The real scandal of the Minnesota Somali fraud story (12-29-2025--Hour3)

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 of the links, become a patron, go to dpetecleanershow 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 a twenty three year old independent YouTube journalist named Nick Shirley went around Minneapolis Saint Paul area with an independent researcher guy named Dave, who had made a whole bunch over the last five years. He's been apparently paying visits to daycares and asking can he enroll his grandson in these daycares? And they keep saying no. And he noticed something really odd that first off, they were located in these warehouses and industrial parks and such. All the windows were blacked out, there were no playground equipment, and most importantly, no kids. He said, never did he encounter a single child at any one of the daycare centers that he visited over the last four or five years of his independent research. He tagged along with Nick Shirley, who posted the video about forty eight hours ago or so maybe Friday, I guess, and Nick Shirley uncovered and confirmed the very same thing that David had said. He found that none of these places seemed to be actual daycare providers. They also then went to adult healthcare home healthcare providers, same thing. Many of them located in the same sort of business building, right warehouse industrial kind of building, and they also checked out some transportation providers. All of this stuff is funded by government grant And what Nick Shirley claimed is that there was somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and ten million dollars worth of fraud that could be attached here to all of the places that they identified among those different operations based on the annual grants that these businesses these companies had received. So the real story here because journalisming rule number two is that when the scandal involves a Republican, the story is the scandal, but when a scandal involves a Democrat, the story is the Republican response to that scandal. Right, So the first step is to basically ignore the story as much as you can if you don't like who may be implicated in this level of fraud. And so that's been the approach that a lot of legacy meets outlets have been taking because there has been no press conference held by a US attorney. For example, as we saw about two weeks ago, when some nine billion dollars worth of medicaid fraud was alleged by the US Attorney's office. Dozens of people charged, several convicted already and they are still investigating all of that stuff. So that that was the first wave of it. And after that popped, that's when Nick Shirley hooked up with this guy David, and they went around to look at some other areas where fraud may be occurring. And that's what prompted him to do the video. Now, because he is an independent YouTuber, he's not, you know, a credentialed journalist working out of an august newsroom like the New York Times or something. The story is being ignored. There's a website that I use to track the kind of average that a story gets. It's called ground News. You can check it out. And this morning, I believe was when I checked. When I checked the coverage. Zero stories on the center or center left of this story that Nick Shirley blew open over the weekend. And when I say blue open, like if you are, if you're on social media and you are on the center right or the right, like you're on that side of the political spectrum, you are well aware of the story. You probably watched the video on YouTube or sorry, on Twitter alone formerly known as X. On Twitter, it's got something like one hundred million views. It's ridiculous. On YouTube, it's got something approaching one hundred million views also, So it is a massive story, but it's really only been on the right. The legacy media, the quote mainstream media, whatever you want to call them, they have largely ignored the story. Now maybe they are marshaling their resources to go and do their own investigative journalism in too. That's as they should, and that is sort of the path that a lot of newsrooms take, which is if you don't if you don't break the story, if you're not the one that did the investigation into the story, but you know, the story has legs, and so you're going to keep pursuing it and you can kind of get some different angles or the story is big enough that you have to cover it, you know, then you will devote your own resources and reporters to go track it down. And so maybe that's what's happening. We could see some more reporting on it. But the only coverage that I saw from any center left or left media newsrooms the one place therap dot com. The rap that's the only plass I saw it. And a lot of this sounds like it was written by AI. Okay, but here's the real story. Headline Young journalists video exposing alleged billion dollar fraud scheme in Minnesota goes viral like wildfire. Okay. Oh, And I should point out the reason why I suspect a lot of newsrooms don't want to touch the story is because this industrial scale fraud, it seems to be mainly contained within the Somali community in Minnesota. There's a large Somali population. And some of the stats of the transportation companies, for example, over a thousand of these transportation companies in the Minneapolis Saint Paul area. Of the one thousand plus eight hundred of them are owned by some right, same thing with the daycare centers, healthcare centers, and now I just saw by the way, somebody took a look. Let me see here it is. There are five hundred This is from kristin meg There are five hundred and thirty nine childcare centers in Washington State that list Somali as the primary language. Most do not even give a street address according to their official documents. So it seems to me like the Somalis have as a community a closed community. They do not welcome outsiders and such. They are very sort of insulated amongst themselves in America. It seems like they have figured out a template, and