Breaking: DOJ Announces 98 Total Arrests in Minnesota Fraud Case - 85 of 'Somali Descent'

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday that the Department of Justice has already charged 98 individuals in Minnesota with fraud-related crimes, noting that 85 of those charged are of Somali descent—and warning that additional prosecutions are on the way.

Bondi’s announcement followed a series of viral investigative videos from YouTuber Nick Shirley, which suggested that fraud within Minnesota’s Somali community extends far beyond the already notorious Feeding Our Future scandal, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit accused of siphoning enormous sums of taxpayer money intended to feed vulnerable families.

According to Bondi, Shirley’s reporting helped bring renewed public attention to misconduct federal investigators have been tracking for months.

“[Nick Shirley’s] work has helped show Americans the scale of fraud in Tim Walz’s Minnesota,” Bondi wrote in a statement on X late Monday.

“@TheJusticeDepartment has been investigating this for months. So far, we have charged 98 individuals — 85 of Somali descent — and more than 60 have been found guilty in court,” she continued.

“We have more prosecutions coming… BUCKLE UP, LAWMAKERS!”

Bondi highlighted several cases already pursued by the department, including the Feeding Our Future scheme and a related juror bribery case—conduct she described as “not unlike what you would see in the corrupt Somali judicial system.”

Beyond the school-meals scandal, the attorney general pointed to multiple Medicaid fraud cases, including schemes exploiting public funds meant to serve autistic children.

In September, a Department of Justice media release alleged that 28-year-old Asha Farhan Hassan received nearly $500,000 for her role in a $14 million autism-related fraud operation.

“As set forth in the information, Hassan and others devised and carried out a scheme to defraud the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (‘EIDBI’) benefit, a publicly funded Minnesota Health Care Program that offers medically necessary services to people under the age of 21 with autism spectrum disorder (‘ASD’). According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services (‘DHS’) website, the purpose of the EIDBI program is ‘to provide medically necessary, early and intensive intervention for people with ASD and related conditions,’” the DOJ release stated.

“From November 2019 through December 2024, Asha Hassan and others devised and carried out a scheme to defraud the EIDBI autism services program. Hassan formed and registered Smart Therapy LLC with the Minnesota Secretary of State in November 2019. Hassan listed herself as the sole owner of Smart Therapy. In reality, other individuals also had ownership stakes in Smart Therapy but were not listed on DHS documents, including because one of the owners previously owned an adult daycare and was excluded by DHS for three years due to her conduct running the adult daycare center. Shortly after forming the company, Hassan enrolled Smart Therapy as a provider agency in the EIDBI program. As discussed below, Hassan also enrolled Smart Therapy in the Federal Child Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future,” the release continued.

“Smart Therapy purported to be providing necessary one-on-one ABA therapy to children with autism. In fact, Smart Therapy employed unqualified individuals as ‘behavioral technicians.’ These behavioral technicians were often 18- or 19-year-old relatives with no formal education beyond high school and no training or certifications related to the treatment of autism.”

The allegations mirror scenes documented in Shirley’s videos, which featured so-called “learning centers”—one of which became infamous for misspelling its own name as a “learing” center—that appeared abandoned during weekday afternoons when children should have been receiving services.

Experts now estimate that entitlement fraud tied to Minnesota’s Somali community may total billions of dollars, raising serious questions about oversight failures, political accountability, and the long-term abuse of taxpayer-funded programs.

With the Justice Department escalating its crackdown under Bondi’s leadership, the message from the Trump administration is clear: systemic fraud will no longer be ignored.