It has been a difficult few days on social media since Nick Shirley’s video was posted documenting his visits to Somali-run daycare centers in Minneapolis which exposed the obvious fraud many of them are almost certain to be.
NEW Happy New Year: Trump Pausing Child Care Payments to All States, Not Just MN, Pending Records Reviews
But among the most egregious instances of outright fabrications have come from conservative “social media influencers” who are using the Minnesota fraud schemes to attack the performance of DOJ under the stewardship of Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Before I go into a discussion of what DOJ is currently doing with regard to welfare and health program fraud schemes, I want to lay out FACTS in a timeline about when the fraud is alleged to have begun, when the investigation started, what has been accomplished so far, and what is happening today.
- January 20, 2022: The investigation first broke into the open when teams of federal agents conducted search warrants at multiple locations in the Minneapolis Somali community. Because an investigation is in place for some time before search warrants are used, it is almost certain that the investigation started in 2021.
- May 20, 2022: A criminal complaint alleging passport fraud is filed against a target in the FOF investigation. The defendant, Abdiaziz Farah had his passport confiscated during the January search. He applied for a new passport by making the claim under penalty of perjury that he had lost his passport when applying for a replacement on March 22, 2022. Investigators had learned that Farah had twice booked one-way flights from Minneapolis to Kenya in March 2022, but did not board either flight. Farah was later indicted on a single count of passport fraud on June 21, 2022, in Case No. 22-cr-124.
- September 13, 2022: A superseding indictment is returned in Case No. 22-cr-124, charging 43 counts of conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering against Farah and 7 other co-defendants. All the charges involved the FOF fraud. The indictment was sealed after it was returned, and it was unsealed on September 22 as noted next.
- On September 22, 2022, the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota announced that 47 individuals were charged across six different Indictments and three Informations. Indictments are numbered sequentially each year, with the first Indictment being “22-cr-0001” in 2022. Five of the indictments were numbered 22-cr-222 through 22-cr-226 in sequential order. That means those 5 indictments were obtained on the same day, one after another. As noted above, in Case No. 22-cr-124 a superseding indictment was returned by a grand jury on September 13. Case No. 22-cr-222 charged 3 defendants. Case No. 22-cr-223 charged 14 defendants, including Aimee Bock who had formed FOF in 2018, and orchestrated the fraud as I explained in my earlier article linked above. Case No. 22-cr-224 charged 8 defendants. Case No. 22-cr-225 charged 6 defendants. Case No. 22-cr-226 charged 5 defendants. Three additional defendants were charged individually in three different Informations. That means they had agreed to plead guilty before they were charged, and waived indictment. These three were only charged with money laundering — meaning they were not involved in the fraudulent acts themselves.
- March 13, 2023: Ten additional defendants were charged, with four being added to the 22-cr-226 case, three being charged separately in three new indictments, 23-cr-80 through 82, and three being charged by way of Informations.
- February 5, 2024: Ten additional defendants were charged in two new indictments.
Those are all the defendants charged by the Biden DOJ — 67 total — between September 2022 and February 2024. Every case was related to the “Feed Our Future” fraud scheme involving a childhood nutrition program funded by the Dept. of Agriculture.
- April 22, 2024: Jury trial begins for 7 defendants in the Farah case, 22-cr-124, the first case filed in May 2022 starting with just a passport fraud charge, but then adding 43 counts of fraud and money laundering with 7 new co-defendants in September 2022.
- June 7, 2024: Guilty verdicts returned as to 5 defendants, but 2 defendants are acquitted on all charges. A DOJ press release says those convictions brought to 23 the number of individuals either found guilty or who pled guilty.
There were numerous guilty pleas between September 2022 and June 2024. The only other trial, in March 2025, involved only 2 of the original 14 defendants charged in one of the five original cases listed above, with the remaining defendants all pleading guilty prior to trial. All other dispositions have been by guilty plea.
- May 29, 2025: More than 4 months into Trump Administration, 1 defendant is charged as part of the FOF fraud, having received $1.7 million in payments, and still demanding another $700,000.
- June 6, 2025: One defendant is charged with receiving $1.4 million for more than 600,000 non-existent meals for children served at two locations from Feb. to June 2021 — 1500 per day, seven days a week.
- August 5, 2025: One defendant is charged with receiving $2.7 million in 2021 and 2022 for non-existent meals for children served at two locations.
- Sept. 3, 2025: One Kenyan national is charged with money laundering in helping Farah, referenced above, to purchase an apartment complex Kenya with proceeds from the FOF fraud scheme.
- September 18, 2025: Eight defendants are charged in four different indictments involving the “Housing Stability Services Program” fraud scheme. Minnesota was the first state to provide services using Medicaid funds to assist disabled, mental illness sufferers, and substance abusers with obtaining “stable” housing. The four cases together involved an alleged $8.4 million in fraud losses by Medicaid.
- Sept. 24, 2025: One defendant is the first person indicted in the “Autism Treatment” fraud scheme, alleged to have received $14 million in Medicaid funds for fraudulent treatments. She was previously charged in the FOF fraud scheme and alleged to have served $465,000 worth of meals at her treatment center.
- November 20, 2025: One defendant is charged with receiving $1 million for non-existent meals for $300,000 children at two locations.
