Minnesota Fraud Scandal EXPLAINED

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Hi, it’s December 29, 2025, you’re tuned in to Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. Over the Christmas holiday week, among posts about the rigged 2020 election, Jeffrey Epstein, and Nigerian strikes, Trump posted numerous times about fraud in Minnesota, under the leadership of Democratic governor Tim Walz, perpetrated by Somali immigrants, who stole taxpayer money from the state and sent it to the terrorist group al-Shabab. Part of his evidence was in a YouTube video he reposted from a YouTuber named Nick Shirley. Nick Shirley, a 23 year old YouTuber from Utah who calls himself an “independent journalist” and was a guest at Trump’s Antifa roundtable for right wing influencers back in October, posted a video on December 26th called I Exposed Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal. It has gotten 1.4 million views on YouTube and over 100 MILLION views on X in 3 days. It caught Trump’s attention, and received praise from the likes of JD Vance and FBI director Kash Patel. It has spurred on federal and state investigations, and instigated responses from officials across the federal and Minnesota state government. But is this “reporting” accurate? Is there widespread fraud in the state of Minnesota? Is the Somali community to blame? Is Tim Walz to blame? Today we’re breaking down what’s ACTUALLY happening here, in my home state, where I actually live among the dreaded Somali immigrant community here in Minneapolis. We’ll look at Nick Shirley’s video as well as the actual investigative reporting by real journalists. And we’ll discover that many things can be true at the same time, and that nuance and critical thinking are, once again, proving difficult for Trump and his MAGA base who are eating this shit up, hook, line, and sinker.

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In his viral video “exposing” Minnesota’s fraud scandal, Nick Shirley interviews a man named “David”, no last name provided, who has been “doing his own research” to discover Somali fraud in Minnesota which includes numbers on a piece of paper he likes to wave around and visiting child daycare centers upwards of 100 times to see if he can get a look at the children. Before they head out to investigate the fraud, David warns Shirley that “these people are incredibly violent.” Shirley and David go to a childcare center and determine that because they cannot see in and the doors are locked in the middle of the day then that means there is fraud, there couldn’t possibly be children inside this center that two grown men and a cameraman couldn’t just wander into freely. Fraud!

Shirley then points out that the recently redesigned Minnesota flag looks SUSPICIOUSLY like the Somali flag! Because both are blue and have a star. Stars and the color blue are so UNIQUE for flags, you know. The clearest answer is that there was a conspiracy to make the Minnesota flag look like the Somali flag. Not that we had a whole ass contest to pick a new flag, which included a statewide open submission of flag ideas, which received 2123 submissions, including drawings from children and just a photo of Duke, the dog mayor of Cormorant Village. Of those submissions, one was chosen by the flag selection commission and then together with the designer they finalized a flag with a geometric shape on the left that looks like the state of Minnesota, the north star because we are the stars of the north, obviously, and then the color blue because of our lakes. But yeah no it’s a Somali conspiracy.

Then they visited another daycare center, again couldn’t wander in freely, and when a woman answered the door and acted suspicious of them, again, three grown men with a camera trying to get into a daycare center, obviously fraud!! Ignore the fact that this entire community has been fucking terrorized for weeks at this point by masked, unidentified ICE agents targeting them in the streets and in their places of work and in their churches and schools. No no, the only conclusion to be drawn here is that fraud. They then wave David’s papers in front of a few Somali peoples’ faces demanding they explain. Additional reminder that English is likely not their first language for some of the people they are interrogating. But yes their confusion is conclusive proof of FRAUD!! Nick Shirley did peek inside, lil peeping Tom, at this one and did confirm he could see a kid in there but then later pronounced there were no children.

After they were done harassing childcare centers they went to a building with 14 different healthcare centers inside of it. Ignore the fact that it’s a large office building with many offices. Again, most offices turned them away because there were at least three men wandering around with a camera, though at one point it looked like two masked men were also behind them, and later in the video Shirley says that he knew filming this video would be “very dangerous” so he did hire security and then invites viewers to help him fund his security in the future through a company called BlackLine. He tells viewers to donate to BlackLine Guardian Fund, which, according to their website, “exists to extend protection to individuals and institutions facing credible threats but lacking the financial means to secure professional protective services.” So poor Shirley over here can’t afford his own security detail despite having over a million YouTube subscribers and a brand sponsor on this video.

When they did get inside one of the offices they were offered rates for childcare, people were inside working, sitting at desks, doing actual work, but then someone called the cops and they were escorted out. Only explanation? Fraud!!!!

