December 23, 2025 • 22 mins
In this episode, Lisa breaks down the explosive Minnesota fraud scandal involving federal child nutrition funds, she is joined by former federal prosecutor Joe Teirab who examines how millions of taxpayer dollars were misused through weak oversight and regulatory failures. The conversation exposes how easily the system was exploited, the role of political actors and government agencies, and why accountability mechanisms failed to stop the fraud sooner.
Lisa and Joe also explore ongoing efforts to recover stolen funds, disturbing links between fraud proceeds and terrorist financing, and the broader national implications—raising serious questions about whether similar schemes could be unfolding in other states. With taxpayers left footing the bill, this episode highlights the urgent need for government reform, stricter oversight, and real consequences to prevent future abuse of federal aid programs.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get
to the heart of the issues that matter to you. Today,
we've got former federal prosecutor and Marie veteran Joe Terrab,
who investigated the Feeding our Future, this Minnesota fraud scandal
that everyone's been talking about it. So he's just going
to share his unique frontline insight and to how it
exploded under Governor Tim Walls of Minnesota. And he said,
(00:24):
this this is how we put it. He said, the
big thing that jumped out to him was how easy
this fraud was to do. I could do that in
five minutes on a computer if I had absolutely no conscience.
So how was it allowed to go on for so long?
Why did politicians allow for it to go on for
so long? Well, they potentially get swept up in this investigation.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So we're going to dig in.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
With someone who has seen this case up close, who investigated,
who prosecuted, who worked on this case. So stay tuned
for more on the Minnesota scandal. Joe, it's great to
have you on the show. This Minnesota fraud scandal has
(01:10):
been blowing up in the media and you had a
front row seat to it.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
So appreciate you making the time.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Appreciate you having me on. Thanks a lot, Lisa.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So you said of this scandal that you were surprised
at how easy this fraud was to do. You know,
you could do that in five minutes on a computer
if you had absolutely no conscience.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Walk us through why was it so easy?
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Well, there's a couple layers to that, I mean, stepping
back thirty thousand foot level. You had these massive government
programs in Minnesota here with the Federal Child Nutrition Program,
So money that was meant to go to feeding on
hungry kids, either in after school programs or summer school programs,
but you had a really stupid regulation, regulatory program to
(01:52):
disperse it. You had this purported watchdog organization called Feeding
Our Future, and they were purportedly the organization that was
supposed to be helping to feed a hungry kids. Well,
no one was watching this watchdog and so basically they
were getting kickbacks from different restaurants or other nonprofits to
(02:14):
say that, oh, you're feeding all these kids, when in actuality,
these kids were just made up. There were phantoms, they
were generating lists on kids that they were saying that
they're feeding. That just didn't even exist. They were generating
these fake and false, you know, backs up PDFs to
say that, oh yeah, we're buying all this food.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
For these kids, and it was just totally made up.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
And so in the same way that I can go
on my computer make up a PDF and saying that,
you know, I bought a thousand pounds of chicken or
one hundred gallons of milk to feed kids that I'm
not feeding.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
It was all a lie. It was super super easy.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
And so if you just had a government that cared
about where our money's going, that wouldn't have happened and
we wouldn't be out literally billions of dollars. And that's
the number that the former acting was attorney here in Minnesota,
Joe Thompson said that the numbers on the magnitude of
over nine billion billion with a bee. It's absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
You know, we've seen you know, the conviction of feeding
our future leader Amy Bach and more than fifty guilty police.
Why do you think it was allowed to go undetected
for so many years? Or how do you think one
undetected undetected for so long?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
So part of.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
It was, you know, during COVID, they just kind of
removed a lot of the auditing and any kind of
you know, checks and balances on it. So, you know, inditionally,
at least before COVID, there was supposed to be some
you know, site visits, actual physical visits. Well it kind
of went out the window over COVID. So just kind
of another reason how you know, waiting which COVID didn't
(03:51):
help things at all, or COVID lockdowns, i should say.