that is to set up a affront business of some kind that can then draw government grants and you don't actually ever have to provide any services for any clients because nobody will come and inspect them. And one of the reasons why this occurs is there is a fear of being called racist or xenophobic or Islamophobic because the Somali community has accused people of being that whenever anybody questioned over the last five years or so. There and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago when people started asking some questions after Minnesota Star Tribune story, they were accused of being racist. Politicians elected leaders. They were accused of being racist and xenophobic and Islamophobic for questioning. And it's a large voter block and they make campaign donations, so there is an incentive there to not ask questions. So, with modern communications being what they are, word spreads of all the riches to be made in America, there is an easy immigration process for Somali's, particularly under the Temporary Protected Status rule that allowed them to come legally, which, by the way, Donald Trump two weeks ago said he was going to revoke the TPS, right, so there was a system built to allow for this kind of fraud to proliferate. That's what it looks like right now. But we'll see because now the federal investigators are all over this. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. 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There's an old saying it's actually not very old, but says modern journalism is about covering a story with a pillow until it stops moving, And I suspect that's what we are seeing now with some of the response, and by some, I mean like really, the only response to Nick Shirley's YouTube video is report where he went around and visited a bunch of these somally owned daycare, adult healthcare, and transportation companies that did not have any clients, did not want to have him as a client. They wouldn't even open the doors for him, everything was locked up. They appeared to be fronts for fraud taking government grants from the state coffers as well as the federal collers. Okay, he had a researcher with him, guy that he only named his David. David has claimed he claimed that he has been assaulted on two different occasions when he attempted to go and roll his grandchildren in some of these daycares in order to try to gain access to see are there any kids there? He never saw any kids there, he says. His personal inquiry, which has included his own own research and sources at the State House in Saint Paul, has uncovered more than one thousand fraudulent service oriented businesses, more than eight hundred of which are Somali owned. Again, this is the only article I could find in any center left or left publications, and this one comes from the Wrap dot com written by Josh Dickey. Shirley started posting regularly to his YouTube channel in twenty nineteen and has built a large online following by posting videos that combine on the ground interviews, commentary, and investigative style reporting, especially on political and social topics. His content often involves interviewing people in public spaces, exploring controversial issues, and presenting bold narratives about social unrest, immigration protests, and alleged fraud. So I mean this sounds like Ai wrote this. His significant following leans toward conservative digital circles. His posts are amplified by police figures like Elon Musk and JD. Vance, and he has attracted criticism over his methods and perceived bias. So the response. By the way, there's a feature on Twitter called community notes, and I think Facebook implemented a similar system where if somebody is posting something that is misinformation, disinformation, whatever, people can like, people can apply to be community note providers or noters community notes. I don't know where you can go in if you have access to this, which by the way, I do. I am one of these bird watchers or whatever they were called under Twitter, and you can post a community note to say what this tweet says is incorrect and here's why, and you give some links, and then anybody who's part of that program and they rate it, they vote on your proposed note, and if you get a certain number of votes, a certain percentage or whatever, that community note now gets attached to the tweet and you've probably seen these, right community notes added context or something like that. This kid's video has been seen a hundred million times on Twitter. There's still no community note. There was one, and all it was was calling him an eight, which has never appeared because everybody downvoted it because it's it's not substantive. You're not addressing anything that he is raised in the video. So here is what I suspect is going to be the approach this from. It doesn't even matter a woman on Twitter, She says, the craziest part of this video is when they don't identify themselves, meaning Nick Shirley, They don't identify themselves, demand to know where the children are, and then try to yank open a daycare door as the female employees pull on it to keep them out, right, So this is the defense now as well as that, Oh my gosh, look at this influencer, this YouTuber. He's gotten all of this attention, so he's making money off of all of the clicks and the views. So he's making all of this money. Now, this is going to incentivize more people to go and do investigative research like this. Yeah, I'm okay with that yeah, really, yeah, I'm okay with that. That's what we want, right, every man's printing press kind of a deal. Every person, every person's printing press. So I'm okay with people doing their own independent research and investigations. I watched him now again, I said this last hour. I watched the video, and I think that he could he could employ some different tactics that might make him more successful in getting through the door, you know, and actually getting people on the record or something. But there wasn't anything illegal