The Minnesota Meltdown: Fraud, Refugees, Retaliation—and a System Built to Be Exploited

LISTEN and SUBSCRIBE on:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i 

WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:

https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured  

A massive web of welfare fraud, ignored warnings, silenced whistleblowers, and political leaders who refused to act—Minnesota’s scandal is no isolated case. It’s a window into what happens when big government, activist nonprofits, and decades-old refugee policies collide with zero accountability. We trace the money, the politics, the retaliation, and the national implications of a system begging to be exploited. Plus, a moment of levity: a nod to Prince, the legendary Minnesotan who mastered everything except the dysfunction happening in his own backyard.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
If Prince was still alive and that guy could basically
do anything, for crying out loud, he couldn't save the
state of Minnesota. No, all kidding aside, We'll talk about
prints in a little bit here, but I've got a
desk full of story. I can't even get my arms

(00:36):
around all of the stuff that is taking place there
at this point time. A scandal monumental proportions. The taxpayers
in the state of Minnesota have had somewhere north of
one billion dollars stolen from them by various different welfare

(01:01):
fraudsters based around Minneapolis. Is tight, tighten knit Somali community.
This is I mean, this looks into the way we've
been doing things as far as immigration in this country.

(01:25):
But the depth of this type of fraud, how it
has been completely ignored by the people in power, by
the media as as well. Back in September of twenty
twenty two, federal government began to indict multiple sets of

(01:50):
Minneapolis areas Somali Americans on charges of defrauding Minnesota welfare
and public assistance programs from National Review Today. First came
the Feeding Our Future scandal, where to date, seventy five
defendants associated with the Somali Charitable Organization allegedly chose to

(02:14):
feed on the sudden flood of post twenty twenty COVID
ARA relief money available to anyone willing to claim any
sort of cause whatsoever, give us money. Feeding Our Future
is able to hoover up millions of dollars of COVID
funding with the promise of providing schlunches to disadvantage children

(02:35):
in the Twin City Somali community. The FBI rated they
had fake meal locations back in January of twenty twenty two,
and since then the federal indictments have been piling up.
This is only one of multiple fraud schemes government fraud

(02:59):
schemes coming out of Minneapolis Saint Paul Somali community during
the COVID era. This past September, federal prosecutors dropped their
first in a wave of indictments against eight defends for
defrauding the state's housing Stabilization Services program to the tunes

(03:20):
of hundreds of millions of dollars. Again now the New
York Times he even got involved with this, and one
governor that it's kind of close to becoming vice president.

(03:42):
Tim Walls. Tim Walls, and to this day, I don't
know what who thought that he was a good person
to put on a ticket. I mean, he's anyway, I'm
not going to say anything, Okay, I apologize, shouldn't anyway,
his responsibility in this and turning the other way this

(04:07):
fraud crisis, this is the prosecutor. This fraud crisis didn't
come out of nowhere. It's the result of widespread failure
across nearly every level of leadership in Minnesota. Politicians who
turned a blind eye, agencies that failed to act, prosecutors
in law enforcement who didn't push hard enough, reporters who

(04:27):
ignored the story, community leaders who stayed silent, and a
public that wanted to believe it couldn't happen here. This
isn't just a few criminals exploiting the system. This is
a system that's been begging to be exploited. And again
I read that and you could just basically replay that

(04:51):
this is kind of what par for the course with
government all across the country. You take a look at
you know, the amount of money that's sent to Washington,
d C. The amount of graft that that takes place there.
I've never seen this before, though, Okay, if somebody can

(05:12):
give me an instance where this has happened before, especially
in a blue state. Okay, I grew up in a
blue state. I grew up in one of the uh
one of the socialist capitals here in the United States,
all of any New York. Yeah, and I've never I've
never seen big government turn on itself like this before.

