Millions of taxpayer dollars stolen from Minnesota welfare programs have been sent to Somalia, where the funds landed in the hands of the radical Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab.
“The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” The City Journal reported in an investigation published Wednesday.
U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson recently called the amount of fraud in Minnesota a “crisis” in the state.
“What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending,” Thompson said in a press release. “I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away. The fraud must be stopped.”
According to retired police officer Glenn Kerns, members of Minnesota’s Somali community ran a sophisticated welfare fraud network spanning from Seattle to Minneapolis.
The network routed significant amounts of cash on commercial flights from Seattle airport to networks in Somalia though Hawalas, informal tribe-based money-traders.
“I worked on it for five years,” Kerns said. “We had sources going into the hawalas to send money. I went down to [Minnesota] and pulled all of their records and, well shit, all these Somalis sending out money are on DHS benefits. How does that make sense? We had good sources tell us: this is welfare fraud.”
Kerns investigated the hawalas in Somalia receiving the money transfers. Millions in U.S. taxpayer funds were being sent from America to Al-Shabaab terror networks in Somalia, he determined. Whether the money was direct intended for the radical Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab or not, Kerns said, the terror group was taking a cut.
“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 separate official told City Journal.
The Somali diaspora sent $1.7 billion back to Somalia in 2023 alone, more than the Somali government’s entire budget for that year. An estimated 40 percent of households in Somalia receive payments from abroad.
Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program was launched in 2021 with a budget of $2.6 million annually. Instead, the program paid out an eyewatering $21 million its first year. In each subsequent year, the program ballooned to $42 million, then $74 million, then $104 million in 2024. During the first six months of 2025, payouts totaled $61 million. On August 1, Minnesota’s Department of Human Services finally moved to end the welfare program.
“Most of these cases, unlike a lot of Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud cases nationally, aren’t just overbilling,” Thompson said at a press conference. “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 also announced charges in September against a man, Asha Farhan Hassan, for defrauding the state’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program of $14 million through fake diagnoses of autism in children. Hassan was also charged with conspiring in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.
Prosecutors say Hassan and her associates approached Somali families and promised them kickbacks of between $300 to $1,500 a month per child if they enrolled in the state’s autism treatment programs.
Autism claims to Medicaid in Minnesota have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2018, there was $3 million in claims. In 2023, there was $399 million — a 13,200% increase in just five years.
“This is not an isolated scheme,” Thompson said. “From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, 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.”
The Feeding Our Future fraud conspiracy is reportedly the largest COVID-era fraud case in the nation. The nonprofit claimed to distribute meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic but allegedly stole $250 million while providing few or no meals at its locations. Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records, and forged invoices, the suspects claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day to poor children and pocketing the money.
Feeding Our Future was founded in 2016. The organizations that Feeding Our Future sponsored were primarily owned and operated by members of Minnesota’s Somali community, according to former state officials.
In 2019, Feeding Our Future received $3.4 million in federal funding disbursed by the state. After the COVID-19 pandemic began, the organization said it rapidly increased its number of locations. In 2021, Feeding Our Future received nearly $200 million in taxpayer funding.
As of November 2025, out of 77 suspects indicted, more than 50 have pleaded guilty and seven have been found guilty at trial.
Several individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to, or appeared publicly, with Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born representative from Minneapolis.
“As Tim Walz helped create this system and shrugs his shoulders every day when a yet another fraud story is revealed, Minnesotans’ hard-earned tax money is funding terrorists,” Minnesota’s Republican Rep. Pete Stauber said.