about what he was doing. There wasn't any He wasn't aggressive towards anybody. He shows up wearing, you know, a hoodie. He's got a little, you know, tiny, a little microphone that like clips onto his onto his lapel kind of thing, and he just takes it off and he just asks him, and he's got his camera guy with him. He should have gone undercover, that's what he should have done, in order to try to gain access into the rooms to see what's actually occurring. But look, if we really want to know what's happening inside of these centers, inside of these front businesses, then the only ones that are empowered to do so are government officials, those who are supposed to be doing inspections of these facilities right, unannounced spot inspections. Just walk in be like I'm here to do it. I'm here to do an inspection. Where are all the kids? Right? And that is really the scandal is that you've got all of these businesses operating and somehow or another, there's no government oversight on any of it. North Carolina had a very similar experience. This is now a decade ago almost when Pat McCrory became governor and the North Carolina legislature passed a bill to toughen the inspection protocols basically for abortion clinics, and the left went nuts, but basically was saying like, you've got these clinics that are operating and there aren't any inspections occurring, and you've got people that are going in there, they're having these procedures done, and we don't even know if they're like meeting basic sanitary standards because you're not checking. So they said, here's the thing. Now, you got to go in and check them, and you got to do reports on them, and you got to meet like this, you have to meet the same sanitary standards as veterinarian clinics and the left went nuts. But see, if you're going to get government funds for these types of programs and services, then there has to be the follow up by the government that is handing out the taxpayer money to ensure that these are not fraudulent front operations. It's really pretty simple. That to me is the scandal. All right, Holiday football has arrived. Right With Draft Kings sportsbook and official sports betting partner of the NFL, the unexpected can turn game day into payday. And don't forget Draft Kings as you're back with early exit. Pretty neat funk here. If your player goes down in the first half, you still get paid in cash. Download the Draft Kings sportsbook app and use the code PETE. That's code pete. New customers can bet five bucks and get two hundred dollars in bonus bets if your bet wins instantly. In partnership with Draft Kings, the Crown is yours. Gambling problem Call one eight hundred gambler. In New York call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why two four six seven three six nine. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling. Call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven, or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill casino and Resort Kansas. Pass Through of per wager tax may apply in Illinois twenty one plus age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. Restrictions apply. Bet must win to receive bonus bets which expire in seven days. Minimum mods required. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources see DKNG dot co slash audio Limited time offer. Some texts from the text line, Kevin says, I think we are finding out why Tim Walls was the VP nominee. Also, this scale of fraud does not happen without the complicity of many government officials. Yeah, And I think this is why you're seeing this sort of whistle past the graveyard approach by a lot of people in the media and a lot of Democrats. But I repeat myself, I think they don't want to scratch this because if they do, they are afraid of what's underneath. And I think you know Tim Walls as the governor, you know, the buck stops with him, to be sure. As for the sort of day to day operations and who knew what and when that sort of stuff. I think there is a real fear that it's going to implicate people like Congresswoman elon Omar. I mean, she has been a a loud, you know, defender of the Somali community. She herself is Somali. Uh. And she's got a bunch of scandal you know, around her from marrying her brother allegedly in order to get citizenship and uh and and now like her wealth explosion that's occurred since she got into Congress. So there are Yeah, I think there are a lot of concerns about who may be implicated in all of that. To be sure, I don't know, but I think that's part of the concern and why a lot of people are hoping this just kind of goes away. But at this scale, I don't see how that's possible. There is a writer on Twitter. His name, he goes by a name Cynical Publius. It's his num deplume, if you will. He says, I'm not sure that most Americans understand that in large swathes or swapped of humanity, there is no actual concept of fraud. And when I read that, I was like, huh, there's no concept of fraud, particularly fraud against the government. Instead, he says, there is a belief in the virtue of getting away with what you can to help yourself and your tribe, whatever your tribe is, your clan, whatever it is. That it's okay, it's not fraud. You're just getting yours. That's what everybody does. That's the virtue. Look at me, I got this stuff from mine, he said. I spent a lot of time of my life in the Middle East and Central Asia working closely with foreign contractors and foreign governments to provide support to American military operations as a US Army officer with a big checkbook courtesy of Uncle Sam. I can't really count the sheer number of times I was offered bribes to award a contract or, falsify records, to do things like create larger fake head counts at places like dining facilities, or to just simply be on the take for future illegal requests. By the way, I read a book a long time ago, I think it was called The French Betrayal of America, and it talked a lot about how this sort of graft is just embedded in the French