Shirley then explains that they just care about the fraud, it doesn’t make them Islamophobic or racist, if it was a bunch of white people out here we would be having the same conversation. But the reality is no you would not. You wouldn’t. Because multiple times throughout this video, Shirley and his good pal David make sweeping claims about “Somalians.” When one guy in a man on the street interview asked Shirley who owns one of the daycare centers, Shirley says “Somalians.” David says “these people are violent.” The entire video ends with the declaration “It is time to RECLAIM our cities from corruption and illegal fraudsters.” If that daycare centered was owned by white people, Shirley would not have responded “Whites” when asked who owns a place. They would not be taking the alleged fraud of a group of white people and making sweeping statements about all white people. They would not be insinuating or outright stating that this is a problem within the White people community. That white people are really insular and secretive, that any white person in the vicinity must know something and if they pretend they don’t then that’s suspicious. And that we need to reclaim our cities from the white illegal fraudsters. “Reclaim our cities” is exceptionally loaded language and it is meant to play to conservative and MAGA fears of immigrants invading our cities, without saying the quiet part out loud, with just enough plausible deniability to say no no we’re not RACIST!! We just want our cities back!!!

Not only that but this is just bad journalism. In the day of “independent journalists” no name 23 year olds with no training who can pick up a camera and show up anywhere asking outlandish questions no one can answer and putting dramatic music in the background, they can convince a surprising amount of the public that they are doing hard hitting investigative journalism. And listen I also don’t have formal training as a journalist, that’s why I am always very clear with you guys that I am not a journalist, I’m not trying to pawn off my work as investigative journalism, I usually rely on the work of journalists to get my facts and then dig deeper into the headlines to provide more context and my own legal takes as a lawyer. And as a lawyer I can tell you that none of what is shown in that video–David’s pieces of paper with no sourcing provided and video of allegedly empty daycare centers–would be sufficient for probable cause to suspect a crime is being committed. That is not sufficient work to constitute actual investigative journalism. It’s lazy. You show up and you film people, without their consent, to make them uncomfortable, which makes for good TV. You talk to one conspiracy theorist named David while providing no sources or credentials and pawn that off as “proof.” So I wanted to turn to ACTUAL journalists and investigative reporters to find out what’s actually happening. Because there IS fraud happening in Minnesota. Allegedly hundreds of millions of dollars of it. And that’s a problem. It’s a waste of my taxpayer dollars, and it would be great to get that money back and to prevent it from happening in the future.

The problem for Nick Shirley and the type of people who fall for this “investigative journalism” is that two things can be true at the same time, and they really struggle with the cognitive reasoning required for that level of critical thinking. There can be fraud happening. Some of the fraud could be committed by people of Somali origin. And also the Somali community as a whole can be mostly made up of good, law abiding, tax paying people. Just like the white person community. Or the black community. The crimes of individuals do not equate to proclivity for crime in a whole community of people. And when you make sweeping statements to the contrary–these people are dangerous, they are insular and secretive, all fraud is being committed by Somali immigrants–that is, in fact, racism. You are equating an individual or group of individuals to the entire group based on their ethnicity. You are bunching them all together and slapping them with negative labels. That is racism. And it is people like Nick Shirley who are exploiting the racism and increased fear of immigrants to get views and sensationalize real news stories. So here’s the facts, as reported on by actual journalists who did actual investigations and actual lawyers leading these prosecutions.

On December 18th, US Attorney for the district of Minnesota Joe Thompson, a Trump appointee who has spent his career as a US prosecutor going after major cases of fraud, claimed that upwards of $9 billion dollars in federal funds that go towards supporting 14 different Minnesota-run programs may have been stolen as part of numerous multi-layered fraud schemes in the state. This investigation grew out of his previous investigation into the Feeding Our Future fraud that was discovered during COVID. 57 defendants in that case have been convicted of stealing $300 million in COVID relief funds, the largest COVID related fraud scam in the country. The founder of that nonprofit, who was convicted on multiple federal charges, was a white woman named Aimee Bock. And we all know white women are really prone to fraud, our brains can’t really handle business too good so oops sometimes we steal, it’s in our nature. Those 57 total defendants in the Feeding Our Children fraud scheme were receiving payments from clinics meant to serve children with autism, leading to an investigation into those programs, into childcare facilities, into at home health services, and into services meant to provide people with stable housing, which uncovered multi-layered fraud activities that led to the current charges. The general scheme is that the defendants create these companies, provide zero services, and submit claims to Medicaid for those services, then pocket the federal funds they receive from those claims. According to reporting from the Associated Press, ““The magnitude cannot be overstated,” Thompson said. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.”” Of the 92 total defendants who have been charged with participating in these fraud schemes, 82 are Somali Americans.

