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https://wng.org › roundups › whats-the-deal-with-somali-fraud-in-minnesota-1764976022
What's up with the Somali fraud in Minnesota? | WORLD
Dec 8, 2025Somalis in Minnesota had stolen billions of dollars, the president claimed, adding that such people shouldn't even be in the United States. Earlier in November, Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe at City Journal released a report with the provocative headline "The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer."
what’s up with the Somali fraud in Minnesota?
National attention turns to a problem the state has reckoned with for years
The day before Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump declared that “hundreds of thousands of Somalians” were “ripping off our country.” Somalis in Minnesota had stolen billions of dollars, the president claimed, adding that such people shouldn’t even be in the United States.
Earlier in November, Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe at City Journal released a report with the provocative headline “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer.” The article asserted that some of the funds that individuals of Somali ethnicity had defrauded from Minnesota’s welfare programs wound up thousands of miles away in the hands of an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia.
And on Nov. 29, an X account claiming to represent nearly 500 employees of Minnesota’s government issued a statement asserting that large-scale fraud had taken place in the state and that Gov. Tim Walz was responsible for letting it happen.
The remarks by Trump and others about fraud in Minnesota have brought attention to an issue locals have raised concerns about for years.
What are the fraud claims all about?
The U.S. Department of Justice last month announced that it had charged the 78th person in connection with a scheme to defraud a COVID-era Minnesota welfare program called Feeding Our Future. The DOJ alleged that the latest defendant, Abdirashid Bixi Dool, had received more than $1 million in funds from the state of Minnesota to run a food assistance program for children. But Dool and a co-conspirator spent most of that money on enriching themselves and their families, the DOJ said. Roughly $250 million was stolen from the program altogether, Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor reported in 2024.
“It’s the simplest scam you can possibly conceive of. The fraudsters were just sending invoices and based on services that were not rendered, products that were not delivered, and they were collecting money from the state, pretty much no questions asked,” said Bill Glahn, a senior fellow at Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank. “They were basically delivering meals to children—poor, low-income children—but when they sent the invoices, they were adding an extra zero so they would serve one meal and they would bill for 10.”
But Feeding Our Future was only one of the Minnesota programs that have seen a fraud problem in the past few years.
The Department of Justice in September alleged that, as part of a $14 million enterprise milking a Minnesota autism assistance program, fraud ringleaders paid kickbacks to Somali parents in return for permission to register their children as autistic. The leaders then received payments from the state for supposedly providing therapy services. Some of the parents left the defendant’s fraud program so they could register their children with other fraudulent autism assistance programs that offered higher kickbacks, the DOJ claimed.
And earlier this year, federal prosecutors charged eight individuals with defrauding a housing stabilization program in the state. The defendants made millions of dollars off the program, causing the program’s budget to balloon significantly.
Were Somalis mainly responsible for the fraud?
Yes. Nearly all of the defendants in the Feeding Our Future and other welfare fraud schemes were Somali, according to Kayseh Magan, a Somali-American former investigator in the Medicaid Fraud Division of the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, and according to prosecutors.
Nearly 80,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, and most of them are naturalized U.S. citizens. But Glahn cautions against painting with too broad of a brush: He points out that even if the number of Somali fraudsters in question substantially exceeds the current number of arrests, it would still represent only a tiny fraction of the state’s overall Somali American population.
“Were the majority of the people involved in these fraud scams of Somali ethnicity? Yes,” noted Glahn. “Those are fairly, I would think at this point, non-controversial facts. But people try to turn them into value judgments, you know? We have a Somali fraud problem in Minnesota. Do we have a Somali problem in Minnesota? I don’t think so.”
So why is this fraud centered on Somalis?
Magan, writing for the Minnesota Reformer, discussed how Somali culture in many ways can serve as a force multiplier for fraudsters.
Many Somalis are the sole providers for relatives back in Somalia who rely on remittances from their American-earned dollars, Magan explained. But the Minnesota bureaucracy provided an easy way to fraudulently boost how much they sent home. “The systems intended to catch fraud are mostly designed to root out recipient fraud,” Magan wrote. “It is exceedingly difficult to guard against providers who collude with recipients, which is the type of fraud most pervasive in the Somali community.”
And providers can easily collude with recipients because Somalis in Minnesota—like many immigration communities—are tight-knit and trusting.
“This creates a vast opening for fraudsters,” Magan wrote. “The conduit for fraud in publicly funded programs are the recipients, who require services. Somali recipients face language and cultural barriers. In an unfamiliar country, they lean heavily on other Somalis. Somali providers are in a position of trust, and some have taken advantage.”
