Key figures in the long-running controversy over alleged fraudulent safety net programs in Minnesota

By CNN

Published January 2, 2026 3:00 AM

CNN

By Ray Sanchez, Cheri Mossburg, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration, for the second time in recent weeks, is using allegations of fraud to justify increased federal law enforcement actions in Minnesota, the state with the country’s largest Somali population.

The latest surge in federal resources — from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security — followed the release of a widely circulated video in which 23-year-old YouTube content creator Nick Shirley alleges, with little evidence, to have uncovered widespread fraud at Somali-run child care centers.

The accusations are the most recent in a series of fraud scandals involving state social service programs that provided meals for needy children during the pandemic, Medicaid housing assistance and other safety nets which benefit needy families.

The alleged schemes prompted a fresh gush of fury and vitriol from the administration of President Donald Trump and state GOP leaders, who have demanded a crackdown on the waste of taxpayer dollars for social services they said were never provided.

The scandals go back nearly a decade and include allegations of fraud in the Somali community focused on Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit prosecutors said falsely claimed to provide meals to needy children during the Covid-19 pandemic. Federal charges were brought against dozens of people — most of them Somali — beginning in 2022.

Shirley’s video with the newest accusations involving Somali-run child care centers was retweeted by Vice President JD Vance and former Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk. The US Department of Health and Human Services then announced it was freezing child care payments to the state pending a federal investigation of the allegations.

Here’s a look at key figures in the highly politicized, long-running controversy involving alleged fraudulent, government-funded safety net programs in Minnesota.

Aimee Bock and Salim Said

A federal jury in March found Aimee Bock and Salim Said guilty for their roles in a $250 million fraud scheme connected to a government-funded food program for kids.

Bock was founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit that received funding from the Federal Child Nutrition Program. Said was co-owner of Safari Restaurant, which provided meals for children at the restaurant and many other food sites associated with Feeding Our Future. Beyond feeding children, prosecutors said, the defendants used proceeds from the scheme to buy real estate, luxury vehicles and pay for international travel.

An early investigation by state education officials was slowed in part by a lawsuit filed by the organization and Bock — who is not Somali — on grounds the probe was discriminatory. She later voluntarily dropped the suit after federal agents raided her home and offices.

Bock was eventually convicted of seven federal charges, including bribery. She has not yet been sentenced, but a judge denied her request for a new trial. Said, who also awaits sentencing, was convicted of 20 federal charges, including bribery and money laundering.

Bock and Said each face possible sentences of more than 30 years in prison, CNN affiliate KARE reported.

The vast majority of roughly 70 people charged in the case are members of the state’s Somali community, CNN has reported. Thirty-seven defendants have pleaded guilty, according to The Associated Press. Five were convicted among a group of defendants who were tried last year, the AP reported.

Ibrahim Ali and Quality Learning Center

One subject of Shirley’s viral video was the Quality Learning Center in Minneapolis. The center was featured prominently in the video, with Shirley noting “Learing” was misspelled.

In the video, posted the day after Christmas, the conservative activist and content creator is seen visiting and trying to enter several child care centers he said are not operational yet receive government funding through the state’s Child Care Assistance Program, or CCAP, for low-income families. He does not specify in the video when he visited most of the centers, which Shirley claimed are Somali-run. He told CNN he filmed the video on December 16 and made a follow-up visit later in the day.

CNN is looking into the centers identified in the video and has reached out to several of them. None of the day care center operators have been charged with fraud.

A spokesperson for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, told CNN two of the centers in the video were closed. But a Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families spokesperson later clarified that one — Quality Learning Center — ultimately decided to remain open, according to The Minnesota Star Tribune.

Ibrahim Ali, a manager at Quality Learning Center, said his parents own the facility. He told KARE on Monday that Shirley’s video was recorded when the business was scheduled to be closed. A sign on the door says its operating hours are 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.

“There’s no fraud going on whatsoever,” Ali told KARE.

CNN, which has reached out to the center for comment, observed families dropping children off at Quality Learning Center on Tuesday.

MAGA activist Nick Shirley

Since the day after Christmas, when he posted the video purporting to show widespread fraud at federally funded day cares, Shirley has gained hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views.

Shirley told CNN Tuesday he is “100% sure” the allegations are true. A man whose research was featured in the video told CNN he obtained all of the information from publicly available websites and that it was not given to him by Republican politicians. CNN is looking into the claims.

His video showed Shirley being escorted out of one building by police after they responded to reports he was trespassing and harassing people.

Shirley is well-known in MAGA circles and was invited to speak at the White House in October during a roundtable with Trump.

First Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson

Joe Thompson headed the fraud and public corruption section at the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota for more than three years.

Months before the most recent allegations, in July, the FBI raided five businesses in the Twin Cities which had allegedly committed Medicaid housing assistance fraud, according to The Minnesota Star Tribune.

