By Minnesota’s welfare system plunged into crisis this week after more than 480 Department of Human Services employees publicly accused Governor Tim Walz of enabling one of the largest fraud disasters in state history and retaliating against those who attempted to expose it, according to Fox News.
In a viral post on Twitter, the alleged whistleblowers charged that Walz “is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota,” recounting years of ignored warnings, internal suppression, and what they describe as a climate of intimidation designed to keep billions in losses out of public view. According to the employees, they approached the governor early, hoping to partner with his administration to stop the fraud, but instead encountered “monitoring, threats, repression,” and a sustained campaign to discredit their reports. Rather than strengthen oversight, they wrote, the Walz administration and allied legislators “attacked whistleblowers,” while an indifferent media stood by. The result, they said, was an environment that left frontline staff “scary, isolating and wondering who we can turn to.”
Their account describes a system that steadily unraveled under Walz’s leadership, beginning with what they call his deliberate weakening of the Office of the Legislative Auditor, which allowed agencies to disregard audit findings entirely. From there, they describe a “cascade of systemic failures leading up to Tim Walz,” accusing him of appointing unqualified loyalists who “willfully disregarded rules and laws” to bury fraud reports—sometimes, they say, going so far as to threaten the families of whistleblowers. The employees claim these leaders were elevated not because of competence but because of personal ties to Walz, leaving state government “floundering” as fraud spread unchecked across multiple programs. They allege agency leadership shut down internal dissent, reassigned staff who raised alarms, and refused to confront documented wrongdoing out of fear that taking action would appear discriminatory. “To date,” they wrote, “no single agency leader has been held responsible,” listing several top officials who remain in their positions despite years of documented failures.
These allegations add fuel to a fire already burning, according to a devastating report by The New York Times about Governor Tim Walz. Federal prosecutors say more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds has vanished from Minnesota’s social-service programs over the past five years—an amount that eclipses the state’s annual spending on its entire prison system. The cases, spread across food assistance, housing aid, and medical reimbursements, have exposed deep fissures in state oversight and left Gov. Tim Walz facing intensifying scrutiny as he seeks a third term.
The defendants in the three largest fraud cases are overwhelmingly from Minnesota’s Somali community. Of the 86 individuals charged, 78 are of Somali ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization. Prosecutors say shell companies billed the state for services never rendered—children never fed, patients never treated—and funneled the money into luxury cars, overseas property, and bundles of cash flown out in suitcases.
“No one will support these programs if they continue to be riddled with fraud,” said Joseph H. Thompson, the federal prosecutor overseeing the cases. “We’re losing our way of life in Minnesota in a very real way.”
The scandal broke wide in 2022 with the Feeding Our Future case, which then–Attorney General Merrick Garland labeled the largest pandemic-relief fraud in the country. Since then, the web has spread to include housing stabilization payouts and skyrocketing autism-therapy claims. In each instance, prosecutors allege millions in public funds were siphoned off with minimal state intervention.
Thompson told The New York Times that racial sensitivities contributed to the paralysis. “This was a huge part of the problem,” he said. “Allegations of racism can be a reputation or career killer.”
Governor Walz has rejected that explanation. “The programs are set up to move the money to people,” he said. “The programs are set up to improve people’s lives, and in many cases, the criminals find the loopholes.” He added: “The message here in Minnesota is if you commit a crime, if you commit fraud against public dollars, you are going to go to prison.”
Critics point to 2020, when Feeding Our Future threatened to sue the state Department of Education for racism after regulators delayed approval of new minority-run meal sites. The state resumed payments. A later report by the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor concluded that fear of litigation and bad press influenced the agency’s decisions.
Kayseh Magan, a Somali-American fraud investigator who once worked in the Minnesota attorney general’s office, said political caution was evident throughout. “There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc,” Magan said.
Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who has launched a 2026 challenge to Walz, accused the governor of simultaneously raising taxes and letting “fraud run wild.” Former President Trump has echoed the charge nationally, calling Minnesota “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” and announcing plans to revoke temporary protected status for several hundred Somali immigrants living in the state.
The backlash has left deep rifts within Minnesota’s Somali diaspora, which numbers around 80,000. Macalester College professor Ahmed Samatar, himself Somali-American, said the moment demands candor. “American society and the denizens of the state of Minnesota have been extremely good to Somalis,” Samatar said. “This betrayal of that trust demands honest reflection.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose Minneapolis district includes many of the charged individuals, warned against assigning communal guilt. “We do not blame the lawlessness of an individual on a whole community,” she said.
But in many ways, it was much of the whole community and it sent billions of autism funding to Somalia to fund terrorism.
Absolutely bonkers story about Somalian immigrant communities in Minnesota over-diagnosing their own kids with autism so that they can funnel billions of Medicaid dollars back to terrorist cells in Somalia. https://t.co/B37pPUUIkK pic.twitter.com/FxVboB9QIF
— Edward L Hamilton (@EdwardLHamilton) November 19, 2025
With dozens of defendants awaiting trial and new investigations underway, the damage is still unfolding. But the bottom line remains: more than a billion dollars intended for Minnesota’s most vulnerable residents disappeared—on Tim Walz’s watch.
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