Why Should We Be Concerned about the Somali Fraud in Minnesota?

On Friday, Nick Shirley, an independent video journalist, released a 42-minute YouTube documentary with details of his undercover work to document the fraud of mostly Somali scammers in Minnesota. This news is everywhere – except in the mainstream news.

Reports are that the scammers took billions of dollars of taxpayer money, probably with the knowledge of someone in the State of Minnesota government. Reports are also sounding about similar fraud taking place in Maine, Ohio, and Washington State.

Those in high federal government offices watched Shirley’s documentary. Vice President JD Vance commented on it on X and praised Shirley for doing more journalistic work than some people who received Pulitzer Prizes. Jarrett Stepman reported on the video as follows. 

The video is certainly worth watching. Among the big findings uncovered is a series of so-called day care centers and other facilities being funded in the state that have no children in them at all.

In one of the most remarkable scenes, Shirley arrived at a location called the “Quality Learing Center.” Yes, “Learing,” which was obviously misspelled. The center had been licensed for 99 children, but none were there. In front of the building, a woman kept shouting, “Don’t open up, ICE.” Shirley informed her that he was merely a journalist, but she ignored him and kept shouting….

This is just the latest in what is without a doubt one of the biggest scandals in American history.

According to some estimates, Somali scammers have taken more money from taxpayers in the last few years than the entire gross domestic product of Somalia.

Also, according to the New York Post, the stolen money “accounts for roughly half of the $18 billion in total federal funs provided to the Minnesota-run services since 2018.”…

Walz and most Democrats seem to be, at most, slightly bothered that they have to talk about this story at all and have tried to make this out to be a “bipartisan” issue that must simply be managed.

But it wasn’t Republicans who run the state of Minnesota, it wasn’t Republicans creating these massive entitlement programs. And while there are Republicans who embrace the kind of open-ended immigration that enabled the Somali fraud scandal, they are at least much less prominent in the age of President Donald Trump.

No, this is a problem created by the Left, one that Democrats are apparently unwilling to confront with any level of urgency.

Let’s take a step back here and get back to the rub of this Somali scammer problem at its source. It’s not just about a broken immigration system with perverse incentives, though we’ve certainly had that.

What the Somali fraudsters did was a matter of greed and crookedness, a replication of the kind of schemes that allow one to get ahead in their homeland. It’s immoral, but easy to understand in a basic sense. It’s the kind of corruption that ruins countries the world over, but it isn’t remarkable.

Now let’s say you really are an old school New Deal Democrat, who believes strongly in the power of government and a robust welfare state. You should be the most enraged by what’s happened, right? After all, these apparently well-meaning programs have become the means by which our modern-day Visigoths have essentially sacked the capital city and turned their programs into a complete mockery of the whole system.

But outrage hasn’t materialized on the Left. If anything, they’re miffed they have to talk about the Somali fraud story at all…..

When Fox News columnist David Marcus went to Minnesota to find out what the feeling was in the state about the whole mess, I think he got to the heart of the matter. He found mostly apathy and indifference from the local liberal voters….

I imagine this apathetic attitude is common among the Democratic Party’s most engaged base voters.

New Deal liberalism is dead. In its place is a warped ideology, a new religion. Many blue state programs have been converted into quasi-religious enterprises, fueling what appears to be virtually unmitigated graft the depth of which we are only beginning to understand.

The government is no longer there to give all Americans a leg up. It’s there to enact an identitarian form of social justice, to sort out the winners and losers of its largesse based on a mystical hierarchy of oppression only fully understood in the inner sanctums of the federally funded ivory tower.

That money was siphoned away by illegal means wasn’t really so terrible according to this thinking. It was just the product of a mandated secular tithe to soothe the modern liberal conscience made no less noble by its seedy application. What the oppressed groups do with the money justly given isn’t the biggest problem, after all….

The real problem right now, so this thinking goes, is that bigoted Americans noticed the scandal and might not be so keen about bringing in waves of more Somalis, who are the real victims here….

This toxic, civilizationally suicidal impulse of misguided, self-destructive “empathy” mixed with self-loathing is costing us far more than the billions of dollars already pillaged from state coffers. In the end, it may cost us everything.

Carlos Garcia reported at The Blaze on the Minnesota fraud. According to Kristi Noem, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, said that the federal government is investigating the fraud in Minnesota. He also reported the comments of FBI Director Kash Patel that any Somali immigrants who are convicted of fraud could be denaturalized and deported. 

Shirley’s commentary was not the first reported abuse in Minnesota. Patel said on Sunday that “the BI previously dismantled a $250 million fraud scheme involving COVID-19 relief funds intended to provide meals for children in Minnesota.”

In this case, there were 79 indictments with 57 convictions. Several defendants “were charged with crimes ranging from wire fraud to money laundering and conspiracy.” Some defendants tried to subvert justice by bribing “a juror with $120,000 in cash.” One defendant was sentenced to a 10-year term in prison and ordered to pay nearly $48 million in restitution.

Patel described the scheme as the “tip of a very large iceberg,” adding that the FBI would “continue to follow the money and protect children” and that the investigation remains ongoing.

The publication of Shirley’s documentary increased scrutiny into the fraud in Minnesota. Shirley put the blame on Governor Tim Walz, who pushed back saying the state had been cracking down on fraud for years. However, “a group of former state health workers have accused Walz of obstructing efforts to uncover the scams” saying that Walz “is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota.” They said that they informed Walz “early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud, but no, we got the opposite response.”