An investigation has uncovered a fraudulent scheme involving Minnesota’s Medicaid autism-care programs, where millions have been misappropriated and funneled back to Somalia, allegedly supporting terror groups. The scandal, centered around the Somali community in Minneapolis, involves nearly 100 autism clinics falsely billing Medicaid for services under the guise of treating children with autism.
New revelations suggest the scale of the fraud is significantly larger than earlier reports indicated. At the core of the issue is the oversight by Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz, previously a vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, under whose administration these welfare schemes have been mismanaged.
The financial implications of this mismanagement are staggering. For instance, the state’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program was initially projected to cost $2.6 million in 2021. However, actual disbursements far exceeded expectations, with expenses skyrocketing to $21 million in its inaugural year. The following years saw expenditures rise dramatically to $42 million, then $74 million, and eventually $104 million. By mid-2025, the program had already accrued $61 million in costs, as reported by City Journal.
The fraud extends beyond autism programs, affecting various Minnesota welfare initiatives. A notable case involves Asha Farhan Hassan, a Somali woman charged with defrauding the state’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program. She allegedly orchestrated a scheme that siphoned off $14 million through false autism diagnoses for Somali children.
Prosecutors have revealed that Hassan and her associates offered Somali families monthly kickbacks ranging from $300 to $1,500 per child to enroll them in the state’s autism treatment initiatives.
Prosecutors now say that Hassan and her cohorts approached Somali families and promised them kickbacks of between $300 to $1500 a month per child if they enrolled in the state’s autism treatment programs.
The fraud in autism treatment has skyrocketed apart from Hassan’s alleged criminal enterprises. The Journal notes that “autism claims to Medicaid in Minnesota have skyrocketed in recent years — from $3 million in 2018 to $54 million in 2019, $77 million in 2020, $183 million 2021, $279 million in 2022, and $399 million in 2023.”
Businesses are also in on the con. Autism providers soared from 41 across the entire state in 2020, to 328 by 2025 — all of them applying for and receiving Minnesota’s Medicaid funding. The theft was so deep that one in every 16 Somali four-year-olds in Minnesota had been “officially” diagnosed with autism — a rate that is more than triple the state average.
And this is all in addition to the Feeding Our Future scam that has resulted in 70 Minnesotan Somalis being indicted for $250 million in fraudulent food aide.
“This is not an isolated scheme,” Joe Thompson, the U.S. attorney, said in a press release. “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.”
“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 announcing the indictments. “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.”
“What we see are schemes stacked upon schemes, draining resources meant for those in need. It feels never ending,” Thompson exclaimed. “I have spent my career as a fraud prosecutor and the depth of the fraud in Minnesota takes my breath away.”
The stolen billion in Medicaid and welfare money didn’t merely go into the pockets of corrupt Somalian migrants. They also went to fund terrorism in Africa.
