Somalis swipe simoleons in Minnesota (12-02-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So, what the heck is going on up in Sama, I mean Minnesota? Like the Somali's got it going on up there? Man. They they found that soft underbelly of Minnesota benefits and they have just been just going to town cutting it open, just drinking from the lifeblood of the left wing welfare state. Minnesota is drowning in fraud. That's how the story started over Its City Journal, a piece by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Ruffo. I started watching this burst onto the scene during my vacation last week, where yes, I somehow another contracted some congestion in my chest. It's still there, and so I apologize for the rough sounding nature of my voice, although it does make it somewhat gravelly sounding, which I've always wanted as a broadcaster. Anyway, billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim jazz Hands Walls Democratic. I added the jazz hands there, but he does do the jazz hands. Have you noticed that? But he does the waving. It's like jazz hands. Anyway, Democratic state officials overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the are asleep at the switch, and the media, duty bound by progressive pieties, refused to connect the dots. Although I will say the New York Times has now got onto this story, so credit where it is due. The New York Times is now covering the story. City Journal broke the story, although to be fair, like we kind of already knew a lot of this like two years ago, which is weird because do you remember Governor Tim Walls was put on the presidential ticket to be the VEEP for Kamala Harris, and nobody talked about this story, this scandal, which has now exploded because now there are even more dots to connect. And as Christopher Rufo just tweeted out within the hour, the Somali fraud story reveals a truth that liberals would prefer to ignore. And this is why I think. I think he's exactly right. I think this is why people are uncomfortable talking about this story. It's because of the racial dynamic, the cultural dynamic. There is a cultural dynamic at play, and he articulates it. Christopher Rufo articulates it thusly, when Nordic welfare state culture and Somali piracy culture collide, the result is mass looting of the public treasury. I'm old enough to remember when a state representative from Mecklemburg County, a Democrat, Carla Cunningham, in a debate on the floor in the General Assembly in Raleigh a few months ago, and she pointed out that not all cultures are equal, and her felt, hello, Democrats lost their minds. How dare she say such a thing. And you'll recall there was another state lawmaker from Mecklenburg County. I forget his last name, it's tedros something, or maybe his last name is Tedros but I had him on the show. His legislative assistant sent out a press release condemning Carla Cunningham. So I replied, and I said, I'd love to have him on the show, and she booked. It don't know if that'll ever happen again, because I kept asking whether or not his assertion could be supported by some evidence. Make your case that all cultures because he was mad that she said all cultures are not equal, and he was mad she said that, and I said, well, do you believe that that's true? And then he kept saying about, oh, it's the context of this argument, it's the context of the bill, it's the context of the debate and all of this. And he could never articulate why she was wrong to say that, And of course she was not wrong to say that. In fact, there was a story out of Minneapolis. I believe it's Minneapolis, Saint Paul. Yeah, Saint Paul Minnesota rather because the name of the Islamic Center is the Saint Paul Islamic Center, which I did have to do a double take on that. Yeah, the Saint Paul Islamic Center put out a statement in defense of one of their members who just got arrested for raping a thirteen year old, and they put out the statement saying that he wasn't aware he had not fully assimilated to the American culture. He's a Somali so they apparently the Islamic Center of Saint Paul has apparently not gotten the memo that all cultures are equal, so because they're like, oh, no, he didn't know. He's from Somalia. He didn't know that that's not allowed here. All cultures are not equal. That's not to say better or worse in total right, because some cultures may have very good things about them and very bad things. And if you're going to do an assessment and compare, then you got to look at the totality of the culture. In many cases, this is back to the City Journal story. In many cases regarding the fraud, it was allegedly perpetrated by members of Minnesota's sizable Somali community. Federal counter terrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al Shabab. As one confidential source said, quote, the largest funder of Al Shabab is the Minnesota taxpayer. The City Journal investigation shows what happens when a tribal mindset meets a bleeding heart bureaucracy. When imported clan loyalties collide with a political class too timid to offend, and when accusations of racism are cynically deployed to shield criminal behavior, and there's evidence of that. There's direct evidence that that's why whistleblowers were retaliated against