But then you had this really perverse incentive structure for
regulators or bureaucrats in Minnesota. So the agency in Minnesota,
the Minnesota Department of Education, was supposed to be kind
of overseeing the feeding our future organization that itself was
(04:11):
supposed to be overseeing other sites, and so you could
see where things could get lost in translation. But these
bureaucrats at the Minnesota Department of Education were incentivized to
just look the other way because when they did actually
end up putting up the smoke signal saying, hey, there's
some weird funny business here, like we're seeing exponential growth
in these federal child nutrition program funds being used when
(04:34):
like there's not a massive growth of kids or massive
growth and the needs for this when they put up
that smoke signal. What did feeding our Future do? Led
by Amy Bach, they alleged racism. They said to the court,
they said, you guys are being racists for shutting off
this money because we're feeding all these kids who are
Somali or Somali descent.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
And that actually won the day for a while.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And so literally like a you know, crying wolf and
saying that that just not having money, a bunch of money,
you know, being being misspent and stolen, and somehow racism
actually led to this not being uncovered for for quite
a while.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
But what does it say about the law that just
the simple charge of oh, you're being racist then prevented
further investigation or you know charges at the time.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
You know, I don't know exactly what it says about
the law. I mean it definitely says something really terrible
about our politics. I mean, thankfully we've just seen kind
of depending on swing against wocism running up. But what
you had here in Minnesota, especially under Governor Tim Walls
and Attorney General Keith Ellison, I mean, if you have
the leaders at the top who are just talking about
(05:41):
everything in terms of the lens of oppressor and oppressed,
you're you're you're hearing things of that nature. It's it's
definitely going to set up the sentence structure for people
to feel a little bit more nervous about having lots
of audits and background on organizations that might be spending
money on people of Somali descent, for example. And so
(06:05):
that's just a dangerous situation and it didn't work out
well for the Minnesota taxpayer.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So what extent were Democrat politicians involved with some of
these people?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
You know?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Were they getting kickbacks, were they getting donations? Did some
of that potentially prevent further investigation?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, you had this meeting. I think it was December of.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Twenty twenty one, it might be often the year, but
a few of these individuals met up with these fraudsters,
these co conspirators with each other, met up with Keith Ellison,
Attorney General, the person who's supposed to be upholding the
law in Minnesota. And I think Keith Ellison, you know,
he used to represent Minneapolis United States Congress, the same
district that now Ilanowa represents. Keith Ellison was I think
(06:50):
the deputy chair of the DMC. They these fraudsters set
up a meeting with Keith Allison, and this meeting was
recorded and we actually have the recording, and they were
trying to curry favor with Keith Elston.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
They were saying, you.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Know, our money is very important and we can kind
of choose who we donate to, but we need to
make sure we have our attorney general who's fighting for us.
And really, just I mean, you don't even have to
look between the lines to see what they were trying
to do. They were trying to get Keith Ellison to
the extent that he was doing anything, which he really
wasn't like not put the spotlight on what's going on
with this these federal child musician funds and all this
(07:26):
fraud that's happening in Minnesota. And so they donate a
bunch of money to him. Now he'll say, oh, yeah,
well I gave it all back. Okay, fine, okay, you
gave a bunch of it back. Well why why were
they the people doing that they could donate money to
you and curry favor to you. And so that's very
concerning and I would hope and wish that more people
knew about that.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
You know, at what point do you think you know?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Because there were, you know, whistle blowers and auditors of
raised concerns, you know, raised concerns years before arrests were made.
You know what point did state officials have enough information
to stop this fraud?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Well, they definitely had it early enough.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
I remember there were points at which it was clear
that the state had this information. Keith Ellison, I remember,
even in the heat of I think it was a
twenty twenty two attorney general race against a guy who
I happened to be a good friend of mine, Jim Schultz,
bringing from attorney general in Minnesota, Keith Ellison was making
statements during debates that were absolutely false, saying, oh, well,
(08:26):
we were working hand in hand with the you know,
the federal regulators and prosecutors like myself and federal investigators.
We were working hand in hand with them from the
get go. You know, No, they weren't. They just weren't.
And this has kind of been an open secret unfortunately
in Minnesota that a lot of this fraud has been happening.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
For many, many years.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
I mean, people have been calling this out since I
think at least the year at twenty fourteen. There's a
lot of childcare fraud amongst folks mostly of Somali descent
here in Minnesota running these childcare organizations that we're either
massively over billing or just totally making up numbers saying yeah,
we're actually you know, we're providing childcare for all these kids,
but it really wasn't happening. Well, a lot of this
(09:09):
fraud is just kind of transformed over over time childcare,
but then it was feeding you know, federal childeutician program funds,
and then it was housing stabilization funds. You know, I've
heard of an interpretation interpret fraud autism fraud saying oh,
we're running these autism clinics and helping kids.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Well, no, you're actually not.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
There's providing kickbacks of families to say that their kids
had autism when they actually didn't. I mean, just so
when you have all these government programs that are supposed
to be helping people, but you set it up where
it's just so easy to steal and so easy to falsify,
and unfortunately you can't do the honor system with folks
who aren't honorable.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Why do you think Minnesota is more susceptible to fraud?
Speaker 4 (09:58):
That is well, is this going to say the million
dollar question? But maybe actually the billion dollar question of
the billions dollar question, Gosh, I wish I knew, because
it's really shameful. I mean, I'm proud of being in Minnesota,
and I was born racer in Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I think we have.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Statistically like the highest levels of like education, and we're
healthy and we read and we're like we're just you know,
we're pretty like connected state. You know, very proud about
being in Minnesota. But I think when you kind of
have these big government set up aid programs in Minnesota
which very much kind of are based off the honor
(10:34):
system in many ways, and really they shouldn't be. I mean,
things of the honor system are meant for a society
where there's a lot of trusts and you're not going
to have an infusion of people that might take advantage
of it, unfortunately, and that's just kind of what we had.
We had a bunch of people who were just willing
to cheat the system now where there's no virtue. You
need virtue in a democracy, and unfortunately we just had
(10:56):
a lot of folks who didn't have any virtue here.
