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Posted on 12/02/2025 1:29:12 AM PST by Morgana
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
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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.
Minnesotans are livid - and scared.
Because this wasn’t a small-time hustle – it was a full-scale Somali 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. They capitalized on political influence.
Investigators say a number of crooked Somalis saw ......an open-tap of easy money.......billions of tax dollars.
Ilhan Omar’s Immigration Controversy:
A controversy involved a video where Omar advised undocumented immigrants on their legal rights when interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, specifically their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
This was criticized as “advising illegal Somalis how to avoid ICE,” leading to calls for her deportation or removal from committees.
Political Context: Allegations and calls for her removal are often circulated by critics frequently tied to broader political debates about immigration and the Somali community in Minnesota.
Fact-checking organizations have often found that claims against her involve “faulty translations.” OMAR: It’s “xenophobic and racist” to ask about Somali Fraud ...
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 ...
And to think of all the incredible contributions Somalis have made to our country….(rolling eyes here).
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.
snip
Minnesota deserves them.
Liberals are such suckers.
Thanks for posting. WOW. HOORAY Thorpe, Rufo, Bessent, President Trump and federal prosecutors. Tampon Tim’s government of the Somalians, for the Somalians...
Are all of these government officials in Minnesota that corrupt? No whistleblowers? Are they all getting kickbacks? What a mess!
Are all of these government officials in Minnesota that corrupt?
Yes.
Egalitarianism is a great lie.
We are not even born totally equal (by law sure) then whatever equality we inherit is quickly imbalanced by wealth, tradition, culture, upbringing etc
I always remember this woman that used to post on YouTube, she was very liberal and married to an African. But they were practical and she used to say NO SOMALIS, her husband said they are some of the worst people in all Africa, generally. That the rest of Africa is even wary of them.
PS
No I’m not interested in hearing from some Freepers with a Somali babe you got on a MOB site how wrong I am and how perfect they are. Somalia ranks near bottom in every measure and my opinion is much of it is due to the people.
I think you’re if anything understating the case. Why is Somalia the worst sh..hole on a continent that consists mainly of sh..holes? Because of the people who live there. Their culture is based on theft fraud and extortion. Picking up a couple of hundred thousand and dumping them in Minnesota didn’t suddenly instill the American work ethic in them it simply gave them a fresh naive set of marks to swindle. I’m equally sure though I don’t have legal proof that low level fraud eg claiming nonexistent children, getting phony autism diagnoses, claiming poverty where off the books income is present etc is pervasive in Mogadishu in the Midwest. They see nothing wrong with this. It’s how they were raised.
All this started with Pops Bush deciding we needed to be the gendarmes for the UN in Somalia, some stuff about getting food to the rebels, whomever they were in globalist talk. We lost 18 of our bravest and for what? An onrush into the US of hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees. Bush’s idiot son and Draft Dodger Cheney would replicate this in multiples with the onrush of 200,000 Afghan refugees.
Yet they’ll vote Democrat.
Liberals are stuck on stupid.
They destroy the cities where they live, run away, and then destroy the new places where they lived.
We need to INVESTIGATE AND DEPORT anyone who came here and sucked our system dry of money and resources.
DEPORT THEM BY THE TENS OF THOUSANDS. By the MILLIONS.
Or they will destroy our nation.
It’s not the dirt.
It’s the people.
Look at their countries. That’s where America will be in 50-100 years.
You are probably correct.
“No whistleblowers?”
There are 400 whistleblowers.
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