and shut down, and people didn't want to talk about it because the somalis said, that's racist. And the predictable result is, if you were to design a welfare program to specifically facilitate fraud, it would look like the Minnesota Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services Program or HSS. It would look like this program. Okay. It was the first of its kind in America, and it was launched with the noble goal to help seniors, addicts, the disabled, and the mentally ill. It was designed to help them secure housing. It was designed with low barriers to entry. It was designed with minimal requirements for reimbursement. Before the program went live in twenty twenty, officials pegged its annual estimated price tag to be two point six million dollars. Two point six million dollars. Costs went out of control, as you might imagine, last year, not two point six million. No, No, the total was one hundred four million dollars. It went from two point six to twenty one million, to forty two million, to seventy four million to one oh four million. It was on track this year to reach like one hundred and twenty five million dollars. On August first, Minnesota's Department of Health and Humans Services moved to scrap this program. They said payment to seventy seven providers. These housing stabilization providers had already been terminated due to credible allegations of fraud. Joe Thompson, who was the acting US Attorney for the District of Minnesota, Hey, went even further, stating that the vast majority of the HSS program was fraudulent. Which makes sense. Look, I understand, you know government program rolls out, they're like price tag two point six million dollars, and I'm thinking, okay, it's going to be double that. But even if I triple that, even if I put it at ten million, that's still nowhere near the one hundred and four million it that it was paying out last year. That explosive growth is a sign of fraud. This isn't just overbilling, No, No, people created entirely fictitious companies specifically to defraud the system, and it was widespread. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. 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So up in Minnesota, a Somali's created this massive UH fraud network where they were not just over billing through this H eight sorry HSS program, a housing program. They had made up companies that were specifically designed to defraud the system. The perpetrators often targeted people recently released from rehab. They would sign them up for medicaid services that they had no intention of providing, which sounds a lot like the scandal involving that guy here in Charlotte with heels Charlotte right, Cedric something or other, who was one of the pals of our indicted now former Charlotte City Council Member Tijuana Brown, the former acting US Attorney for the District of Minnesota, said, I spent my career as a fraud prosecutor, and the depth of the fraud of Minnesota takes my breath away. Here's one case Feeding our Future FOF, or FOFF as I call it. There have now been gosh, I think it's I think it's actually top like seventy defendants fifty six have pleaded guilty in the two hundred and fifty million dollar fraud scheme. Feeding Our Future was founded in twenty sixteen. It was a very small Minnesota nonprofit sponsored daycares and after school programs to enroll in the federal child nutrition program. So I think this is to the point I saw on the text line. Yeah, Eric said, as long as the Minnesota taxpayer is paying for all that fraud, it's not my problem. They keep voting for people like Waltz, so let them have at it. Right. But here's the thing, it's Federal Child nutrition program money, okay. So Feeding our Future nonprofit that sponsored daycares and after school programs to enroll in the federal child nutrition program in twenty nineteen, so three years after it was created, FOF received just under three and a half million dollars in federal funding that was dispersed by the state. So the Feds send the money to the state and the state distributes. In the months after the COVID nineteen pandemic, began. However, the nonprofit rapidly increased its number of sponsored sites. They used fake meal counts, so they made up the numbers. They doctored attendance records, they fabricated invoices, and the perpetrators of the fraud ring claimed to be serving thousands of meals a day, seven days a week to underprivileged children. Two years later, FOF received nearly two hundred million dollars in funding federal funding. In reality, though, the money was being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and by real estate in America, Turkey sorry to Kia is how they pronounce it now, as well as Kenya. In twenty twenty, Minnesota officials began raising concerns about the nonprofits rapid expansion. In response, the group filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination related to outstanding site applications, noting that feeding our future caters to foreign nationals. People were afraid of being called racist. They were literally threatened with that in a lawsuit. How dare you withhold this federal money? You're racist? Media, alongside Minnesota's Democratic establishment, turned a blind eye to the fraud within