And you had Amy Bach running the whole thing. She's
not of Somali descent, herself. But you had a lot
of folks in this tight knit community and people of
Somali descent who are just willing to take advantage of
the system. And it's not, you know, only people of
Somality descent who are communitists this kind of fraud. But
here in Minnesota, you just had that and it's just
(11:16):
really really hard to explain.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
You got to take a quick commercial break more on
this Minnesota fraud scandal. We're talking some of this money
was spent on luxury homes, overseas travel, there was a
lot of foreign transfer of money overseas as well. Kind
of walk us through some of the more egregious examples
that you saw in the way that this money was
(11:38):
spent and the things it was spent on.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Yeah, when I was on the case and for some
amount of time, my focus in the team was to
focus on this cluster called the Jigjiga cluster, and that
cluster surrounded three individuals. But one of one of the individuals,
his name is leban Ala Schier.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
He stole a bunch of money over a million dollars,
can't remember.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
The exact amount, but he sent a bunch of the
money and spent it on you know, a building complex
in Kenya.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
He bought a resort in Kenya.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
He bought you know, fancy car and a new fancy house,
all these things, you know, But people throughout this fraud
scandal bought tons of fancy cars and things. And it's
not as if we should be a society where you
punishing people for doing well and buying things that you
can afford. But when you're stealing government money and then
buying fancy cars and fancy resorts, that's it's not acceptable
(12:34):
and people should be appalled by it.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
I mean it should be. You know, it's not that
it came to this.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
You know, how well taxpayer is be able to recover
the money at all, or how much can be recovered
At this point.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
You know, a good chunk of the money has been
I guess clawed back if you will. Yeah, And I
know in the Feeding our Future fraud investigation and prosecution
that number that Feeding our Future was responsible was about
two hundred and fifty million dollars at least in fraud,
and I think we hadn't clawed back or gotten back.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I think over seventy billion of it.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
So you're never going to get back that much money,
because a lot of money just went out the door.
It was just stolen. It was bought with all these
things that you're not going to get back. But the
government can seize back boats, houses, cars to extent that
we can grab it, and even some things like in
foreign countries if someone's willing to play guilty and give
that up.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
So it's definitely not enough.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
I mean a lot of money is just never going
to get back, and especially with this number that assistant
he was, attorney Joe Thompson mentioned recently last week in
a press conference. You know, nine billion dollars of this
of this money is just out the door. You know,
we're not going to get you know, probably two percent
of that back. I mean, we're not going to get
(13:47):
hardly any of it. Just all wasted, all wasted.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
There is a report in the City Journal last month
claiming that some of the money indirectly benefited out Shabab.
Have you seen any evidence of that or how do
you what do you make of that and that allegation.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
I mean, I think the evidence that the Tiny Journal
had talked about was, I mean, not to use a
pun here as self evident. I mean, the money did
go to some of those organizations. Now, whether or not
people here in Minnesota took the money from the government
with the intent to give it to El Shabab, It's
it's hard to prove intent like that, I mean, but
a lot of the money was stolen, was illicitly gotten,
(14:29):
and it did go to El Shabob, and that's just
like a really sad thing as well. But Wow, we're
having all this money that was meant to go to
Minnesotan's in Minnesota and then it goes to a terrorist organization.
It very much reminds me of I was in the
Marine Corps for five years on active duty as a
JAG officer, and I deployed once to Iraq to help
(14:49):
our effort President Trump's effort to defeat and destroy ISIS,
And my job was as an operational law attorney, was
to just give advice on our strikes against ISIS, And
I remember seeing reports in that timeframe.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
This is like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
It's about how the one state that sent the most
fighters foreign fighters to fight for ISIS out of any
state in our Union, was Minnesota. So this is wild
to me that Minnesota is sending all this money or sorry.
At that time, all people to fight for ISIS And
now we're seeing all this money getting sent from what state?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Minnesota?
Speaker 4 (15:25):
And unfortunately it's just because we have a lot of
folks here who happen to be of Somali descent who
are sending this money over and it's really really our stomach.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Do you think this is happening in other states and
it's just you know, yet to be discovered or you know,
what is your good tell you?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I think it is happening in other states.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
I mean, I think when you have one party rule
or you have a state, unfortunately here in Minnesota where
you've had Democrat control for a while, maybe people feel
over confident and it feel like they're just gonna be
you can get to get away with it. So maybe
to accept that other states, you know, i've had you know,
more bite partnership, I guess we'll say, like maybe it's
(16:06):
just a little bit harder to do. But I'm sure
it's happening in other states, and I'm seeing more reports
of that now. But somehow Minnesota was was the worst
of it, and I think, yeah, so it definitely is
happening in other states.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
It's interesting too, What did you make of sort of
like the initial I mean, obviously people you know, have
known about this for a while, but you know, we
saw like Tim Walls and Keith Ellison get pressed a
little bit more from the media. You know, sort of
what do you make of their handling of this and
sort of the excuses and really sort of like the
lack of accountability anyone's taking.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, I mean that's a big thing that Walls likes
to do.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Is he likes to say that, oh yeah, kind of
the buck stops with me and I'm the one, you know, responsible,
but he'll just like kind of conveniently not actually take responsibility.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
And that's exactly what he's done here.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Even he had a kind of a clap back, I
guess you could say, to what assist US attorney Joe
Tad And when Joe Thompson mentioned last week that he
believed the fraud could you know, be over nine billion dollars,
I think Tim Walls said, well, you know, they can
throw at numbers, but and then refer to him taking responsibility, Well, no,
he hasn't at all, and maybe he should have been
(17:15):
doing more early on, once it seemed clear that this
kind of fraud was happening. I guess I mentioned it earlier,
but I didn't even finish the point of saying that.
