From Feeding the Kids to Fleecing the Government: Inside the Country’s Largest COVID Fraud
24th March 2025
What happens when you cross a Third-World tribal culture with an urban Democratic establishment? You can probably guess the outcome, but in Minnesota we don’t have to guess. We have seen it on display in the sprawling Feeding Our Future case that represents the largest COVID fraud discovered so far in the United States.
A cast of almost entirely Somali immigrants is charged with siphoning some $250 million from the federal child nutrition program administered by the Minnesota Department of Education into their own pockets between March 2020 and January 2022, when federal agents assembled from around the United States to raid the many scenes of the crime around the Twin Cities. Since then 70 defendants have been charged, 37 have pleaded guilty, and 7 have been convicted in the two trials conducted in the case so far. The others have yet to be tried.
Minnesota—mostly the Twin Cities area—is home to some 100,000 Somali immigrants, the largest Somali population in North America. Starting in the 1990s, the State Department directed thousands of refugees from Somalia’s civil war to Minnesota. As Kelly Riddell reported in a 2015 Washington Times story, Minnesota affords these refugees “some of America’s most generous welfare and charity programs.” Riddell quoted Professor Ahamed Samatar of St. Paul’s Macalester College: “Minnesota is exceptional in so many ways but it’s the closest thing in the United States to a true social democratic state.” After a dip in 2008, the inflow of Somalis has continued unabated and augmented by Somalis from other states. If it takes a village, Minnesota has what it takes.