Minnesota Welfare Fraud Takes Food Out of the Mouths of Children
Minnesota did not just stumble into a garden‑variety scam. It hosted a sprawling, industrial‑scale looting of taxpayer money that prosecutors and watchdogs now say ranks among the largest public benefit frauds in American history. It is a humdinger.
The best known piece of the puzzle involves a Non-Government Organization (NGO) Feeding Our Future. That operation siphoned off more than $250 million from federally funded child‑nutrition programs during the COVID Pandemic. Defendants forged meal counts, attendance rosters, invoices, and laundered funds into luxury cars, real estate, trips, and jewelry.
The story does not end there. Local investigations have tallied hundreds of millions more involving autism services, housing stabilization, and other programs — pushing the statewide tally toward the $1 billion mark and counting.
What was stolen and how
The playbook was audaciously simple. Front organizations and shell sites claimed to feed thousands of low‑income children daily. Paperwork was mass‑manufactured to match the fiction, while oversight was conspicuous by its absence. Reimbursements flowed, but not to the benefit of the children. In the Feeding Our Future saga, prosecutors detailed the fraud with photographic evidence from sites that purported to serve thousands but showed only a handful of patrons, and with defendants pleading guilty to wire fraud conspiracies built on fake rosters and invoices.
The federal dragnet has been large and ongoing. In Feeding Our Future alone, the Justice Department has charged more than 70 defendants over time and secured more than 50 convictions by mid‑2025 — with additional guilty pleas continuing as cases advance. The number of defendants continues to increase as prosecutors keep bringing charges.
Where was the oversight failure?
The critical question is who was supposed to be minding the store? The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) was the primary state agency responsible for supervising the federal child‑nutrition programs from which the Feeding Our Future fraud siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars. Oversight failures within MDE allowed the scheme to grow unchecked.
The evidence suggests multiple, overlapping schemes across several Minnesota welfare programs, not just one. MDE also administers the federal Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) programs – from which funds were also stolen.
Feeding Our Future acted as a “sponsor,” but MDE was supposed to approve sites, monitor compliance, and conduct audits. It did none of those things. MDE received more than 30 complaints about Feeding Our Future operations. Officials spotted signs of fraud as early as 2019 (six years ago, for God’s sake) just before the COVID pandemic surge. Between 2018 and 2024, MDE conducted only one administrative review of Feeding Our Future despite receiving dozens of red-flag complaints.
However, pressure from politically connected Feeding Our Future leaders and lack of political response prevented proper investigations. Emergency pandemic waivers loosened rules, making it easier for fraudulent claims to pass through unchecked. There appears to be some level of willful blindness at the highest levels of Minnesota government.
The Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor later concluded that MDE’s inadequate oversight created opportunities for fraud, noting that the department failed to verify claims and allowed reimbursements to balloon. Was it incompetence or culpability?
Walz Not Looking Good
While Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did not directly supervise the programs, It happened on his watch. His administration was ultimately responsible for the performance of MDE. He appointed the officials who were asleep at the switch — or worse, looked the other way.
Walz now faces a deep political reckoning. House Republicans have launched oversight inquiries into his administration’s handling, allies are second‑guessing his reelection prospects, and national attention has turned Minnesota into a case study in broken guardrails and failed governance. Even sympathetic observers concede that the scandal has created real jeopardy for Walz’ political future, precisely because the fraud grew so large during his years in office. Voters can forgive mistakes. They rarely forgive indifference and incompetence on this scale.
Who Else?
The scandal has brought the public spotlight on other Minnesota officials. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is tied to the scandal by the fact that most of the defendants are Somali immigrants as is she. She is very close to the large Somali community in Minnesota. Undoubtedly, Omar has friendships and associations with some of those involved. There is no evidence that Omar herself is criminally involved or gained from the fraud – although investigators are checking the political contributions of those who were involved. She probably has some ‘splaining to do in terms of her own finances. In 2020, she married Tim Mynett, a political consultant with a net worth of approximately $2 million at the time. By 2024 their net worth soared to between $6 million and $30 million—according to congressional financial reports.
The state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison has been drawn into congressional investigations about whether his office ignored whistleblowers — or retaliated against them.