Like it's been an open secret in Minnesota. This kind
of fraud has been happening going back to many, many years,
and so these folks knew about it, like Keith Ellison
knew about it. Walls knew about it, but they just
didn't care to do much about it. Maybe because you know,
(17:38):
that's a pretty important voting block for Democrats in Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You know, Ihan Omar isn't.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
The congresswoman from the fifth district representing Downtow Minneapolis for
no reason.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
She's there.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
There's a very large semi population. So maybe Keith Ellison
and Tim Walls didn't want to be seen as being
too anti Somali for whatever reason. I mean, even my
former boss, former US Attorney Andy Luger, took a lot
of hits, I think, even from Ilhan Omar regarding his
handling of prosecuting foreign fighters who are coming from Minnesota
going to the Middle East that fights for ISIS, and
(18:12):
he was labeled as anti you know, anti Somali, which
is just a bunch of malarkey, and so definitely they've
been not actually taking responsibility and they should have been
from the get go.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Do you think, I mean, in terms of where we
are now with this story, like we're not done yet,
right Like do you think things will continue to break
or sort of wors your perspective on where this story
is heading?
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Mean, look, if you if assistant Answertory Joe Thompson is
saying that the fraud is going over nine billion pyers
and right now, I think just the am charged. I
don't have the exact number, but it's nothing close to that.
It might be, you know, around it's definitely above two
hundred and fifty million, but is below one billion, so
(18:52):
somewhere in that range.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
So there's a lot more fraud yet to be charged.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
I mean, that's just kind of what nine billion is
like the understanding of how much money was stolen, But
that's not how much money has been charged right now.
So there's a lot more to happen, a lot more
shoes to drop. I think the questions that need to
be answered is more specifically like what does you know
and when does you know it? I'm part of Tim
Walls and Keith Ellison and other leaders.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
What does you know? And when did you know it?
And we're going to see a lot more.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I hope that the fraud isn't going to get too
much bigger than what we've seen, because I just as
a person who pays taxes, I want to know that
my money is not being absolutely wasted. I know it's
like in many large way wasted, but I hope there's
a little there's a cap on that.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
So do you think any politicians could be swept up
in this?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
As you mentioned want sort of you know, Tim Walls
and Keith Ellison to be sort of further questioned and
a little bit more investigative work in that regard, do
you think politicians could get swept up in this?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I mean they could for sure get swept up into
this in terms.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Of you know, what did they do when when they
learned various pieces of information? I mean neilan Omar as
well what she knows and so yeah, I mean, as
I know Chairman Comber, I think of the huss Oversight
Committee is conducting an investigation right now. I know that
more questions are going to be asked. People are stondent
(20:14):
going to have to be put under oath and are
going to have to be telling the truth about what
about what happened even this meeting with Keith Ellison a
couple of years ago where various frosters were attempting to
curry favor with Keith Elison, Like what happened there? Like
did they try to give him any money, you know,
(20:34):
to carer any favor?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Like what else happened? What other promises were made?
Speaker 4 (20:40):
We need to know the answers to these questions because
these are people who are currently in charge and are
currently supposed to be handling our money well and clearly
they're not.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
No, And that's what it really infuriates a lot of Americans.
You know, before we go, are there guardrails we can
put in place to protect tax for money in these instances?
Like sort of what sort of reforms do you think
we could do? And having sort of seen this up close, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Mean this needs to be more checks and balances. We
can't expect like I mentioned some of these programs. We
even have a new one coming up in Minnesota, this
Paige Family Medical Leave.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
But this is going to be so easy to the fraud.
There's got to be more checks and balances. There has
to be more oversight and auditing.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Honestly, you just like, we're not saying that the government
spending should go down to zero, but if there is
any government spending or government programs that are helping folks
who are in need, you need to make sure that
there's some teeth in auditing and teeth in the in
the way that you make sure that the money is
going to the right places. You can't have situations where,
(21:50):
for example, of a person is saying that they're feeding
two thousand kids in a certain town when there's actually
the town that has a popular should have one thousand people,
which is not the exact numbers, but that's kind of
what that's actually what happened in Minnesota, where things were
totally off kilter and didn't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And then you have to have the ability to.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Have bureaucrats who do have some honor, who do raise
a flag and say something's going on here.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
You have to give them the ability to actually shut
off the money.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
And you have to make it so that you know,
fake claims of racism aren't going to stop that from happening.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
So appreciate your time and appreciate your service both as
a federal prosecutor and also as a marine.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Lisa, Thanks.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Jo, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
That was Joe, Tara appreciate him for making the time.