(05:38):
This is from the Minnesota Department of Human Service employees.
Tim Walls is one hundred percent responsible for massive fraud
in Minnesota. We let Tim Walls know of fraud early on,
hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud, but no, we
got the opposite response. Tim Walls systematically retaliated against whistle blowers,

(06:03):
using monitoring threats, repression, and did his best to discredit
fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight
of retaliation by Tim Walls, certain DFL members, and an
indifferent mainstream medium. It's scary, isolating, and left us wondering
who we can turn to. In addition to retaliating against whistleblower,

(06:30):
Tim Walls disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing
agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance. Media and
politicians supporting Tim Walls or the DFL agenda attacked whistleblowers
who were trying to raise red flags on fraudulent activities.
This is a cascade of systemic failures leading up to

(06:51):
Tim Walls, and it goes on not to mention the
fact that he told Kamala Harris, they warned her about
this guy. So now we have US House Committee and
Treasury Department both launching investigations into Tim Walls's role in

(07:14):
a massive fraud scheme. Okay, some other things, same spot.
Here's why it's a lot a lot to take in here.
Voter fraud in Minnesota shows Somalian communities were targeted to
register fake voters for Democrats. Fraudulent voter registration applications were

(07:38):
submitted to election officials and offices in thirteen Minnesota counties.
This was funded by taxpayers. A Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison,
caught on tape pledging to help Somali fraudsters in exchange
for campaign donations. I listened to the audio. This is
the Attorney General State of Minnesota, an NNGO headquarter Minnesota,

(08:02):
getting paid two thousand, three n and seventy fine dollars
for every Somalia immigrant that they bring in to the
United States. Ahh yeah, it's it's funny. You know they
talk about the you know, think about the enemy within.

(08:25):
We we do this. We do this to ourselves as
a country. We really do. Take a look, take a
look at you know again, two hundred thousand Afghan immigrants
not even vetted, just let them into the country. Let's
I'm gonna go through this here. Did a little bit

(08:47):
of homework here in regards to the US Somali refugee program.
You didn't vote for this. I didn't vote for this.
There's no referendum on this, not you say, no bill
in Congress on this. This is how it started. The

(09:09):
Refugee Act of nineteen eighty passed by Congress, signed into
law by Jimmy Carter. The President alone gets to decide
every year how many refugees America takes and from what countries.
No new law required no public vote, no ballot measure.

(09:32):
George H. W. Bush used that authority in nineteen ninety
two nineteen ninety three to open a small Priority two
category for Somalis of special humanitarian concern. First arrivals. A
few hundred came in nineteen ninety two nineteen ninety three,

(09:53):
at the tail end of his presidency. What was happening
at that point in time? Do you remember? Remember all
was happening in Mogadishu and Blackhawk down? Yeah, nobody paid attention.
These numbers grew under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama.

(10:16):
It slowed down under Trump, but he didn't stop it
and Joe Biden. So let's go through the numbers. Nineteen ninety,
nineteen ninety four. Four thousand came in, nineteen ninety five,
two thousand and five, forty five thousand, two thousand and sixty,
two thousand and sixteen, seventy one thousand, twenty seventeen, two

(10:37):
thy twenty four, another sixty thousand plus official refugee total
since nineteen ninety one hundred and eighty thousand. But that's
not the real number. That's not the real number. Once
you're in, Once you're in, it's called chain migration, fam reunification.

(11:02):
Once a refugee is resettled, they can petition four spouses
and minor children, immediate family. No limit on that, no
limit on that parents, no limit adult sons, daughters, and siblings.
That's subject to quotas, but still it's big numbers over

(11:24):
time because Somali families are large and the nineteen eighty
Act and later laws are extremely generous with extended family.
The actual ethnic Somali population in the United States is
now estimated between four hundred and fifty and seven hundred thousand.

