances with Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minneapolis.
Involved in promoting "Feeding Our Future" have been Omar's deputy district director, a former state senator who ran for Minneapolis mayor, and a senior aide to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
Federal prosecutors revealed that another fraud scheme involved boosting the number of Somali children getting federal aid for autism.
Asha Farhan Hassan, a Somali community member also named in the "Feeding our Future" case, allegedly set up a $14 million scheme using Minnesota's Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program.
"Hassan and her co-conspirators 'approached parents in the Somali community' and recruited their children into autism therapy services. It didn't matter, prosecutors suggested, if a child did not have an autism diagnosis: Hassan would facilitate a fraudulent one," the report confirmed.
In fact, prosecutors charge, "To drive up enrollment, Hassan and her partners paid monthly cash kickback payments to the parents of children who enrolled. These kickback payments ranged from approximately $300 to $1500 per month, per child. The amount of these payments was contingent on the services DHS authorized a child to receive—the higher the authorization amount, the higher the kickback. Often, parents threatened to leave . . . and take their children to other autism centers if they did not get paid higher kickbacks."
The report cited autism program costs in Minnesota: $3 million in 2018, then up to $54 million, $77 million, $183 million, $279 million, and $399 million in 2023.
"These massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network," Thompson charged.
And the report revealed, "At least 28 fraud scandals have surfaced since Walz was elected governor in 2019. Most of the large-scale fraud rings, according to two former FBI officials who spoke with City Journal, have been perpetrated by members of the Somali community."
And where did the money go?
"The Somali fraud rings have sent huge sums in remittances, or money transfers, from Minnesota to Somalia. According to reports, an estimated 40 percent of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad. In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government's budget for that year," City Journal said.
And the report added, "Our investigation reveals, for the first time, that some of this money has been directed to an even more troubling destination: the al-Qaida-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab. According to multiple law-enforcement sources, Minnesota's Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of 'hawalas,' informal clan-based money-traders, that have wound up in the coffers of Al-Shabaab."
Confirmation came through Glenn Kerns, a retired detective who worked on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, who said the Somalis' money network routed huge amounts of cash to hawala networks in Somalia, with one getting $20 million in a single year.
Another investigator, who was cited anonymously, said, "Every scrap of economic activity, in the Twin Cities, in America, throughout Western Europe, anywhere Somalis are concentrated, every cent that is sent back to Somalia benefits Al-Shabaab in some way. For every dollar that is transferred from the Twin Cities back to Somalia, al-Shabaab is . . . taking a cut of it."
The Gateway Pundit lauded the work of reporters Ryan Thorpe and Chris Rufo, explaining, "This is insane."