AP pursiate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday
and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week. I
also want to thank our producer John Cassio for putting
the show together.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Until next time.
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth, where we get
to the heart of the issues that matter to you. Today,
we've got former federal prosecutor and Marie veteran Joe Terrab,
who investigated the Feeding our Future, this Minnesota fraud scandal
that everyone's been talking about it. So he's just going
to share his unique frontline insight and to how it
exploded under Governor Tim Walls of Minnesota. And he said,
(00:24):
this this is how we put it. He said, the
big thing that jumped out to him was how easy
this fraud was to do. I could do that in
five minutes on a computer if I had absolutely no conscience.
So how was it allowed to go on for so long?
Why did politicians allow for it to go on for
so long? Well, they potentially get swept up in this investigation.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
So we're going to dig in.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
With someone who has seen this case up close, who investigated,
who prosecuted, who worked on this case. So stay tuned
for more on the Minnesota scandal. Joe, it's great to
have you on the show. This Minnesota fraud scandal has
(01:10):
been blowing up in the media and you had a
front row seat to it.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
So appreciate you making the time.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Appreciate you having me on. Thanks a lot, Lisa.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So you said of this scandal that you were surprised
at how easy this fraud was to do. You know,
you could do that in five minutes on a computer
if you had absolutely no conscience.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Walk us through why was it so easy?
Speaker 4 (01:30):
Well, there's a couple layers to that, I mean, stepping
back thirty thousand foot level. You had these massive government
programs in Minnesota here with the Federal Child Nutrition Program,
So money that was meant to go to feeding on
hungry kids, either in after school programs or summer school programs,
but you had a really stupid regulation, regulatory program to
(01:52):
disperse it. You had this purported watchdog organization called Feeding
Our Future, and they were purportedly the organization that was
supposed to be helping to feed a hungry kids. Well,
no one was watching this watchdog and so basically they
were getting kickbacks from different restaurants or other nonprofits to
(02:14):
say that, oh, you're feeding all these kids, when in actuality,
these kids were just made up. There were phantoms, they
were generating lists on kids that they were saying that
they're feeding. That just didn't even exist. They were generating
these fake and false, you know, backs up PDFs to
say that, oh yeah, we're buying all this food.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
For these kids, and it was just totally made up.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
And so in the same way that I can go
on my computer make up a PDF and saying that,
you know, I bought a thousand pounds of chicken or
one hundred gallons of milk to feed kids that I'm
not feeding.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
It was all a lie. It was super super easy.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
And so if you just had a government that cared
about where our money's going, that wouldn't have happened and
we wouldn't be out literally billions of dollars. And that's
the number that the former acting was attorney here in Minnesota,
Joe Thompson said that the numbers on the magnitude of
over nine billion billion with a bee. It's absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
You know, we've seen you know, the conviction of feeding
our future leader Amy Bach and more than fifty guilty police.
Why do you think it was allowed to go undetected
for so many years? Or how do you think one
undetected undetected for so long?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
So part of.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
It was, you know, during COVID, they just kind of
removed a lot of the auditing and any kind of
you know, checks and balances on it. So, you know, inditionally,
at least before COVID, there was supposed to be some
you know, site visits, actual physical visits. Well it kind
of went out the window over COVID. So just kind
of another reason how you know, waiting which COVID didn't
(03:51):
help things at all, or COVID lockdowns, i should say.
But then you had this really perverse incentive structure for
regulators or bureaucrats in Minnesota. So the agency in Minnesota,
the Minnesota Department of Education, was supposed to be kind
of overseeing the feeding our future organization that itself was
(04:11):
supposed to be overseeing other sites, and so you could
see where things could get lost in translation. But these
bureaucrats at the Minnesota Department of Education were incentivized to
just look the other way because when they did actually
end up putting up the smoke signal saying, hey, there's
some weird funny business here, like we're seeing exponential growth
in these federal child nutrition program funds being used when
(04:34):
like there's not a massive growth of kids or massive
growth and the needs for this when they put up
that smoke signal. What did feeding our Future do? Led
by Amy Bach, they alleged racism. They said to the court,
they said, you guys are being racists for shutting off
this money because we're feeding all these kids who are
Somali or Somali descent.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
And that actually won the day for a while.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And so literally like a you know, crying wolf and
saying that that just not having money, a bunch of money,
you know, being being misspent and stolen, and somehow racism
actually led to this not being uncovered for for quite
a while.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
But what does it say about the law that just
the simple charge of oh, you're being racist then prevented
further investigation or you know charges at the time.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
You know, I don't know exactly what it says about
the law. I mean it definitely says something really terrible
about our politics. I mean, thankfully we've just seen kind
of depending on swing against wocism running up. But what
you had here in Minnesota, especially under Governor Tim Walls
and Attorney General Keith Ellison, I mean, if you have
the leaders at the top who are just talking about
(05:41):
everything in terms of the lens of oppressor and oppressed,
you're you're you're hearing things of that nature. It's it's
definitely going to set up the sentence structure for people
to feel a little bit more nervous about having lots
of audits and background on organizations that might be spending
money on people of Somali descent, for example. And so
(06:05):
that's just a dangerous situation and it didn't work out
well for the Minnesota taxpayer.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
So what extent were Democrat politicians involved with some of
these people?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
You know?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Were they getting kickbacks, were they getting donations? Did some
of that potentially prevent further investigation?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, you had this meeting. I think it was December of.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Twenty twenty one, it might be often the year, but
a few of these individuals met up with these fraudsters,
these co conspirators with each other, met up with Keith Ellison,
Attorney General, the person who's supposed to be upholding the
law in Minnesota. And I think Keith Ellison, you know,
he used to represent Minneapolis United States Congress, the same
district that now Ilanowa represents. Keith Ellison was I think
(06:50):
the deputy chair of the DMC. They these fraudsters set
up a meeting with Keith Allison, and this meeting was
recorded and we actually have the recording, and they were
trying to curry favor with Keith Elston.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
They were saying, you.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Know, our money is very important and we can kind
of choose who we donate to, but we need to
make sure we have our attorney general who's fighting for us.