system. And the author talked about you know Boeing versus air Bus, and how in various you know, bids to airlines and stuff and governments for planes that air Bus always had this, this bribery factor built in to their contracts. So that seemed that that seems to indicate that, yeah, there's there's some acceptance of this. It's not like the whole world believes like this is wrong. He says. Of course I had enough sense to never comply with any of these requests for bribes and such. Moreover, they were never explicitly structured as bribes. Instead, it was usually along the lines of here, I have these rolexes as gifts for you and your wife to show our friendship. Unfortunately, too many US officers and NCOs succumbed to this sirens song and ended up breaking rocks in Leavenworth. The weird thing about this to me was that whenever I turned down such an offering, it was treated as a grave insult. I was the one in the wrong, not the fraudster trying to bribe me. No, it was me. They considered it rude that I was in their country and refused to accept how things got done there. After all, why did I want? Why did I not want to help my tribe by helping their tribe. Right, that's a good trade. And it's just you got the big checkbook. Just you give me somebody, I give you some money, and our tribes are good. It's like they don't view the government being defrauded as wrong, he says. Let me repeat myself, in these cultures, fraud is not even a concept. There is only what helps your tribe. It doesn't even exist as a concept. This reminds me, by the way of a comment that was made by Democratic State Representative Carla Cunningham on the floor of the North Carolina General Assembly a few months ago now maybe where she said not all cultures are equal, they're not all the same. And Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, they went into fits over this. She's got herself a primary challenger now because she said that, and she's voted with Republicans on you know, enforcing immigration law. And remember I had a state senator from Charlotte on the show because he had attacked Carla Cunningham saying, how dare she say, oh, cultures aren't the same or aren't equal. I forget the exact verbis she used, And so I asked him, and he kept telling, he kept dodging, he kept telling me, Oh, you got to look at it in the context of what the debate was about. I'm like, well, what's the context? Like are they equal? Like she made an assertion, you're saying the assertion was wrong. Tell me why it's wrong. And he wouldn't do it. And I suspect it's because he couldn't do it, because there are cultures that if you're taking a you know, you're compiling a ledger of the good stuff of a culture and the bad stuff of a culture. For example, I would submit throwing gay people off of rooftops is not a good thing in a culture. I don't find that to be ideal. I would say that's a check mark in the negative column for a culture that does that, a society that does that. And if you are coming from a society that says that's acceptable, I don't think you have a place here because I don't want to see people thrown off the rooftops in America. See see how that works. Like that's a pretty big one. You get into the FGM stuff as well, this stoning of adulterers and those sorts of things that's not to say that everything about American culture is perfect. I'm not saying that either we have obvious things in our culture that other people don't want to see or we don't even like. But they're not all equal, and that has to be part of the decision when determining do you want mass migration of people from a culture that have no concept of government fraud? If they don't even have a concept of it, do you want a lot of people coming into the country to then commit those types of government fraudulent activities because they don't have a concept that it's wrong. Such thought processes, he says, are so alien to Americans and much of the West. We are raised on the presumption that our institutions are valid and that the rule of law always prevails, and that integrity is universal. We need these presumptions to have working governments and economies. And without these presumptions, without the mental barrier that causes us not to accept outright fraud, our nation would quickly descend into the economic and social healthscape of countries like Oh, I don't know how to pick a random one, Somalia, right, how long has that country been ripped apart by violence and poverty and such like with all the help that we have given that country over the years, Like I was a kid when we started giving money to Somalia. 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. I've just saw this move across the trendsum it's actually at IJR dot com Independent Journal Review by Andrew Powell. Federal agents fanned out across parts of Minnesota EH today, knocking on doors and questioning workers at businesses tied to a massive fraud investigation that has rocked the state and drawn national attention. According to The New York Post, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents targeted locations suspected of being linked to a sprawling social services fraud scheme as part of a broader effort to identify potential immigration violations connected to the case. Okay, so DHS is on the ground. According to the Department of Homeland Security. Going door to door it suspected fraud sites. Apparently they hit a tobacco and vape shop in Burnsville, just south of Minneapolis. Investigators are examining allegations that as much as nine billion dollars may have been stolen through fraudulent use of federally funded state programs. The scheme is believed to involve sham businesses and nonprofits that build for services that were never provided. Okay, so this is in connection to the original announcement that was about two weeks ago from the US Attorney's office. When you hear the nine billion dollar number, that was the announcement from two weeks ago. The Nick Shirley viral video that's about daycares, healthcare, adult