Has money really gone to terrorists?
The Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank focusing on international policy, estimated earlier this year that in 2023, Somalis around the world sent back home approximately $1.7 billion.
“Probably the vast majority of what came from Minnesota was from legitimate people sending money back home that they earned,” Glahn said. But some of the money flowing from Minnesota to Somalia did come from fraud, he added.
When Somalis in Minnesota send money back to Somalia, the terror group al-Shabaab—which is the default authority in parts of the country—takes a cut.
“There’s no evidence that these fraudsters were trying to support al-Shabaab,” Glahn said. “But these folks are fairly sophisticated adults and you know they were probably aware on the front end, ‘I’m going to send money back to my relatives, and yeah, some of it’s going to get siphoned off along the way.’”
Magan, writing again for the Minnesota Reformer, argued the allegations about fraud money making its way into the war chests of terrorists are overblown.
“The story, especially in all its sensationalism, appears to be little more than an effort by the right-wing propaganda machine to whip up hatred against Somali Americans,” he wrote. “If federal prosecutors had any inkling that the ill-gotten gains were going to a terrorist organization, don’t you think they’d have brought charges?”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that he’d ordered an investigation into whether Minnesotans’ taxpayer dollars got into the hands of terrorists. He promised the agency would share its findings as the investigation continued.
Has the government of Minnesota turned a blind eye to this?
Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor Judy Randall published a report last year that found the Minnesota Department of Education ignored early warning signs of fraud in the Feeding Our Future program.
The program faced racial discrimination lawsuits when the department threatened to withhold funding from Somali-run programs that seemed likely to have a fraud problem. The department then chose to fund the programs rather than face the public relations fiasco that the lawsuits threatened. Randall’s report noted that the department also failed to provide proper oversight of the program.
But an X account claiming to represent the voices of former Minnesota government employees said last month that many government workers did know about the fraud, raised concerns about it, and were told to keep quiet. The social media post, which has been viewed about 40 million times, blamed Walz’s administration for shutting down reports about widespread fraud.
Walz’s office did not respond to WORLD’s request for comment about those accusations. In September, Walz issued an executive order that his office claimed ordered state government agencies to take stronger action against fraud.
How can Minnesota prevent similar instances of fraud in the future?
State agencies need to do a better job of talking to each other about when they notice fraud, Glahn said. If an individual commits fraud while serving as a provider for one state program, the government should prevent that person from serving as a provider in all other programs run by the state, he said. The state also needs to beef up its internal auditing at the state government level, he said.
State lawmakers proposed a bill during the Minnesota Legislature’s last session that would have created a state inspector general’s office to conduct enterprise-wide audits of multiple agencies to better prevent multi-agency fraud.
Minnesota senators passed it by a vote of 60-7 in May. “You almost never get anything through our evenly divided state Senate on a lopsided vote like that,” Glahn said.
But the bill didn’t make it to the floor of the House.
“Maybe it’ll come back next year with all this attention to fraud,” Glahn said.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/they-have-no-idea-what-they-have-done-terrorist-groups-in-africa-now-vowing-revenge-on-us-after-suleimani-killing/
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‘They have no idea what they have done’: Terrorist groups in Africa now vowing revenge on US after Suleimani killing
Baghdad,Iraq,January 3,2020,thousands of Iraq people participating in funeral program of Iranian general Qasim Suleiman.
Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story January 11, 2020
President Donald Trump’s decision to eliminate Iranian general Qassim Suleimani could have far-reaching consequences that are difficult to appreciate in the short term. And one example is already being seen in Africa.
According to The Daily Beast, the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), a West African group of Shi’a converts formed in the wake of the Iranian revolution of 1979, has sworn vengeance against the United States for the assassination.
IMN issued a statement saying that Suleimani was an “ardent anti-imperialist who gave the United States of America and their stooges in the region sleepless nights,” and his mission against America would be “accomplished by his brothers, children, and students from resistance men and mujahideen from all the peoples of the world that reject humiliation and submission to the tyrants of this century.”
“America will pay for the killing of Soleimani,” said Ibrahim Hussien, an IMN supporter who participated in an anti-America protest in Nigeria’s capital city of Abjua on Monday. “They have no idea what they have done.”
This comes just after Somalia’s al-Shabab group killed an American serviceman and two contractors at a military installation in Northern Kenya. This attack, part of the group’s “Al-Quds Will Never Be Judaized” campaign, came just two days after the Suleimani killing. There is no clear evidence that al-Shababis linked to Iran, but Suleimani has reportedly sent operatives to the region in the past.