Summary
The Minnesota Department of Education was the central state authority responsible for supervising the programs. Its failure to conduct timely audits, enforce compliance, and respond to whistleblower complaints allowed the fraud to escalate into one of the largest embezzlements of taxpayer money in U.S. history. The investigations continue – and it is likely that the list of defendants and the size of the fraud will continue to grow. Governor Walz and other state officials are now under heavy political scrutiny for these lapses. Some may have been involved. It is a major scandal for Walz – one that casts a dark shadow over his reelection prospects.
So, there ‘tis.
This HAS to make one think. Who in the Somali community has been bankrolling Ihan Omar’s elections? It is not that big a community and if that much fraud has been happening at this level Omar likely knows who they are. I’m willing to bet that her campaign money can be directly tied to the criminals engaged in this fraud.
Oh Joe, how low can you go? Conspiracy theory accusations hidden as thought-provoking open-ended interrogatives Let me try a few:
Who in the domestic extremist community has been bankrolling Joe’s PBP publishing? It is not that big a community and if that many right-wing lies have been happening at this publishing level, Joe likely knows who they are. I’m willing to bet that his publishing money can be directly tied to the criminals from /6/2021 cop beatings engaged in right-wing terrorism.
Or: Has Joe finished recovery yet and is his still beating his wife?
Joe wonders: “This HAS to make one think.” Yeah, ja tink? This one thinks I can’t believe Joe does not know that campaign financing is pretty open, individual amounts capped at $3,500 and Joe just must know he can use Open Secrets, FEC.gov, or even Patch.com to find the answers to his questions. Open Secrets even let him search by donor; he can plug every Somali in; it’s “not that big a community.” Corporate funding is unlimited thanks to Republican controlled partisan SCOTUS action on Citizens United ruling. Brilliant! Not only can big pharma, whatever give unlimited amounts, they get it from their workers too scared not to give to the PAC. Blame Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito. These boys destroyed our elections giving unfair and ultimate voting power to inhuman corporations, associations, and organizations.
Meanwhile, Joe has never expressed any issues with the ability to bribe his Felon King Trump with crypto purchases. No top end. Completely anonymous. Legal. Foreign and domestic.
Justin Sun bought $100M Chinese entrepreneur. GD Culture with Chinese ties bought $300M. ALT Sigma picked up $175M. While Trump does not profit directly from the purchase, he profits with hundreds of millions for “managing” the fund.
Gotta expand your buying access and favors base to include all governmental grifters.
Will we see the Epstein files on Friday: NBL. Out them all. I wonder if Joe’s picture is in there (oh wait, open-ended conspiracy questions are at the top, not here, my bad.)
You are playing naive and you are pretending not to know how fundraising works and how millions can be funneled into a campaign. You know better. And politicians are always aware of major criminals in their area. How valuable would it be for a Somali criminal stealing 100’s of millions to have a Somali representative?
And PBP has made its billions of dollars honestly.
You are playing naive and you are pretending not to know how fundraising works and how millions can be funneled into a campaign. You know better. And politicians are always aware of major criminals in their area. How valuable would it be for a Somali criminal stealing 100’s of millions to have a Somali representative? You seem to assume much.
PBP — honest dollars, hardly. Sure, you are honestly printing many known lies and fabrications all the time. Legal, yes, honest —- a lot of times, sadly, NO. More like 30 pieces of silver honest to the truth. And, as publisher, you own that, lock, stock, barrel and bullet. Sorry, buddy, I love your free speech extremism, obviously, but your lack of attention to the truth, ad hominem attacks, is shameful. Don’t forget the ban on lyrics and poetry…. “there once was a cia guy from Florida, who railed about guys on the borider…..” heh, heh.
Joe, first your “How valuable would it be for a Somali criminal stealing 100’s of millions to have a Somali representative?” Apparently not valuable at all. Do you see any indications beyond your imagination? And the fact they come from the same country that you castigate as America’s evil.
