Minnesota’s Multimillion-Dollar Day-Care Fraud Reportedly Stretches Back to 2014

Minnesota’s rampant fraud involving taxpayer-funded day care reportedly goes back at least as far as 2014 and allegedly involved scammers stuffing carry-on luggage with as much as $1 million a pop to smuggle out of the country.

Tens of millions of dollars in cash transported in luggage started flying out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport around a decade ago, with a marked uptick beginning in 2016 when travelers departed with a total of $84 million and another $100 million the next year, Fox 9 reported in 2018.

The troubling report has taken on explosive new significance since the feds alleged a mind-boggling up to $9 billion fraud scheme in which supposed businesses, such as day cares, lied about providing desperately needed services to the needy to illegally rake in millions off dollars in government funding.

Some of the airport suitcase dough — which was predominantly headed to the Middle East and Somalia — was suspected of coming from the Midwest state’s then-just-surfacing childcare fraud problem, the outlet reported at the time.

Air passengers are allowed to fly with as much as $1 million in a carry-on as long as they fill out the required paper work.

Surveillance footage from a related state fraud case and obtained by the outlet even showed parents arriving with their kids at one childcare facility — and leaving with them just moments later. In some cases, the parents didn’t even bother bringing their children.

Yet the center allegedly billed the state for full days of care for the kids who didn’t actually attend, supposedly giving a kickback to parents participating in its scheme.

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