healthcare, home healthcare services, and transportation companies. That's what he went around and visited and did his YouTube video on that's gotten you know, one hundred million whatever plus views now. But again, federal officials are aware of his video, so I suspect they are going to be you know, widening the net. Let me see here this anything else another video. They're just posting videos. Okay, authorready say the fraud scheme relied on newly formed businesses and nonprofit organizations that claim to provide services such as housing assistance, food programs, daycare, or healthcare. Prosecutors allege those entities then submitted inflated or entirely false claims to state programs backed by federal funding. By the way, the state of Minnesota went from like a multi billion dollar surplus to a multi billion dollar deficit in like two years. And you can see like the explosion in the state or the state programs federally funded, but the states have to cover a portion of those costs. They get federal matching grants and such. So it's a mix. And you got, you know, right after COVID, basically you have this massive growth of all of these I would submit sham companies providing no actual services and getting all this grant money and at the same time a cratering of the state's finances. So back to cynical Publius, he says, when we import people end mass from cultures that accept bribery and fraud as routine, like they don't. And look this like, I'm not saying anything, like I'm not making a I'm not making an indictment here on individual people that happened to come from different countries or cultures, like for example, there is no cultural uncomfortableness with gambling in Asian countries, Okay, So like and that's I'm not saying that to denigrade or anything like that. I'm saying there's not this restriction from like a religious perspective that we in America have had for a very long time. Now that's obviously loosening here in America. But over there on the other side of the world, there hasn't been that kind of you know, sort of an ethical look down your nose at people who are gambling. That hasn't been the case. And so it's out in the open, and a lot of people participate in the activity. They don't see anything wrong with it. It's just a different cultural norm. So, if bribery is part of your culture and that's just the way you get stuff done, Soviet Union was the same way that that was because of communism. But still like that, people just had to bribe in order to get anything that you needed because communism. But anyway, do you want people who see this as a normal course of practice? Do you want to import hundreds of thousands of them into your country if you disagree with them on a pretty big deal, like committing fraud against the government, that's a big deal. In our culture. We don't like that. We get offended by that, he says. If you're going to import hundreds of thousands of people from cultures that accept bribery and fraud as routine, as acceptable ways to advance your own tribe, we should not be surprised that things like the eight billion dollar fraud schemes of the Somali population in Minnesota happen so easily. Introducing a fraud based culture based on tribalism, a fraud based culture based on tribalism, bringing that into America is like introducing some sort of lethal virus into a population that has no natural immunity to it. The virus will spread and grow unchecked because it's so alien to the host. Similarly, a culture of fraud is anathema to American thinking, and it must be cut out before it consumes the host. So when you see and hear patriotic Americans decrying what is happening in Minnesota or elsewhere, and when they seek deportation of the offenders, that's not racism, it's not bigotry, it's not xenophobia. It's preserving the American tradition of responsible institutions and national integrity. And I think he's exactly right. Christopher Rufo wrote about this the other day, saying that different groups have different cultural characteristics. The national culture of Somalia is different from the national culture of Norway. For example, Somalis and Norwegians therefore tend to think differently. They behave differently. They organize themselves differently, which leads to different group outcomes. Norwegians in Minnesota, eh behave similarly to Norwegians in Norway. Somalis in Minnesota behaves similarly to Somalis in Somalia, which makes sense. Many cultural patterns from Somalia, particularly their clan networks, their informal economies, distrust of state institutions, which I can totally understand that right from Somalia. You don't trust your government if you even have one in Somalia, right, So those patterns travel with the people who are fleeing Somalia and come to America in the absence of strong assimilation pressures. The fraud networks are not so surprising. They reflect the extension of Somali institutional norms into a new environment with weak enforcement and poorly designed incentives. Now, part of the other problem here, and you heard reference to this in the Nick Shirley video, is that they is the Somali community in Minnesota, and I suspect elsewhere is very closed. They don't allow outsiders into their networks, into their clan, their families, their tribes. They don't they don't allow for that, and so it's sort of in us versus them, and what that does though practically speaking, is it limits assimilation. So they don't they don't get the interaction with Americans who are who would have a different norm, which is to say, no, you don't defraud the government. No, you don't take this grant money and operate sham daycare centers. That's illegal. You shouldn't do. It's unethical, it's wrong. It's a different norm here. But if you are closed off to that other norm, then you never get told that. So it's like cultures are different people. 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 thepetekalanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone. M hmm.