Half or more of the roughly $18 billion in Medicaid funds that supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen due to fraud, Thompson said on December 18, according to the AP.

“The magnitude cannot be overstated,” Thompson said. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud.”

Walz accused Thompson of essentially making up the $9 billion figure.

“You should be equally outraged about one dollar or whatever that number is, but they’re using that number without the proof behind it,” Walz said in a December 19 news conference, according to KARE.

Jim O’Neill, Kelly Loeffler and other Trump administration officials and supporters

Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill announced the freeze on child care payments to the state of Minnesota Tuesday on X.

O’Neill demanded a state audit of the day care centers in the video and said the agency would now require justification and receipts or photo evidence for all payments to states from the department’s Administration for Children and Families.

“Funds will be released only when states prove they are being spent legitimately,” O’Neill said.

Minnesota receives $185 million in federal child care funding for 19,000 children, according to the agency. The announcement did not specify alternate plans for families affected by the freeze.

Separately, Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler announced on X Monday that funding to Minnesota would be suspended to “investigate $430 million in suspected PPP fraud across the state.” She did not say whether that investigation into the Covid-era Paycheck Protection Program involved any businesses in Shirley’s video.

Vice President Vance, responding to a post on X about alleged fraud involving people of Somali origin, said, “they’re stealing both money and political power from Minnesotans.”

DHS on Monday began posting videos showing agents from Homeland Security Investigations entering what it called “suspected fraud sites.”

The House Oversight Committee has called Minnesota state representatives to testify before the panel for a January 7 hearing centered around “fraud and misuse of federal funds” in the state.

The investigative panel run by Republican Rep. James Comer is also expected to hear testimony from Walz and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in a separate hearing on February 10.

In a statement to CNN, the governor’s office said it was “always happy to work with Congress, though this committee has a track record of holding circus hearings that have nothing to do with the issue at hand.”

Gov. Tim Walz and other Minnesota officials

Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has pushed back on allegations his administration lacks adequate safeguards against fraud.

The governor said Tuesday the state has spent years cracking down on fraud by “referring cases to law enforcement, shutting down and auditing high-risk programs.” He also asked the state legislature for more authority to take aggressive action, a spokesperson for the governor told CNN.

A series of state audits into lax oversight of Minnesota funds were either minimized or dismissed by Walz and administration officials, CNN reported last year. Criticism of the governor’s hands-off approach to accountability came amid allegations the Somali community’s strong support for — and contributions to — Democrats helped shield them from scrutiny.

Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown said during a Monday news conference that while the agency had “questions about some of the methods” used in Shirley’s video, it does take concerns about fraud “very seriously,” KARE reported.

The state is working to improve its systems and hold bad actors accountable, Minnesota state Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, co-chair of the Children and Families Committee, said at a news conference Wednesday. The Department of Children, Youth, and Families works closely with county partners on reports of alleged fraud, she said.

While there are legal safeguards to ensure programs are run properly, “this hasty scorched earth attack is not just wrong, it may well be illegal, and my team and I remain committed to protecting the people of Minnesota to the fullest extent of the law,” Carin Mrotz, a senior adviser with the Minnesota Attorney General’s office, said in a statement on behalf of Ellison, referring to the political fallout from the video’s release.

Minnesota’s Somali diaspora

With around 84,000 of the state’s roughly 108,000 Somali Americans concentrated in the Twin Cities, the contingent has become a potent voting bloc in the region. The vast majority of Somalis are in the US legally.

Members of the embattled Somali diaspora and their advocates have urged people to not blame an entire community for the actions of a few.

“The Somali community in the Twin Cities is overwhelmingly made up of hardworking families, small business owners, healthcare workers, students, and taxpayers who contribute every day to Minnesota’s economy and civic life,” Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Minnesota chapter, told CNN in an email.

Trump, who has led the charge against what his administration has said is a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” in Minnesota, announced plans in November to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Somali residents in the state. In December, ICE launched operations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to specifically target undocumented Somali immigrants.

Trump has accused Somali residents of “ripping off our country and ripping apart that once-great state.” He described Somalia as a country that has “no laws, no water, no military, no nothing.”

The president ended a November Cabinet meeting asserting that he does not want Somali immigrants in the US. He referred to the community and US Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant who represents Minnesota and a frequent target of his rhetoric, as “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from.”

Kotyza-Witthuhn, at Wednesday’s news conference, said: “Instead of tearing down our Somali community and our child care centers, let’s lift them up. Let’s make sure that our children have safe places to learn and grow.”

CNN’s Zoe Sottile, Andy Rose, Holmes Lybrand, Lauren Mascarenhas, Chris Boyette, Hannah Rabinowitz, Omar Jimenez, TuAnh Dam, Rob Kuznia and Emma Tucker contributed to this report.

Article Topic Follows: CNN - National

Jump to comments ↓