Iran has historically shied away from engaging foreign rivals directly, instead opting to use proxy forces. Indeed, Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. Majid Takht-Ravanchi told CNN Friday that, “We can speak on behalf of the Iranian government, we are not responsible for the actions that others might take” — a clear signal that they will not condemn violence committed against Americans by these proxies.
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https://reason.com/2018/01/03/war-on-terror-minnesota-somali-immigrant/
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When Abdirahman Kahin landed in the United States in 1997, he only knew a handful of people. He pooled his money with a few other Somali refugees who landed the same day in Atlanta. They rented a van, pointed the steering wheel north and headed for Minnesota, a strange land nothing like their former home.
Twenty years after fleeing war and famine in Somalia, Kahin is peacefully feeding hundreds of Minnesotans every day. He's the owner of The Afro Deli, a successful restaurant that he opened in 2010 after more than a decade of working low-paying jobs. He serves Somali food, but made "Minnesota spicy" as a concession to the stereotypically Nordic tastes of many Midwesterners. The restaurant, Kahin says, is a bridge between cultures.
But his big smiles and delicious food belie the difficulties that Kahin and others like him have faced in coming to America and building a life here. He has a classic immigrant success story, one that has been replicated for centuries as waves of foreigners seek a better life. But he worries that America is now making it harder than ever for others to follow in his footsteps.
Somali refugees like Kahin have faced many of the same difficulties as other immigrant groups coming to America. They've had to learn a new language, find work, and build new social connections. They've faced racism and intolerance from those who came here before them. They've been on the outside of the political order, living in a democracy without having a voice in it.
Over time, like Kahin, they have moved closer to the inside. The first Somali-American state legislator was elected in Minnesota last year. But even as these immigrants settle in, the community finds itself facing a new set of challenges.
Minnesota's Somali communities have become domestic fronts in the war on terror. Federal law enforcement agencies have singled out Somali Muslims in the Twin Cities for a special surveillance program intended to curb terrorism since 2011. But there is little evidence that this program has been successful.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has instructed the federal government to step up the scrutiny of immigrants and refugees from a number of Muslim-majority countries. The Trump administration's so-called "travel ban" has gone through various iterations since January, but every version has included Somalia on the list of places from which visitors will be uniformly labeled as threats. The administration has also taken steps to reduce the number of refugees allowed into America. Only 45,000 will be accepted next year, down from the previous floor of 67,000 set by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
Against this national political backdrop, the Somali community in Minnesota has become a microcosm for the national debate over immigration, refugee resettlement, and national security. Under President Trump, the war on terror and the fight over immigration have become the same thing.
"THE GOAL IS TO BUILD NEIGHBORHOODS FROM WITHIN."
Bounded by a pair of interstates and tucked into a curve of the Mississippi River on the east side of Minneapolis, the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood has long been a landing point for foreigners. The area was first settled in the 1890s by Germans and Swedes who came looking for work in the city's legendary flour mills. Vietnamese and South Asian immigrants reshaped the community during the 1970s, when the Riverside Plaza, a set of brutalist concrete apartment buildings that serve as a centerpiece for the neighborhood, was built.
In 1993, the United States began accepting refugees from Somalia after that country's government collapsed amid a regional civil war and famine. Many of the displaced resettled in Minneapolis. With a small community established there, others followed. Today, the Twin Cities are home to the largest Somali diaspora anywhere in the world outside of Africa.
Thousands more refugees have followed a similar path in the 20 years since. In 2015, the most recent year for which complete data is available, over 8,800 Somali refugees were resettled in the United States, with more taking up residence in Minnesota than anywhere else. Overall, more than 30,000 Somalis live in the state, according to U.S. Census data. The majority are in Minneapolis, but sizable communities have also been established in places like St. Cloud and Mankato.
Kahin arrived in Cedar-Riverside in 1997 after making the cross-country drive from Atlanta. He was just 20 years old. After struggling to find work, he landed a job with a video production company and eventually ran his own video business, filming weddings and other events. He also took classes at St. Thomas University's business school in downtown Minneapolis, and eventually earned his MBA.
Eventually, he entered the restaurant industry. His first venture was a failure, but The Afro Deli found success when he opened it in 2010 on the main drag of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, an area peppered with small, dimly lit bars, coffee shops, and independent theaters—a consequence of the neighborhood's relatively affordable rents and close proximity to the University of Minnesota—along with halal groceries and other Somali-owned service sector businesses.
