Fraudulent programs that claimed to feed needy children and to support kids with autism in Minnesota stole billions of dollars in recent years, with some of the funding going overseas to Somalia and helping fund the Al-Shabaab Islamist terror group, according to a new report from City Journal, a Manhattan Institute publication.
According to the report, a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future received $250 million in state funding. “Using fake meal counts, doctored attendance records and fabricated invoices, the perpetrators of the fraud ring claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week, to underprivileged children,” the report stated.
“In reality, the money was being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey and Kenya,” it said. It added that several of those connected to Feeding Our Future had connections to or appeared with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a member of the far-left, anti-Israel “Squad” in Congress.
A woman charged in the Feeding Our Future alleged scheme has also been accused of running a $14 million scam that involved fake autism diagnoses for children.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, the accused and her partners “paid monthly cash kickback payments to the parents of children who enrolled,” with kickbacks ranging from $300 to $1,500 monthly per child.
“The amount of these payments was contingent on the services the Minnesota Department of Human Services authorized a child to receive—the higher the authorization amount, the higher the kickback,” the department said. “Often, parents threatened to leave,” it added, “and take their children to other autism centers if they did not get paid higher kickbacks.”
From 2018 to 2023, “the number of autism providers in the state spiked from 41 to 328,” according to City Journal, “with many in the Somali community establishing their own autism treatment centers, citing the need for ‘culturally appropriate programming.’”
“By the time the fraud scheme was exposed, one in 16 Somali 4-year-olds in the state had reportedly been diagnosed with autism—a rate more than triple the state average,” it added.
Per the report, some of the fraudulent gains were sent overseas via Somali money-transfer systems called “hawalas,” which operate in Al-Shabaab-controlled areas.
“According to multiple law-enforcement sources, Minnesota’s Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of ‘hawalas,’ informal clan-based money-traders, that have wound up in the coffers of Al-Shabaab,” per the report.
“Welfare fraud is likely to become a major issue in Minnesota’s 2026 elections. Gov. Tim Walz, now seeking a third term, has presided over a litany of scandals and faces Republican Kristin Robbins, who has made fraud prevention central to her campaign,” it states.
“Minnesotans will have to confront the uncomfortable but unavoidable reality: members of the Somali community have played a central role in the massive fraud now engulfing the North Star State,” it added.
