Inside the Somali fraud ring that turned money for hungry children in Minnesota into luxury empires

Minnesota once prided itself on its Scandinavian-style safety net – high taxes, generous benefits and a shared belief that no child should ever go hungry.

But that image lies in ruins after a billion-dollar fraud spree that siphoned taxpayer money away from the needy and poured it straight into luxury mansions, high-end cars, overseas real estate and designer lifestyles.

What authorities first hoped was a one-off pandemic scam has now been exposed as something far bigger – and far uglier.

Federal prosecutors say that over the past five years, scores of scammers – many operating inside Minnesota’s Somali diaspora – stole more than $1 billion intended for feeding children, helping homeless families and providing autism therapy.

Instead, the money bankrolled G-Wagons, Teslas, Porsches, lakefront homes, Dubai shopping sprees and beachside resorts abroad.

Minnesotans are livid - and scared. Because this wasn’t a small-time hustle – it was a full-scale hijacking of the state’s famously trusting, famously generous social-services machine.

For decades, Minnesota welcomed immigrants, and poured taxes into the public good. The state drew tens of thousands of Somali refugees fleeing civil war. Most built families, careers and political influence.

But investigators say a small number saw something else: an open-tap of easy money.

aol.com / Reuters
⁠Christian Martinez and ‌Ismail Shakil
editing ‌by Costas Pitas)
Mon, Dec 1, 2025

US Treasury investigating tax fraud funding Somali terrorists

The U.S. Treasury Department ‌is investigating allegations that tax dollars ‌from Minnesota may have been diverted to the Al-Shabaab militant group in Somalia, ⁠Treasury Secretary ‌Scott Bessent said on Monday.

Bessent announced the investigation ‍on X days after U.S. President Donald Trump called Minnesota a “hub of fraudulent ‌money laundering activity” under Democratic Governor Tim Walz, an apparent response to unverified media reports shared by several ⁠Republican lawmakers that Al-Shabaab had benefited from fraud committed in Minnesota. Walz’s office did ‍not ⁠immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Treasury Secretary launches probe into Minnesota tax dollars allegedly funding Al-Shabaab terrorists. Bessent on Monday launched a federal probe into claims that Minnesota tax dollars were siphoned to the terrorist group Al-Shabaab under the Biden administration and Governor Tim Walz – an allegation he said demands urgent scrutiny. “At my direction, @USTreasury is investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab,” Bessent posted on X. “Thanks to the leadership of @POTUS @realDonaldTrump, we are acting fast to ensure Americans’ taxes are not funding acts of global terror.

“We will share our findings as our investigation continues,” he added. Walz’s office told Fox News Digital that Walz said last week that should a connection be found between Minnesota tax dollars and Al-Shabaab, he welcomed an investigation.

Last month, an investigation conducted by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo of the Manhattan Institute uncovered a web of fraud involving Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program, Feeding Our Future and other organizations in a bombshell report.Thorpe and Rufo noted that, in many cases, members of Minnesota’s Somali community were perpetrators of fraud. They added that federal counterterrorism sources confirmed that millions of dollars in stolen funds were sent back to Somalia, which is how Al-Shabaab got the cash.

The alleged funneling of taxpayer dollars happened under Tim Walz and the Biden administration’s leadership, Scott Bessent said. Thorpe and Rufo sought to answer a bigger question when looking into the schemes: “Where did the money go?” As it turned out, the Somali fraud rings sent money transfers from Minnesota to Somalia and, according to reports, approximately 40% of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad. Thorpe and Rufo state that in 2023, the Somali diaspora sent $1.7 billion to the country, which was higher than the Somali government’s budget that same year.

Thorpe and Rufo discovered that the funds were being funneled to Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked terror organization. Multiple law enforcement sources informed the duo that Minnesota’s Somali community sent millions of dollars through a network of money traders known as “hawalas” that wound up in the hands of the terror group.

pic Al-Shabaab hideout in Somalia The Somali National Army escorts members of the press to hideouts used by the terrorist group al-Shabaab in the Sabiid-Aanole areas, Somalia on June 23, 2025.