- November 24, 2025: One defendant is charged with receiving $1.1 million for non-existent meals to 40,000 children a week at two different sites over an unspecified period of time.
- December 18, 2025: One defendant is charged with receiving $6 million in the Autism treatment fraud scheme.
- December 18, 2025: Five defendants are charged in three indictments involving the Housing stability fraud scheme. The combined total received by the 5 from Medicaid funds as alleged in the three indictments is $5.65 million.
- December 18, 2025: The U.S. Attorney announces searches were conducted in connection with an investigation of a fraud scheme involving Minnesota’s “Integrated Community Supports” program funded by Medicaid. The program is intended to help people live more independently in the community — as opposed to an institutionalized setting — with daily one-on-one help with health, safety, and household tasks… Providers can bill up to 24 hours per day for services.” The program began in 2021, with costs totaling $4.6 million for that year. In 2024 the cost of services billed to Minnesota was $170 million, and nearly $180 million through Sept. 2025 alone. More than $475 million total over the first 5 years. No indictments yet announced.
The total loss in the FOF fraud scheme is estimated to be only $250 million.
Remember, the Biden DOJ last charged anyone in the FOF fraud scheme on Feb. 5, 2024. No additional charges over the final 11 months prior to Trump taking office, and it had no investigations into any other fraud schemes.
Working almost from scratch, the Trump/Bondi DOJ — beginning in May 2025 — has now charged 21 additional defendants in less than 7 months, and expanded the investigation into Autism treatment, housing assistance, and the Integrated Community Supports services.
READ MORE: Feds Now Looking at ‘Feeding Our Future’ Org. for Possible Fraud – Is MN Gov. Walz Implicated?
Catherine Herridge posted on X Wednesday that Dir. Kash Patel said the FBI has 16 investigations open into 32 healthcare and homecare providers. This is a joint effort with HHS OIG’s Medicaid Fraud Unit, IRS, and Postal Inspectors. The HHS OIG unit is particularly noteworthy since their primary responsibilities are Medicare and Medicaid fraud investigations.
At a 35-minute televised press conference on December 18, 2025, the Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota said his office has investigations looking into 14 different programs funded by Medicaid and operated by the Minnesota state government.
“The fraud is not isolated. It is not small. The magnitude cannot be overstated…. [It] is not a handful of bad actors…. It is a staggering industrial scale fraud.”
Since 2018, the 14 programs have been funded with $18 billion in Medicaid money. These are just the programs that have been flagged so far, and they only involved Medicaid money. Remember the FOM fraud involved childhood nutrition funding from the Dept. of Agriculture.
But for context — keep in mind that California’s Economic Development Department, which oversees Unemployment Compensation, paid out approximately $30 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims, including more than $1 billion to inmates in California prisons and county jails. Tim Walz has some ground to cover before he can hold a candle to Gavin Newsom.
DIVE DEEPER: How Many Recall Elections Can You Fund With $32 Billion? Asking for Gavin Newsom.
Note what is completely absent from any of what is described above. There is nothing that suggests the Biden DOJ ever looked into whether Minnesota state officials or politicians were criminally complicit in massive and systematic fraud in programs where Minnesota paid the money out to the fraudsters.
Tolerating fraud, overlooking fraud, knowing about fraud but doing nothing to stop it — none of these are necessarily federal crimes. Any acts by Gov. Tim Walz and others would need to be in support of or to advance the fraudulent scheme for them to be charged. Knowing about it but not doing anything isn’t going to lead to him being indicted.
But there is NO evidence that any campaign finance investigations were ever done to determine whether elected officials in Minnesota — almost all Democrats — received money from any of the indicted/convicted defendants.
I have seen reports on X and elsewhere that donations to ActBlue were made by indicted defendants. Given that the Trump/Bondi DOJ is already looking into ActBlue’s receipt of illegal donations, I expect this issue will now be added to that inquiry.
This article is in response to the moron conservative social media influencers who have made specious and bogus claims that the Bondi DOJ has not be active and aggressive in its efforts directed at fraud in Minnesota. That is a false and malicious smear intended to undermine AG Bondi who many have never supported, and to fatten their own bank accounts with X revenue sharing money by engagement farming through their outrage porn posts.
Investigations of these kinds of schemes are methodical. No arrests can be made until warrants are obtained. Warrants can only be obtained after there is a charging document filed — either an Indictment or Information. Those aren’t filed until the investigation is complete or nearly complete.
I expect we will see rolling indictments involving multiple schemes to defraud over the next 2-3 years — right up to the 2028 election cycle. I also expect this investigation is going to expand far beyond the borders of Minnesota.
But it is also not likely to be the case that “thousands” of perpetrators are involved. Most of the fraud involved nothing more than billing the State of Minnesota for services that were never provided, and the State of Minnesota sending out checks. The two people charged in connection with the autism services fraud are alleged to have been responsible for $20 million in invoices. A few dozen bad actors working over time, without any effort by the state to detect them, can extract massive amounts of funds when there is no oversight to their entry into the program or their conduct participants in the program.
What is being exposed here is the “Poster Child” example of what happens with federal tax dollars when the Democrats are in charge and use those funds to support liberal/progressive/socialist/communist NGOs and the “programs” they rely upon to exist.
This is DOGE at its most real — evidence to support Congress cutting funding for crap like this, and people going to jail as a result.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is crossposted at the author’s Substack.)
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