(11:48):
Largest concentrations Minneapolis Saint Paul one hundred to one hundred
and fifty, Columbus, Ohio seventy to one hundred, Seattle forty
to sixty. Then there's San Diegoville and Lewiston, Maine. They
have some five and six figure Somali neighborhoods. This is

(12:10):
what the executive branch can do at this point in time.
We don't pay attention. This is what you don't pay
atten people. They're just gonna grab power. It's gonna grab power.
And then you take a look, when you have all
of these refugee programs, well, then what you need to

(12:32):
have government programs to help with the refugees, meaning what
more government employees, more government employees living off the dole
of the taxpayers, and it just keeps getting bigger and
bigger and bigger. That's that's the issue. Now again, I

(12:58):
guess you know they're threatening the gonna send ice to
to these areas. What do you do at this point
in time? But what do you do? Oh, you're gonna
you're gonna see good luck. I mean, you're gonna see
people lawyer up. You're gonna have all these lefties out
there doing a myriad of different things to protect us.
But we allow this to happen. Again, I mentioned this,

(13:22):
I think recently on the program. I was blown away.
I was blown away when I went to the Republican
Convention in Minneapolis Saint Paul. And when I saw when
I landed there, I was like, did I get Did
they drop me off in the wrong place? I had

(13:44):
dropped off in the wrong country. Never see Burker's in
the United States. I never saw a Burca in the
United States. Now, I lived in New York City, I
liver't Manhattan for ten years. Okay, I never saw Burka
once Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Burker's wait, what in the
world is going on? Where the hell am I for

(14:05):
crying out loud? This doesn't jibe, This is not America.
One of the dumbest statements. And I'm going to get
blowback on this I've ever heard my entire life is
diversity is our strength. What what does that mean? Exactly?

(14:30):
What does that mean? You know, we're a fairly young
country as far as to take a look at, you know,
certain for two hundred and fifty years, we have our
way of doing things. Why what would make anybody think
that these people from this area of the world, with

(14:52):
this belief system would jibe here in the United States
of America and in massive numbers. It doesn't work, don't
Their philosophy doesn't work. We talked about yesterday had the

(15:15):
afghandy uh uh people you know ninety percent want sharia.
Lat don't work here? Why here? I ain't a lot
of a lot of you know, Muslim countries you know
in the Middle East that they you know, let there
go ahead. We just don't think you're gonna fit in

(15:38):
for crying out loud. It's just, you know, not gonna work.
You don't fit in, you don't blend here and that's so.
Is that that want to be deep called race? Race?

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Not?

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh not, that's the way you feel. Okay, well, you know,
we want to which to some place where you're gonna
feel comfortable. You come to our house and you engage
in this and it's it. Can we allow it to happen?
We allow it to happen. Again. We got a lot
of you know, like I said, big government, they live

(16:15):
off this, all the little NGOs, all the little side
groups there, all the little aid groups, and we're gonna
help do this, and we're gonna help do that. Yeah. Yeah,
they're all making money. They're all making their living off
the taxpayer. It's massive. The biggest surprise that I have

(16:39):
with this story, to be quite honest with you, is
the fact that it's out there now. I'm gonna throw
this question. Do you think anyone is gonna be held responsible?
What's the over under on that? Okay, I don't gamble, nobody, nobody.

(17:03):
It's going to be in the news now for a while. Oh,
James Comber is going to have another investigation. Bullshit, mark
my words. Okay, mark my words. This is a show, okay,
just like every other every day time. Because Republicans are
going to realize that they have friends and buddies in
DC working for some of these organizations that are helping

(17:26):
AI these Somali communities, and they don't want to expose them.
They're their friends, they're their buddies, and nothing will be done.
It is what it is, people. I can't even get
angry about the stuff anymore. This is this is the
country we have decided to create. To a lot of

(17:50):
we've allowed this to happen. These are going to change quickly.
Back to Prince Uh yeah, okay, if you're not from
me with you young people listening to this thing, wake up?
Okay again. The guy was a musical genius that I said.
He could do a lot of stuff. He was also

(18:10):
All State basketball in the state of Minnesota. Crazy athlete.
Could play every I mean literally every instrument. Actually, you
want to watch something, Okay, watch the I want to
see Prince play the just pat play guitars. Unbelievable guitar player.
But watch him on stage with some unbelievable guitar players.

(18:34):
This was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
induction of George Harrison, and watch him do the guitar
solo for why my guitar, well, my guitar gently weeks
watch him play that insane or you know you watch too,
You watch True Hollywood Stories Dave Chappelle. Dave Chappelle doing

(18:55):
True Hollywood Stories with Prince unbelievable story anyway. Watch Talk
on Wall Street dot com