the Somali community. Then This, in turn allowed the problem to metastasize. The fraudsters leveraged their growing political influence to cultivate close ties with Minnesota's elected officials. Several individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scheme donated to or appeared publicly with do you want to guess? Ilin Omar exactly, the Somali born congresswoman from Minneapolis. Omar's deputy District director, Ali Is advocated on behalf of Feeding our Future. Omar Fateh, a former state senator who recently ran for Minneapolis mayor. He had lobbied Governor Tim Wohole in support of the program as well. And one of the accused, Abdi Nur Salah, served as a senior aide to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry. And that's just one program, the Feeding our Future. Yeah, Feeding our Future. There's another case. One of the women, Ashah Farhan Hassan, also Somali. She's been charged in the Feeding Our Future scam, but she's alleged to have played a role in a fourteen million dollar fraud scheme perpetrated against Minnesota's Early Intensive Developmental and behavioral intervention program. She and her co conspirators approached parents in the Somali community and recruited their children into autism therapy services. And it did not matter if a child had autism or or not. It did not matter. Hassan would facilitate a fraudulent diagnosis for them and then the kickbacks begin. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. 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That's what your photos and videos are They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. The Somali Somolean scandal here as I'm calling it, maybe it'll catch on, not just with the fof the Feeding our Future, but also the early intensive developmental and behavioral intervention program where this woman, Asha Farhan Hassan, along with her co conspirators, would recruit parents in the Somali community to have their kids enroll in autism therapy services, and if the kids did not have an autism diagnosis, then they would fabricate one. They would make one up for them. So to drive up enrollment, Hassan and her partners paid monthly cash kickback payments to the parents of the kids who enrolled, which then, of course, if you're coming from a pirate culture and you're the parent in this scenario and you don't feel like you're getting enough money, well now you could threaten to leave and you can extort the people that are running the fraud for more money, which occurred also some of them would actually then go off and create their own autism therapy centers which were in name only, and they would just keep all of the money there for the autism services. And much like with the HSS program the housing program, the autism claims to Medicaid in Minnesota skyrocketed. They went from three million dollars five years ago up to three hundred ninety nine million dollars in five years. By the time that the fraud scheme was exposed, one in sixteen Somali four year olds in the state had reportedly been diagnosed with autism. And that is a rate that is more than triple the state average, which should have been an indication like I don't know why all these Somalis are getting autism, Like what's up with that? Like are they all getting like massive batteries of vaccines or something. I don't know. No kidding, it's just a joke. I'm not saying that anyway. So the City Journal goes on to report later on this is a very lengthy investigative. Peace they find at least twenty eight fraud scandals have surfaced since Tim Walls was elected governor in twenty nineteen. Most of the large scale fraud rings according to two forms FBI officials who spoke with the City Journal have been perpetrated by members of the Somali community. What happened to all of the money, Well, some of it went to politicians in campaign contributions, obviously, some of it got sent back to a lot of it got sent back to Somalia. They sent huge sums in what's called remittances or money transfers from Minnesota to Somalia. According to reports, and estimated forty percent of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad, like it's propping up their economy in Somalia. Whatever you can say of the economy of Somalia, forty percent of the households there get money from overseas in twenty twenty three alone, the Somali diasport. By the way, what did I see the other day that Somalia is home to I think it's the largest goal old reserve, like the largest gold vein on Earth, and like the second largest uranium crop. But they can't access it because nobody will go in there because if they go in there, they get murdered. So they have all these resources, but because they keep murdering each other and then murdering anybody who comes in to try to, you know, turn this into profitable industries. They get murdered. That's why it's impoverished. Right, it's the crime. It's the tribal mindset, this clan mindset. Anyway, the Somalia. In twenty twenty three, the Somalia diaspora sent back one point seven billion dollars. So the people from Somalia that are living outside of Somalia sent back one point seven billion dollars. That is more than the annual government budget of Somalia. City Journal reports some of this money now has been directed to