My point is that a responsible journalist should not lower themselves to open-ended, unfounded, questions that tend to lean towards guilt by association, this time based on country of origin, and religion (although you did not call her out for being Muslim pre se). Your “facts” are 1. Somali. 2. Small community, huge fraud (80 indicted, 250,000 Somalis here, 100,000 in Minnesota). (SSA tracks 350,000 Joe’s in America, wanna know the Joe show guilty factors?). 3. Omar likely knows them (give me a break). 4. I will take that bet, now what? And what nationality will you go after next just for being different? We only have 800,000 Slovaks in America, you coming for us next because 80 of them done bad?
Playing naïve, nah, I do not know how millions can be ILLEGALLY funneled into a campaign, do you? You say: “You know better. And politicians are always aware of major criminals in their area.” I do not know, please illuminate us on how politicians fake fund themselves. And you are guessing that all politicians know all major criminals in their area. I am pretty sure you are wrong on that.
I do know how Citizens United legally allows millions to enter a campaign but that’s corporations and rarely gets to the candidates pockets. As for individuals, they would need to keep it off their books, out of their banks, totally laundered and hidden. Banks disclose cash transactions over $10k via Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) and report suspicious activities, even small ones around $5k using Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), which flag potential money laundering, tax evasion, terrorism financing, or other crimes, all under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to prevent financial crime and assist federal agencies like FinCEN/IRS/FBI. So she would have to be completely off-the-books, hidden from banks, hidden from the press, but sure, pigs might fly. But, about that $50K bribe in a brown paper bag that Homan accepted — where the heck did that end up and did Trump get his cut?
My point was, without facts, with just your innuendo, you posit a possibility without merit depending on people’s fears of Somalis that Trump fan the flames for. And if you’re gonna fling feces against the wall, she’s worth between $1-2M based on her financial disclosure: *chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-pdfs/2024/10068415.pdf* which you could of looked up. Her husband is worth between $5M-$30M, the high end being the 3,500% increase in a short time reported inaccurately by the New York Post. He got a broke winery, a broke reefer company (how to do go broke on pot?), and a viable, but mysterious, venture capital partnership in DC where the money shown for him MAY include his partner’s assets, unknown. If there’s funny money, that’s where you go. It looks as hinky as Trump’s financiers. Check out who is behind Trump’s latest loan, they covered his ass on the DC hotel when no one would, paid a ridiculous amount, went bankrupt and forfeited all to their lenders who now own the hotel. Yeah, that was a straight up deal, NOT. But we can never know fer sure. The biggest political payoff is Trump’s crypto scam where anyone, foreign or domestic, anonymous to the public, can buy as much Trump coin as they want and Trump makes HUNREDS OF MILLIONS in fees. 800 million to 1.2B for 2025. That’s a legal honeypot of unmatched proportions.
Answer: these crypto and investment firms need sunshine laws to ferret out what you can only imagine. Turn Elizabeth Warren and Katie Port loose to make laws here to monitor and control like our banks. Won’t happen with Trump in office, but this shit may become our next Great Recession when these guy’s bubbles burst. Trump is looking to loosen restrictions and reporting and his guy has already started by weaponizing against the banking industry to pave the wave for looser regulations. I really don’t want to return to the Great Recession or worse just because these guys over leverage trillions of loans. That’s the kind of risk your fear of Omar pales in comparison.
As long as there are dumb liberals who just love getting ripped off by the government to give to illegals this will continue. I remember that my grandparents worked two jobs in order to have something in life but now just come to the US
and fill your pockets with our hard earned dollars
because we are so generous we will just give our money away. I should say that the crooked politicians like Knucklehead Waltz will take your money and give part of it away and keep the rest to become even richer. Why do we need these politicians stealing our money and raising our
taxes every year. All the liberals love it probably because they are all on welfare.
As I peruse Larry’s story, I have to say, I am flummoxed. Who’s on first? Minnesota? Feeding Our Future for sure, Federal funding mechanism? MN Dept of Education (wow, that’s seems a stretch), Governor Walz, Walz Administration, Minnesota State Senate, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, House, Senate, State’s Attorney?
Without saying it, I think he might have stumbled onto the root cause; who’s on first and is State’s Rights the solution to all issues?
On the other side, and just looking from a Federal perspective, some facts:
2016: Aimee Bock founds the nonprofit organization, Feeding Our Future (FOF) under Biden.