However, according to actual real investigative reporting from the Star Tribune, quote “While Minnesota is confronting one of the largest social services fraud scandals in its history, a Star Tribune review of court records shows the alleged fraud uncovered to date is closer to $218 million, including $24 million in the recent indictments involving housing and autism services. Programs across the country meant to help Americans weather the COVID-19 pandemic — from the meals program implicated in the Feeding Our Future crisis to the Paycheck Protection Program — were rife with fraud.

Those numbers are widely expected to grow as ongoing state and federal investigations into the state programs continue. In December, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson predicted that prosecutors will ultimately find evidence showing that $9 billion or more has been misappropriated from what he called 14 “high-risk” state programs. He declined to say how long it would take to prosecute at least $1 billion in fraud or provide other details to back up his assertion.”

But, ever in pursuit of pretext for furthering his racist mission to deport the brown immigrants and militarize the blue cities, Trump has latched onto the race of the defendants in these fraud schemes as proof that Minnesota is riddled with Somali fraud and money laundering under the watch of our Democratic governor Tim Walz and the only way to fix it is send in ICE and root out the Somali community and send them back to their garbage country. There are 107,000 Somali immigrants living in Minnesota. And 82 Somali Americans who allegedly committed fraud are being used as an excuse to terrorize all of them.

Trump has ratcheted up the racist rhetoric by sharing false reports that money from these alleged fraud schemes were flowing straight to al-Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliate in Somalia. US Attorney Joe Thompson confirmed at the press conference on the 18th that there is NO evidence that defendants were sending money to or otherwise supporting terrorist organizations. He confirmed a significant portion of the funds were sent abroad, used to purchase real estate in places like Kenya and Turkey. Thompson said, quote “There’s no indication that the defendants that we’ve charged were radicalized or seeking to fund al-Shabab or other terrorist groups.”

Prior to the Nick Shirley video, Governor Tim Walz had increased scrutiny over these federally funded programs, shut down at least one entirely, and hired an independent auditor to scrutinize where payments are going. And so let’s be really clear: fraud is happening in Minnesota related to the misappropriation of federal funds through schemes that make claims for services they are not providing. According to actual investigative reporting from the Minnesota Star Tribute, which has been covering these stories for the last 15 years. As far back as 2009, an auditor report found that the state’s DHS personal care services program was quote “unacceptably vulnerable to fraud and abuse” due to insufficient oversight, including outdated technology and a lack of electronic verification. So the state was on alert, FOR YEARS, LONG before Walz became governor, that state programs were vulnerable to fraud. The first scheme involving Somali defendants occurred in 2015, years before Tim Walz became governor, when three Minneapolis daycare centers were raided and charged with misappropriating upwards of $6 million dollars from the state’s Child Care Assistance Program. Investigators concluded quote “internal controls at the state DHS were “insufficient to effectively prevent, detect, and investigate fraud.”

And the Star Tribune’s reporting does not look good for the state, especially Attorney General Keith Ellison, seen as a progressive AG. Quote “Star Tribune reporters uncovered documents showing that the Education Department and the state Attorney General’s Office failed to act when a whistleblower accused the leader of Feeding Our Future of breaking the law in 2018 and 2019, before more than $200 million was paid to the nonprofit. Instead of opening an investigation, Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office referred the whistleblower to other state and federal agencies.

In late 2022, two months after the first indictments were issued, the Star Tribune revealed that day cares owned by several defendants in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme were still receiving payments from the state. … A Star Tribune review of state and federal records shows that Minnesota officials provided federal authorities with little or no evidence that Feeding Our Future was misappropriating government funds.”

That being said, Walz has been aware of the fraud and has taken some action to improve oversight over state programs, including signing legislation in 2023 to establish an inspector general at the Education Department and increased funding for fraud-detection efforts. And in October of this year, according to the Star Tribune, quote “Walz ordered an outside audit of payments to providers in 14 state programs and announced a new system to review reimbursement claims.” And this summer the state’s DHS began cutting off payments to companies that have a single credible allegation of fraud, which is a major change from past practice of continuing payments while investigators build a case. According to DHS, that has led to provider payment cut offs 485 times this year, though it’s unclear how much of a change that is from previous years.The DHS inspector general has 1300 open cases, according to the Star Tribune.

And of course while there are many Somali people getting indicted in these crimes, there are also many NON-Somali people taking advantage of the state’s shoddy oversight. For example, there is widespread Medicaid fraud among addiction treatment providers in Minnesota which is actively being investigated and does not involve the Somali community.