And really, just I mean, you don't even have to
look between the lines to see what they were trying
to do. They were trying to get Keith Ellison to
the extent that he was doing anything, which he really
wasn't like not put the spotlight on what's going on
with this these federal child musician funds and all this
(07:26):
fraud that's happening in Minnesota. And so they donate a
bunch of money to him. Now he'll say, oh, yeah,
well I gave it all back. Okay, fine, okay, you
gave a bunch of it back. Well why why were
they the people doing that they could donate money to
you and curry favor to you. And so that's very
concerning and I would hope and wish that more people
knew about that.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
You know, at what point do you think you know?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Because there were, you know, whistle blowers and auditors of
raised concerns, you know, raised concerns years before arrests were made.
You know what point did state officials have enough information
to stop this fraud?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Well, they definitely had it early enough.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
I remember there were points at which it was clear
that the state had this information. Keith Ellison, I remember,
even in the heat of I think it was a
twenty twenty two attorney general race against a guy who
I happened to be a good friend of mine, Jim Schultz,
bringing from attorney general in Minnesota, Keith Ellison was making
statements during debates that were absolutely false, saying, oh, well,
(08:26):
we were working hand in hand with the you know,
the federal regulators and prosecutors like myself and federal investigators.
We were working hand in hand with them from the
get go. You know, No, they weren't. They just weren't.
And this has kind of been an open secret unfortunately
in Minnesota that a lot of this fraud has been happening.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
For many, many years.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
I mean, people have been calling this out since I
think at least the year at twenty fourteen. There's a
lot of childcare fraud amongst folks mostly of Somali descent
here in Minnesota running these childcare organizations that we're either
massively over billing or just totally making up numbers saying yeah,
we're actually you know, we're providing childcare for all these kids,
but it really wasn't happening. Well, a lot of this
(09:09):
fraud is just kind of transformed over over time childcare,
but then it was feeding you know, federal childeutician program funds,
and then it was housing stabilization funds. You know, I've
heard of an interpretation interpret fraud autism fraud saying oh,
we're running these autism clinics and helping kids.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Well, no, you're actually not.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
There's providing kickbacks of families to say that their kids
had autism when they actually didn't. I mean, just so
when you have all these government programs that are supposed
to be helping people, but you set it up where
it's just so easy to steal and so easy to falsify,
and unfortunately you can't do the honor system with folks
who aren't honorable.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Why do you think Minnesota is more susceptible to fraud?
Speaker 4 (09:58):
That is well, is this going to say the million
dollar question? But maybe actually the billion dollar question of
the billions dollar question, Gosh, I wish I knew, because
it's really shameful. I mean, I'm proud of being in Minnesota,
and I was born racer in Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I think we have.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Statistically like the highest levels of like education, and we're
healthy and we read and we're like we're just you know,
we're pretty like connected state. You know, very proud about
being in Minnesota. But I think when you kind of
have these big government set up aid programs in Minnesota
which very much kind of are based off the honor
(10:34):
system in many ways, and really they shouldn't be. I mean,
things of the honor system are meant for a society
where there's a lot of trusts and you're not going
to have an infusion of people that might take advantage
of it, unfortunately, and that's just kind of what we had.
We had a bunch of people who were just willing
to cheat the system now where there's no virtue. You
need virtue in a democracy, and unfortunately we just had
(10:56):
a lot of folks who didn't have any virtue here.
