Prosecutor: More than Half of $18 Billion in Welfare Funds Lost to Fraud in Minnesota

Half of $18 billion in federal welfare funds, which supports 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018, has been lost to fraud, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said during a press conference Thursday.

People come from all over the world to steal millions from U.S. government Medicaid, housing, and other programs, he added.

“Minnesota has become a magnet for fraud, so much so that we have developed a fraud tourism industry — people coming to our state purely to exploit and defraud its programs,” Thompson said. {snip}

Thompson explained that “traditional Medicare and Medicaid fraud is that people overbill,” but said the fraud in Democrat Gov. Tim Walz’s Minnesota has been unique in that thieves are not providing any services, just creating fake companies and filing wholly fake bills {snip}

Thompson revealed that charges have been filed against Anthony Waddell Jefferson, Lester Brown, Hassan Ahmed Hussein, Ahmed Abdirashid Mohamed, Kaamil Omar Sallah, and Asha Farhan Hassan {snip}

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