But of course all of these legitimate investigations and prosecutions of fraudulent activity in Minnesota, which is also happening across the country, along with the fact that we are home to the largest population of Somalis in the country and we have a governor who was on the ticket that ran against Trump in 2024, has made us and, more specifically, our Somali community, a target of Trump’s midnight truth social rants and the right wing misinformation machine that has been spitting out propaganda left and right, tying the fraudsters to al-Shabab despite no evidence, making outlandish claims about the size of the fraud despite no evidence, and generally capitalizing on their base’s growing fear of violent brown immigrants, of growing violent crime that doesn’t exist, reminder that immigrants are less likely than citizens to commit crimes, and of Islamophobia that goes back decades. It’s the perfect storm and Trump is capitalizing on it, as is Nick Shirley and his “investigative reporting.” But the reality, it turns out, requires nuance. Which isn’t as compelling, it doesn’t get the views and the clicks, no matter how creatively and click-baity I title this video, it simply won’t get the 1.4 million views that Nick Shirley’s dramatic investigative reporting does. That’s the reality of the world we live in and the internet we have created as a society. Nuance is lost in the name of clicks.

Because the reality is that people across the country are guilty of defrauding the federal government, Minnesota seems to be a hotbed of fraudulent activity, especially in the wake of the huge Feeding Our Future scandal, a lot of eyes are on Minnesota. The state has been on notice for at least 15 years that state programs are vulnerable to fraud and abuse. Tim Walz inherited that reality and has taken action to try to fix it. But unlike MAGA blowhards who are willing to bend over backwards to argue that Trump is a good person with good intentions to help people, I am not emotionally attached to Democratic politicians. It is not the takedown you think it is to say haha Democrats, Tim Walz failed you. Okay, primary him, then. Give me a better candidate I would happily vote for them over Walz. Bill Clinton’s in the Epstein files? Okay, investigate him, put him in prison. Keith Ellison failed to do his job and investigate widespread fraud? Okay, let’s replace him with someone better. Politicians are tools for the people to get what they want. Period, full stop. And when we forget about that and start hero worshipping them because of political party affiliation or sense of tribalism or for their charisma, we get Trump, or even Obama, sorry. When you take the nuances into account, you see a state system that failed us and the people who have to actually pay for that, other than of course all of us whose tax dollars were stolen, are the people who SHOULD have actually received the services billed for, which is infuriating in a state with rampant housing shortages, a growing unhoused population, and vulnerable populations in need of medical services, autism services, childcare services. These crimes absolutely should be investigated and prosecuted regardless of the race of who did the crimes. I firmly believe in paying taxes to provide these services, and it is the duty of the state to oversee those services. The more we cut taxes, the less oversight they are ABLE to give for lack of resources, the shoddier the technology, the fewer the staff. But then when fraud like this occurs, of course the sentiment of taxpayers is gonna be why would I pay more in taxes when the people handling my tax dollars are incompetent? And so the cycle continues, and more and more services get cut, and vulnerable populations are left in the lurch, and the Somali community gets targeted with hate and ICE raids as a result of racism against them based on what a few Somali people have allegedly done.

It is a mess. It is absolutely worth being enraged about. But instead of having a larger conversation over the oversight role of state governments, over how to improve that oversight, to create regulations and provide funds for that oversight, how to better deliver aid and services to the people who need it most, instead Trump and MAGA are using this entire situation as a means to further their racist anti-immigrant plan. And the fraud will keep happening, and the most vulnerable among us will continue to suffer, and nothing will really change.

Okay so what can we do? First of all, support actual journalists by purchasing subscriptions to news media you trust, or to the substacks of independent journalists whose work appears in major publications, meaning it’s been vetted, and not just on a random YouTube channel they started. If you are in Minnesota, you can have conversations with your state representatives and senators about this, they are far more accessible than federal congressmembers. You can set up a one on one meeting. Call their office and voice your concern about improving DHS oversight while also protecting our Somali community. The good thing about the local level is that you have a lot of agency here, you just need to voice your concern. You don’t even need to be that knowledgeable, though of course informing yourself on the issue can help. As a concerned citizen, you are their constituent, you voted for them, you have a right to access them. Don’t be afraid to exercise that right, even if it’s to ask questions about what they’re doing about all this.

And, as always, I will use this as an opportunity to advocate for being active within your local community, your neighborhood association, your local mutual aid organization, just within your own friends. Help support and protect our immigrant communities. Help support our unhoused neighbors. Look to the hyper-local level, your own street, your own neighborhood, your own district, for ways that you can push for supporting the people who need support the most. We can and should push especially for our state governments to do something about this, but we also must support each other. That is the only way we get through this.

If you’d like to support my work heading into a brand new year of horrors, consider joining here on YouTube by clicking the big join button below, or supporting me over on Patreon, patreon dot com slash Leeja miller, where you get access to all these episodes completely ad free. Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Christopher Cowan, Amber Arwood, Evan Friedley, Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, Anthony Jiles, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about how Trump is attacking trans rights.

Leeja Miller
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