And you had Amy Bach running the whole thing. She's
not of Somali descent, herself. But you had a lot
of folks in this tight knit community and people of
Somali descent who are just willing to take advantage of
the system. And it's not, you know, only people of
Somality descent who are communitists this kind of fraud. But
here in Minnesota, you just had that and it's just
(11:16):
really really hard to explain.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
You got to take a quick commercial break more on
this Minnesota fraud scandal. We're talking some of this money
was spent on luxury homes, overseas travel, there was a
lot of foreign transfer of money overseas as well. Kind
of walk us through some of the more egregious examples
that you saw in the way that this money was
(11:38):
spent and the things it was spent on.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Yeah, when I was on the case and for some
amount of time, my focus in the team was to
focus on this cluster called the Jigjiga cluster, and that
cluster surrounded three individuals. But one of one of the individuals,
his name is leban Ala Schier.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
He stole a bunch of money over a million dollars,
can't remember.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
The exact amount, but he sent a bunch of the
money and spent it on you know, a building complex
in Kenya.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
He bought a resort in Kenya.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
He bought you know, fancy car and a new fancy house,
all these things, you know, But people throughout this fraud
scandal bought tons of fancy cars and things. And it's
not as if we should be a society where you
punishing people for doing well and buying things that you
can afford. But when you're stealing government money and then
buying fancy cars and fancy resorts, that's it's not acceptable
(12:34):
and people should be appalled by it.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
I mean it should be. You know, it's not that
it came to this.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
You know, how well taxpayer is be able to recover
the money at all, or how much can be recovered
At this point.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
You know, a good chunk of the money has been
I guess clawed back if you will. Yeah, And I
know in the Feeding our Future fraud investigation and prosecution
that number that Feeding our Future was responsible was about
two hundred and fifty million dollars at least in fraud,
and I think we hadn't clawed back or gotten back.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
I think over seventy billion of it.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
So you're never going to get back that much money,
because a lot of money just went out the door.
It was just stolen. It was bought with all these
things that you're not going to get back. But the
government can seize back boats, houses, cars to extent that
we can grab it, and even some things like in
foreign countries if someone's willing to play guilty and give
that up.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
So it's definitely not enough.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
I mean a lot of money is just never going
to get back, and especially with this number that assistant
he was, attorney Joe Thompson mentioned recently last week in
a press conference. You know, nine billion dollars of this
of this money is just out the door. You know,
we're not going to get you know, probably two percent
of that back. I mean, we're not going to get
(13:47):
hardly any of it. Just all wasted, all wasted.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
There is a report in the City Journal last month
claiming that some of the money indirectly benefited out Shabab.
Have you seen any evidence of that or how do
you what do you make of that and that allegation.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
I mean, I think the evidence that the Tiny Journal
had talked about was, I mean, not to use a
pun here as self evident. I mean, the money did
go to some of those organizations. Now, whether or not
people here in Minnesota took the money from the government
with the intent to give it to El Shabab, It's
it's hard to prove intent like that, I mean, but
a lot of the money was stolen, was illicitly gotten,
(14:29):
and it did go to El Shabob, and that's just
like a really sad thing as well. But Wow, we're
having all this money that was meant to go to
Minnesotan's in Minnesota and then it goes to a terrorist organization.
It very much reminds me of I was in the
Marine Corps for five years on active duty as a
JAG officer, and I deployed once to Iraq to help
(14:49):
our effort President Trump's effort to defeat and destroy ISIS,
And my job was as an operational law attorney, was
to just give advice on our strikes against ISIS, And
I remember seeing reports in that timeframe.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
This is like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
It's about how the one state that sent the most
fighters foreign fighters to fight for ISIS out of any
state in our Union, was Minnesota. So this is wild
to me that Minnesota is sending all this money or sorry.
At that time, all people to fight for ISIS And
now we're seeing all this money getting sent from what state?
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Minnesota?
Speaker 4 (15:25):
And unfortunately it's just because we have a lot of
folks here who happen to be of Somali descent who
are sending this money over and it's really really our stomach.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Do you think this is happening in other states and
it's just you know, yet to be discovered or you know,
what is your good tell you?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I think it is happening in other states.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
I mean, I think when you have one party rule
or you have a state, unfortunately here in Minnesota where
you've had Democrat control for a while, maybe people feel
over confident and it feel like they're just gonna be
you can get to get away with it. So maybe
to accept that other states, you know, i've had you know,
more bite partnership, I guess we'll say, like maybe it's
(16:06):
just a little bit harder to do. But I'm sure
it's happening in other states, and I'm seeing more reports
of that now. But somehow Minnesota was was the worst
of it, and I think, yeah, so it definitely is
happening in other states.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
It's interesting too, What did you make of sort of
like the initial I mean, obviously people you know, have
known about this for a while, but you know, we
saw like Tim Walls and Keith Ellison get pressed a
little bit more from the media. You know, sort of
what do you make of their handling of this and
sort of the excuses and really sort of like the
lack of accountability anyone's taking.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, I mean that's a big thing that Walls likes
to do.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Is he likes to say that, oh yeah, kind of
the buck stops with me and I'm the one, you know, responsible,
but he'll just like kind of conveniently not actually take responsibility.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
And that's exactly what he's done here.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Even he had a kind of a clap back, I
guess you could say, to what assist US attorney Joe
Tad And when Joe Thompson mentioned last week that he
believed the fraud could you know, be over nine billion dollars,
I think Tim Walls said, well, you know, they can
throw at numbers, but and then refer to him taking responsibility, Well, no,
he hasn't at all, and maybe he should have been
(17:15):
doing more early on, once it seemed clear that this
kind of fraud was happening. I guess I mentioned it earlier,
but I didn't even finish the point of saying that.