2018: The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) approves FOF to sponsor federal food distribution sites. Concerns and complaints about FOF’s operations began this year under Trump.
February 20, 2019: A rival organization, Partners in Nutrition, files a complaint with the USDA alleging that Bock forged names and stole files to gain state approval under Trump.
OK, by 2019, this guy looks hinky, yet the wheels of justice seem to turn slowly. Both the State and the Fed are getting red light signals. Do they talk?
March 2020: Trump relaxes Federal rules, just like he’s doing to the banks today, allowing more access to Child Nutrition Program funds during the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic leads to the issuance of national waivers, relaxing rules for federal nutrition programs to ensure children could access meals, which allowed FOF to rapidly expand its operations. This is under Trump Administration control and sets the stage for massive frauds. (hey, I can respect that. With great emergency programs, with large amounts, and focus on speed, speed, speed, there will be breakage, there will be theft, there will be loss.)
Late 2020: Feeding Our Future (FOF) rapidly expands, receiving huge federal funds for child meals. This is now under the Biden Administration.
January 2022: Under Biden, FBI raids FOF’s office and homes, kicking off the massive fraud investigation at the Federal Level for Federal crimes while the process seems managed by the State.
2023: The full scale of the alleged $250 million fraud becomes public, with many charged under the Biden Administration.
April-June 2024: First major trial begins, revealing details of the elaborate scheme under the Biden Administration.
March 2025: FOF Founder Aimee Bock and co-conspirator Salem Sed convicted in the first trial under the Trump administration although charges filed under the Biden administration.
April-May 2025: More defendants plead guilty, with over 50 facing charges by mid-2025, most of which were being investigated, charged, or both during the Biden administration.
FOF, a sponsor for federal food aid, grew from $3.4M in 2019 (Trump) to nearly $200M in 2021. (Biden).
While it would be fun to pit Biden against Trump administration involvement over time, my question is what is the governance model between the State Government and Federal Government to test, control, and manage this mess. If Walz or the State is the issue, why are the crimes Federal?
As Larry notes, “the (fraud) playbook was audaciously simple.” That may be true, but the governance model is a clusterfuck. Because if the fraud was easy, I would say the management model is audaciously flawed. We can’t even point the finger at the man who owns it. I hope they root-cause-assess this mess rather than point political fingers over top of racist ones about Somalis and Muslims. Seems there is a huge systemic management/governance problem here in how the entire process was set up, especially the governance mode. That’s, IMO, the real story that needs to be told. Until then, I stand flummoxed but bored with banging on Somalis, yet another crush of another race.
Joe you can’t take Dunger seriously. He only spews leftist bullshit.
For the fraud to have grown so much under the WALZ administration he would have to be criminally incompitent of just another criminal getting a cut to look the other way.
Neener, neener, Namer :>), you could have a point, but then again, it’s Federal dollars, Federal crimes, so you want Walz to do Trump’s job? The crimes themselves started on Trump 1.0, carried through Biden 1.0. Maybe with large programs, tossed together hastily to fight big, sudden problems, like covid, comes great lack of responsibility followed by crime?
My point is in our lust for State’s rights, we create these clusterfuck big-money POS operations and then wonder why we are getting ripped off when you can’t even tell you who’s responsible for the program, States may be ill equipped for large scale, rapid expansion, big money projects, and where to point your fickle finger of fate for ownership. How many national programs do we push to the States claiming State’s rights (which makes sense WHEN it makes sense), better management closer to the source (which I do believe), and plenty of room for finger-pointing when the shit hit the fan. Republicans are much bigger into this than Democrats. Rand Paul wants to push FEMA out to the States, an almost laughable concept except for the danger involved in doing so. What’s next? Maybe no Federal military and back to the militia, part II.
And Hank-ie: sorry son, you are just lost in urban myth, conspiracy, and a total lack of facts. All liberals on welfare must be a joke of an idea by now. Let me guess, you see black welfare moms driving caddies with large screen tvs (in the back) while eating SNAP-paid-for lobster….. From Money Geek: “Seven of the 10 states most dependent on the federal government were Republican-voting.” Summa biatch.