{"id":57032,"date":"2025-12-01T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T13:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/57032\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T13:11:10","slug":"minn-social-service-workers-slam-gov-tim-walz-as-100-responsible-for-1b-state-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/57032\/","title":{"rendered":"Minn. social service workers slam Gov. Tim Walz as ‘100% responsible’ for $1B state fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of state workers at the Minnesota Department of Human Services<\/a> publicly excoriated Gov. Tim Walz<\/a> for allowing a \u201cmassive fraud\u201d scandal to unfold under his watch and retaliating against their whistleblowers.<\/p>\n

Over $1 billion in taxpayers\u2019 money was fleeced by dozens of scammers in Minnesota\u2019s Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, the largest known COVID-19 fraud case in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cTim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response,\u201d the Minnesota DHS employees X account, which represents over 480 staffers, chided Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTim Walz 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,\u201d the account charged. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just last week, the Justice Department prosecuted the 78th\u00a0defendant<\/a> in what prosecutors have dubbed the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. At least 59 people have been convicted so far.<\/p>\n

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz downplayed the fraud scandal and ripped into President Trump for seizing on it. AP<\/p>\n

Feeding Our Future dissolved in 2022 as it faced scrutiny from prosecutors and federal investigators. AP<\/p>\n

During the past five years, fraudsters targeted Minnesota\u2019s generous social safety net by setting up companies that billed the state for social services prosecutors alleged were never actually provided.<\/p>\n

Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit founded in 2016 that purported to help feed school children, had partnered with dozens of local businesses under the pretense of providing food aid.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit, which dissolved in 2022, and its partners billed the state, claiming to have helped feed tens of thousands of needy children. In reality, most of that money was squandered on foreign real estate projects, luxury cars, and more. <\/p>\n

Other organizations besides Feeding Our Future committed fraud with Minnesota\u2019s social safety net as well.<\/p>\n

The fraud largely revolved around dozens of people in the Somali diaspora<\/a>. Minnesota is home to about 80,000 Somali Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs staff, we firsthand witnessed and observed fraud happening yet we were shutdown, reassigned and told to keep quiet,\u201d the Minnesota DHS employees\u2019 X account alleged.<\/p>\n

Investigators have conducted multiple raids in the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. Star Tribune via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors began charging individuals associated with Feeding Our Future in 2022. As federal investigators parsed through documents, they quickly realized that the fraud was widespread. <\/p>\n

One homelessness program started as $2.6 million in 2021, saw its costs soar to $104 million last year, after being rife with fraud, the New York Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMinnesota has become the land of 10,000 frauds under Tim Walz,\u201d House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told The Post about the scandal. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a total slap in the face to the hardworking, law-abiding people of Minnesota. The Walz administration is either too incompetent or completely unwilling to clean up their own mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hundreds of workers in the Minnesota Department of Human Services gave a stern rebuke of Gov. Tim Walz. X\/Minnesota_DHS<\/p>\n

The egregious scandal also drew attention from President Trump, who ripped Minnesota as \u201ca hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Walz returned fire against Trump and noted that \u201cI take responsibility for putting people in jail,\u201d despite federal prosecutors leading many of the charges. <\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump: Deflect, demonize, come up with no solutions. He\u2019s not going to help fix anything on fraud,\u2019 Walz told NBC News\u2019 \u201cMeet the Press\u201d in an interview that aired Sunday. \u201cMy God, there\u2019s a big difference between fraud and corruption. And corruption is something he knows about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Minnesota DHS employees\u2019 X account also accused Walz of weakening safeguards and disempowering the Office of the Legislative Auditor during the alarming fraud.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is a cascade of systemic failures leading up to Tim Walz,\u201d the workers alleged. \u201cAgency leaders appointed by Tim Walz willfully disregarded rules and laws to keep fraud reports quiet \u2013 even to the extent of threatening families of whistleblowers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t fight fraud in Minnesota alone, hence why we\u2019re appealing to the federal levels of government. We need all the help we can get.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post reached out to Walz\u2019s office for comment. <\/p>\n

Walz launched his campaign<\/a> for a third term as governor of Minnesota in September.<\/p>\n

Minnesota is one of over a dozen states that don\u2019t have term limits on its governor. But no Minnesota governor has been elected three times since gubernatorial terms were extended from two to four years in 1963.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of state workers at the Minnesota Department of Human Services publicly excoriated Gov. Tim Walz for allowing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,396,5800,9,11,10,87,15004,30097,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-57032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-fraud","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-social-services","16":"tag-tim-walz","17":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}