Like it's been an open secret in Minnesota. This kind
of fraud has been happening going back to many, many years,
and so these folks knew about it, like Keith Ellison
knew about it. Walls knew about it, but they just
didn't care to do much about it. Maybe because you know,
(17:38):
that's a pretty important voting block for Democrats in Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You know, Ihan Omar isn't.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
The congresswoman from the fifth district representing Downtow Minneapolis for
no reason.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
She's there.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
There's a very large semi population. So maybe Keith Ellison
and Tim Walls didn't want to be seen as being
too anti Somali for whatever reason. I mean, even my
former boss, former US Attorney Andy Luger, took a lot
of hits, I think, even from Ilhan Omar regarding his
handling of prosecuting foreign fighters who are coming from Minnesota
going to the Middle East that fights for ISIS, and
(18:12):
he was labeled as anti you know, anti Somali, which
is just a bunch of malarkey, and so definitely they've
been not actually taking responsibility and they should have been
from the get go.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Do you think, I mean, in terms of where we
are now with this story, like we're not done yet,
right Like do you think things will continue to break
or sort of wors your perspective on where this story
is heading?
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Mean, look, if you if assistant Answertory Joe Thompson is
saying that the fraud is going over nine billion pyers
and right now, I think just the am charged. I
don't have the exact number, but it's nothing close to that.
It might be, you know, around it's definitely above two
hundred and fifty million, but is below one billion, so
(18:52):
somewhere in that range.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
So there's a lot more fraud yet to be charged.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
I mean, that's just kind of what nine billion is
like the understanding of how much money was stolen, But
that's not how much money has been charged right now.
So there's a lot more to happen, a lot more
shoes to drop. I think the questions that need to
be answered is more specifically like what does you know
and when does you know it? I'm part of Tim
Walls and Keith Ellison and other leaders.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
What does you know? And when did you know it?
And we're going to see a lot more.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I hope that the fraud isn't going to get too
much bigger than what we've seen, because I just as
a person who pays taxes, I want to know that
my money is not being absolutely wasted. I know it's
like in many large way wasted, but I hope there's
a little there's a cap on that.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
So do you think any politicians could be swept up
in this?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
As you mentioned want sort of you know, Tim Walls
and Keith Ellison to be sort of further questioned and
a little bit more investigative work in that regard, do
you think politicians could get swept up in this?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
I mean they could for sure get swept up into
this in terms.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Of you know, what did they do when when they
learned various pieces of information? I mean neilan Omar as
well what she knows and so yeah, I mean, as
I know Chairman Comber, I think of the huss Oversight
Committee is conducting an investigation right now. I know that
more questions are going to be asked. People are stondent
(20:14):
going to have to be put under oath and are
going to have to be telling the truth about what
about what happened even this meeting with Keith Ellison a
couple of years ago where various frosters were attempting to
curry favor with Keith Elison, Like what happened there? Like
did they try to give him any money, you know,
(20:34):
to carer any favor?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Like what else happened? What other promises were made?
Speaker 4 (20:40):
We need to know the answers to these questions because
these are people who are currently in charge and are
currently supposed to be handling our money well and clearly
they're not.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
No, And that's what it really infuriates a lot of Americans.
You know, before we go, are there guardrails we can
put in place to protect tax for money in these instances?
Like sort of what sort of reforms do you think
we could do? And having sort of seen this up close, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Mean this needs to be more checks and balances. We
can't expect like I mentioned some of these programs. We
even have a new one coming up in Minnesota, this
Paige Family Medical Leave.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
But this is going to be so easy to the fraud.
There's got to be more checks and balances. There has
to be more oversight and auditing.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Honestly, you just like, we're not saying that the government
spending should go down to zero, but if there is
any government spending or government programs that are helping folks
who are in need, you need to make sure that
there's some teeth in auditing and teeth in the in
the way that you make sure that the money is
going to the right places. You can't have situations where,
(21:50):
for example, of a person is saying that they're feeding
two thousand kids in a certain town when there's actually
the town that has a popular should have one thousand people,
which is not the exact numbers, but that's kind of
what that's actually what happened in Minnesota, where things were
totally off kilter and didn't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And then you have to have the ability to.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Have bureaucrats who do have some honor, who do raise
a flag and say something's going on here.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
You have to give them the ability to actually shut
off the money.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
And you have to make it so that you know,
fake claims of racism aren't going to stop that from happening.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
So appreciate your time and appreciate your service both as
a federal prosecutor and also as a marine.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Lisa, Thanks.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Jo, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
That was Joe, Tara appreciate him for making the time.
AP pursiate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday
and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week. I
also want to thank our producer John Cassio for putting
the show together.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Until next time.
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Buck Sexton
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