Every month, Hillsdale College prints an in-depth article on a current topic. This is invariably insightful and worth reading carefully.

This publication is called Imprimis, and it is distributed to millions of subscribers in both print and electronic format. 

I've clipped this one for length to focus on Medicaid fraud, but the supporting context is outstanding.

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/learning-from-minnesotas-somali-fraud-scandal/

January 2026 | Volume 55, Issue 1

Learning From Minnesota’s Somali Fraud Scandal

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...In the last six weeks of the investigation they posted surveillance cameras outside twelve Feeding Our Future sites that were supposedly feeding thousands of kids a day. The kids were nowhere to be seen.

On January 20, 2022, the investigation went public when federal agents raided sites in the largest such operation ever conducted in Minnesota. The following September, United States Attorney Andrew Luger called a press conference to announce the charges brought against the first 47 defendants in the case. Charges have now been brought against a total of 78 defendants. The latest of the 78 cases were charged this past November.

In the cases resolved so far, there have been 50 guilty pleas, seven guilty verdicts, and two acquittals. Five fugitives remain at large. One defendant has died. Thirteen unresolved cases await trial. Bock was convicted on seven counts of wire fraud, conspiracy, and federal programs bribery and will be sentenced to a long prison term. The total fraud in these cases comes to some $300 million.

Medicaid Fraud

The Feeding Our Future fraud cases opened a window on scams involving several Minnesota Medicaid programs. After the FBI executed search warrants in one such case in July of last year, then-Acting United States Attorney Joe Thompson—who until very recently was leading both the Feeding Our Future and the Medicaid fraud prosecutions—called a press conference in September to announce criminal charges against the first eight Medicaid fraud defendants, all of whom are Somali.

These initial cases were tied to Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) program, the purpose of which was to help people with disabilities find housing using Medicaid funds. “Most of these cases, unlike a lot of Medicare and Medicaid fraud cases nationally, aren’t just overbilling,” Thompson said at the 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.” The press release distributed at the press conference suggested that the HSS program seems to have been designed to facilitate fraud: “By design, the Program had low barriers to entry for new providers and for beneficiaries. The Program also had minimal requirements for reimbursement.”

Uncovering fraud in Minnesota is like playing with Russian nesting dolls. “Many of the owners of [the involved HSS] companies,” Thompson said, “had one or more other companies through which they billed other Medicaid programs such as the [Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention] program, the Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services program, the Integrated Community Support program, the Community Access for Disability Inclusion program, [Personal Care Assistance] services, and other Medicaid-waivered services.” The details of these cases were almost incidental to Thompson’s main point—that “Minnesota is drowning in fraud.”

“It feels never-ending,” Thompson said. “I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away.”

On December 18 of last year, Thompson called another press conference to announce charges against six more defendants in connection with Minnesota’s Medicaid programs. The new cases involved allegedly fraudulent claims in programs for housing, autism services, and assistance for disabled adults seeking to live independently. “Every day we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,” Thompson said.

The total amount of money disbursed through these programs since 2018 is $18 billion. Based on his ongoing investigations, Thompson estimated that as much as half that amount—$9 billion!—may have been paid out on fraudulent claims. “The magnitude cannot be overstated,” Thompson said. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s a staggering, industrial-scale fraud.” Four of the six defendants charged in December are Minnesotan Somalis, and those involved in the uncharged cases under investigation are almost entirely Somali.

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Public programs fraud on the scale we see today in Minnesota—and to a lesser degree (so far at least) in other states—indicates a leadership class that has either forgotten or no longer takes seriously the idea that public office is a public trust. What more fitting time could there be than the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence to restore the moral power of that idea in irresponsible state governments like that of Minnesota?

Scott W. Johnson is a co-founder of and contributor to PowerLineblog.com. He earned his B.A. at Dartmouth College and his J.D. at the University of Minnesota Law School and practiced law for 35 years in the Twin Cities. A fellow of the Claremont Institute, he has published widely on issues of public policy, including in National Review, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Minnesota Star Tribune, and the Washington Free Beacon. For more than ten years he has covered Minnesota Fifth District U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar and three major trials in Minnesota involving Somali defendants.