Glenn Kerns, a retired Seattle Police Department detective who spent 14 years on a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, told Thorpe and Rufo that the Somalis ran a complex money network and were routing cash on commercial flights from the Seattle airport to the hawala networks in Somalia. “We had sources going into the hawalas to send money. I went down to [Minnesota] and pulled all of their records and, well s-—, all these Somalis sending out money are on DHS benefits,” Kerns told Thorpe and Rufo. A confidential source told Thorpe and Rufo that “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”

“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,” a former official who worked on the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force told Thorpe and Rufo.

Fox News Digital’s Rachel Wolf contributed to this report.

Minneapolis judge sparks fury; overturns taxpayer $7.2m fraud
conviction, as Somalis ‘scam Minnesota out of $1 BILLION’
Daily Mail UK ^ | December 1, 2025 | Emma Richter
FR Posted on 12/2/2025, 1:45:15 AM by Morgana

A judge in Minneapolis has sparked rage after she decided to overturn a taxpayer fraud conviction that saw a husband and wife go down for robbing $7.2 million from people. Abdifatah Yusuf, 44, was found guilty of robbing innocent taxpayers through a home healthcare care company called Promise Health in August. A jury found that he and his wife, Lul Ahmed, ran a deceitful Medicaid fraud scheme out of a mailbox at the so-called medical company and used the money for ‘lavish’ shopping sprees, including trips to name brand and designer stores like Coach, Canada Goose, Nike, Michael Kors, and to purchase high end cars, according to prosecutors.

But in a shocking twist of events, and months after Yusuf was found responsible for directing the massive scam, Judge Sarah West decided last week that the jury was all wrong and he should be let off the hook.

She defended her choice by stating that the case ‘relied heavily on circumstantial evidence’ and that the state of Minnesota did not rule out other potential ‘reasonable inferences.’ Her decision to overturn the case, which is extremely rare especially in criminal cases, has ignited a fire storm not just for the general public but for the jurors who sealed his fate.

‘I am shocked. I’m shocked based off of all of the evidence that was presented to us and the obvious guilt that we saw based off of the said evidence,’ jury foreperson Ben Walfoort told KARE 11 News. ‘It was not a difficult decision whatsoever. The deliberation took probably four hours at most. Based off of the state’s evidence that was presented, it was beyond a reasonable doubt,’ he added. (Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...

lhan Omar Brags About Advancing a Somalia First Agenda in Congress

Feb 5, 2024 COMMENTARY BY
Mike Gonzakez, Angeles T. Arredondo
E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Omar appears not just to put her Somali ethnicity first but...sees her job in Congress as representing the interests of the east African country and its government. “While I am in Congress, no one will take Somalia’s sea,” read a translation that she retweeted.n Omar, who accuses Americans who support Israel’s right to exist of “divided loyalty,” seems to have forgotten her job is to look after American interests.

America’s porous southern border, a growing crisis that has existed since Joe Biden became president and acted on his campaign call for foreign nationals to “surge to the border.” A question Americans should be asking is: How many of them will be like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)? The U.S. granted Omar and her family refugee status from a Kenyan refugee camp in 1995 after they had fled the horrors of civil war in their native Somalia. In 2000, the U.S. granted her naturalization, and she took the oath to become an American citizen. Within less than two decades, she was elected to represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District.

As is our wont today, instead of commenting on her readiness for the job, let alone vetting her, the media lionized Omar as a woman of many firsts—the first woman of color to represent Minnesota, the first Somalian-American in Congress, and the first of two Muslims, among others. This is how America is constituted today. Because all of life is seen through the prism of an epic struggle between categories of the oppressed and their oppressors, diversity becomes a goal in itself. In fact, it is an a priori good, trumping considerations of merit, character, and ethics.

>>> Democrats Shouldn’t Be Surprised by Their Left Flank’s Radicalism

Multiculturalism has become our society’s goal while extolling Americanness is frowned upon. Focusing on America’s interests is seen as passe, even for those elected to do exactly that. It should hardly surprise us, then, that, according to comments that have seen the light of day this week, Omar appears not just to put her Somali ethnicity first but to think of herself as a Somali—that is, a citizen of Somalia—and sees her job in Congress as representing the interests of the east African country and its government.

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