Just last year, Kahin closed that location and re-opened The Afro Deli on the opposite side of the University of Minnesota campus, along the bustling Washington Avenue corridor. His new place—with menus displayed on shiny HD television screens, an exposed kitchen, and neon booths bathed in natural light from floor-to-ceiling front windows—looks like any other upscale fast food eatery. It fits right in between a Bruegger's Bagels and a generic college town pizzeria.
Photo by Eric Boehm
The place is meant to invite Minnesotans to try Somali food, Kahin says. He sees his restaurant as part of a growing trend of businesses trying to cross that cultural divide.
Kahin's success makes him an outlier compared with most of the Somali community in the Twin Cities. The unemployment rate in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood is nearly 18 percent—four times higher than the unemployment rate across the state of Minnesota as a whole (3.3 percent in October 2017) and further still above as the unemployment rate in Minneapolis (3 percent in September 2017).
Still, the refugee community has a sizeable economic footprint. Statewide, African immigrants earned an estimated collective income of $1.6 billion in 2014 and paid more than $183 million in state taxes, according to a study by Bruce Corrie, an economist at Concordia University in St. Paul. There are more than 2,000 African-owned businesses in the state, Corrie found, and more than 200 of them are owned by Somalis, according to the Minnesota Somali Chamber of Commerce.
Immigrant entrepreneurs face all the same difficulties as anyone else who wants to start a business, but with added cultural barriers. For Somali businesses, one of the biggest problems can be access to credit. "Banks won't even listen to you, no matter how good your idea might be," says Kahin. He opened The Afro Grill with help from a nonprofit, the African Development Center, that uses a mix of public and private funding to help immigrants launch businesses.
Banks might be unwilling to lend to refugees-turned-entrepreneurs, but there's also a religious barrier for many Somalis. Islam forbids borrowing or lending with interest, so devout Muslims have to find alternative banking solutions that aren't always readily available, says Samir Saikali, a grants manager at the St. Paul–based Neighborhood Development Center (NDC), a nonprofit that, like the one that helped Kahin launch his business, helps get promising immigrant businesses off the ground with a mix of private investment and state funds.
In addition to providing direct aid to new business ventures, the NDC runs a special banking program that comports with rules of Islam. To avoid charging interest, these banks will purchase an expensive item—a new freezer for a restaurant, for example, Saikali says—then will turn around and sell it to the business, at a mark-up. The buyer will pay off the expense on an installment plan, called "murabaha" in Arabic. Late fees and other penalties are fixed, not based on a percentage of the purchase price.
The NDC trains roughly 200 aspiring immigrant entrepreneurs each year. About 20 percent of them will eventually start a business in one of the organization's four targeted low-income, high immigrant neighborhoods. "People within a certain neighborhood are those who are best suited to develop their own neighborhoods, economically and culturally," says Saikali. "The goal is to build neighborhoods from within."
"WE DON'T TRUST THE FBI, AND WE HAVE GOOD REASON NOT TO."
In November 2016, during the final days of last year's presidential campaign, Donald Trump made a campaign stop in Minnesota. He spoke on the tarmac at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, where nearly 1,000 Somalis are employed. But he wasn't there to talk about the hard-working immigrants who have boosted the state's economy. He was there to warn about the threat of Somali terrorism.
"Here in Minnesota, you've seen first-hand the problems caused with faulty refugee vetting, with very large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state without your knowledge, without your support or approval," he said, calling the growing Somali community in the Twin Cities "a disaster." Trump argued that Somali immigrants intended to infiltrate American society as part of a terrorist campaign. "Some of them are joining ISIS," the soon-to-be-president said, "and spreading their extremist views all over our country and all over the world."
The U.S. Department of Justice says terrorist organizations in the Middle East have been actively trying to recruit Somalis living in Minnesota since at least 2007, when a group of about 20 Somali men and women left the Twin Cities to join the militant group al-Shabab. One of those men, Shirwa Ahmed, in 2008 drove a truck loaded with explosives into a government building in Puntland, Somalia. It was one of five simultaneous attacks carried out by al-Shabab that killed 28 people.
The Islamic State, a quasi-governmental terrorist group that rose to occupy significant portions of Iraq and Syria during 2014 –15, has similarly tried to recruit Minnesotan Somali-Americans to fight abroad or to conduct terror attacks on U.S. soil. An April 2015 video posted online by an ISIS-affiliated account specifically called for an attack on the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis. In late 2014, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune cited "federal authorities" claiming that one Minnesota man had died in Syria while fighting for ISIS.
In response, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and FBI launched a joint program to work with local police departments in three American cities—Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis—to develop "comprehensive prevention and intervention pilot programs to help counter violent extremism within local communities."