an even more troubling destination, the al Qaeda linked Islamic terror group Al Shabab. According to multiple law enforcement sources, Minnesota Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of hawaas, those are informal, clan based money traders that have wound up in the coffers of al Chebab, Whether intentionally or not. When you're dealing with these hawalas, these money traders, al Shabab is getting a cut, intended or not. You know, if you're sending money, you fled Somalia, you're working, you're law abiding, you're doing everything right. You're not engaged in fraud, but you're sending money back through these jualas you're funding al Shabab. Every cent that is sent back to Somalia benefits al Shabab in some way. They're taking their cut. Finally, City Journal reports ten years ago Minnesota led the nation and the number of Americans who had joined or attempted to join isis. Of the fifty eight Americans who had done so, nearly half of them came from Minnesota. Coincidence, welfare fraud also likely to become a major issue in Minnesota's twenty twenty six elections. Governor Tim Walls is seeking a third term, and he has presided over a litany of scandals. He is facing Republican challenger Kristin Robbins, who has made fraud prevention central to her campaign, as she should. If this has cost Minnesota and federal taxpayers billions of dollars, which there are some estimates that show this could be somewhere in the neighborhood of three to four billion dollars, like you should make this the focal point of your campaign. Political blowback is brewing. In fact, it has already blown back. There's a Twitter account for the Minnesota Department of Human Service employees, and they took a flamethrower to jazz hands. Tim Walls all right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news, slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent. So the Minnesota Department of Human Service employees put out a press release basically on Twitter and they said Tim Walls governor is one hundred percent responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let him know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud, but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walls systematically retaliated against whistleblowers, 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 DFM members, Democrat, Farmers, Labor. What's it called. It's the socialists, it's the basically, it's the Democrat Party up there, the DFL, as well as an indifferent mainstream media. It's scary, isolating, and left us wondering who we can turn to. In addition to retaliating against the whistleblowers, 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 all the way up to Tim Walls. They always say Tim Walls. He's got one of those names where he can't just say Walls, you gotta say Tim Walls. Agency leaders appointed by Tim Walls willfully disregarded rules and laws to keep fraud reports quiet, even to the extent of threatening fail families of whistleblowers. These same leaders are not qualified for their jobs, instead getting leadership jobs via Tim Walls's friendship. So state government were left floundering. DFL lawmakers refused to acknowledge fraud and deflected any serious conversation to stop fraud. Biased mainstream media such as WCCO, which I believe is the TV station up there, as well as MPR which is Minnesota Public Radio. Oh, where have you gone, Lake wilbe Gone? They showed absolutely no interest in covering fraud happening in our own state. Programs, especially in behavioral health and disability services, were built without any guardrails against fraud, all in an attempt to extract more funding from the legislature. And the federal government. Right, that was the play makes sense. And by the way, I've talked about this for years, you would think that the people who advocate for the growth of government programs and services would be the biggest hawks when it comes to watching out for fraud, because any dollar that is diverted away from the mission of the program or the service is a dollar that is not then being used to help the people that you say you care so much about that you advocated for the creation of the program or service. Right, the biggest advocates for the programs should be the biggest hawks against fraud. Yet they never seem to care. Reassess your assumption if you don't understand the outcome, reassess your assumption. The assumption is that they actually care about helping these people through the programs and services. But that's not actually the case. That's not the case. They're getting the dopamine hits, they're getting the rush, the self pleasure sure of having other people know that they care. That's the juice they want. As staff, they say, we first hand witnessed and observed fraud happening, yet we were shut down, reassigned, and told to keep quiet. Sometimes more leadership did not want to appear to discriminate against certain communities and were unwilling to take action such as stopping fraud that would have an adverse impact on their image. So this is the their racist charge. That's why the fraud investigations were stymied, one of the reasons at least. It is an absolute shame. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything. W Well, I'm gone.