Racism accusations shielded Minnesota fraudsters from accountability

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – In the wake of the massive “Feeding Our Future” scandal and broader allegations of systemic fraud in social programs in Minnesota, a troubling theme has emerged: accusations of racism that are repeatedly used to deflect scrutiny, intimidate investigators, and obstruct accountability.

Rumors and reports of fraud in Minneapolis, especially within the city’s exploding Somali community, have been circulating for at least a decade, but criticism of the fraud has largely been dismissed by elected Democrats as “racist” or underpinned by hostility toward foreigners. News stories focusing on Somali scammers in recent years have been dismissed as “racist.”

““The whole story died under the weight of these accusations that people were racist,” Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center for the American Experience, told Fox News Digital. “Oh, maybe someone stole a little bit here, a little bit there, but there’s nothing systemic going on.”

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Tirap, who helped lead federal prosecutions in the Feeding Our Future case, described to Fox News Digital how individuals involved in the fraud relied on racist accusations as a shield. According to Terap, the suspects explicitly mentioned race during a secretly recorded meeting with District Attorney Keith Ellison, asserting that investigators were targeting them “solely because of race.”

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Tirab described this tactic as deliberate and cynical. In one trial, a $120,000 cash bribe was offered to a juror, which was allegedly accompanied by letters intended to frame the investigation as racially motivated. The goal was not simply to escape prosecution, but to discredit the system itself by threatening anyone who sought the truth with the specter of racial bias.

“I provided cover,” Tirab told Fox News Digital. “The scammers knew that the issue of race and racism was something they could use as a cudgel…It is disrespectful to use these terms when they are not appropriate, especially when fraud is clearly occurring.”

Mark Curran, a Republican senator from Minnesota, echoed Tirap’s concerns, stressing that investigators followed evidence, not demographics. Fraud prosecutions disproportionately affected one community only because significant fraud was discovered, not because investigators targeted anyone based on race.

“The average Minnesotan, the average legislator, doesn’t care who commits fraud,” Curran said. “Well, the evidence will lead you either to or from the perpetrator. So, if the evidence leads to the perpetrator, then we have to prosecute them all.”

Curran noted that government officials and agencies that prosecute fraud are routinely labeled as racists for doing so. Some perpetrators were “emboldened,” he said, so much so that they sued the state to force it to continue payments, even after red flags indicated widespread irregularities.

Curran argues that this measure dwarfs what many Minnesotans understand. While federal authorities may ultimately prosecute about $2 billion in fraud, he noted that the true annual losses across state programs could be much higher when taking into account both blatant fraud and poor service delivery.

At the same time, many families participated in related schemes by receiving bribes from fraudulent autism service providers, further complicating implementation. Investigators simply lack the resources to pursue every case, creating an environment in which fraud becomes a low-risk, high-reward business.

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Representative Ilhan Omar speaks in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, during a press conference. (AP Photo/Mauri Gash, File)

“For the average, hardworking American who does everything right, it is a disgusting disservice…to know that there is such a blatant disregard for the value of that dollar,” Curran said.

Curran noted that allegations of racism so emboldened supporters of the status quo that they contributed to the Feeding Our Future lawsuit against the state of Minnesota, accusing state officials of being racist to investigate the alleged fraud.

State agencies were “trembling in fear” of being called racist, and local politicians were keenly aware that “racist naming” was the “professional kiss of death,” Glahn told Fox News Digital.

A legislative auditor’s report found that Minnesota Department of Education officials felt they had to handle the nonprofit “carefully” because of these allegations of racism and the risk of negative media coverage, and that this influenced regulatory actions MDE took or did not take, CBS News reported.

Political commentator and columnist Dustin Gragg highlighted another factor that enables fraud: media indecision. He said conservative reporters described hitting internal roadblocks when promoting stories about the “Feeding Our Future” scandal because editors were afraid of being accused of racism.

“In newsrooms, they’re told, ‘We can’t manage this because we’ll be accused of racism,'” Gragg explained. This fear, coupled with political pressure, allowed the scandal to grow largely unchecked until federal indictments forced it into the spotlight.

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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz sits for an interview with Star Tribune reporters in his office at the state Capitol in St. Paul on December 12, 2024. (Alex Korman/Minnesota Star Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Gragg pointed to an early pivotal moment: The Minnesota Department of Education detected signs of fraud and briefly halted payments. Immediately, Minneapolis political figures Omar Fatah and Jamal Othman responded, claiming that the stop was racially motivated. They even took the state to court, though their case was ultimately dismissed.

However, the damage was done. Payments resumed, and more importantly, Governor Tim Walz refused to use his subpoena power to obtain Feed Our Future’s bank records, even though he had the authority to do so. Garage noted that this inaction led to a delay in detecting the fraud.

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The sun rises on the Minnesota State Capitol. (Steve Karnovsky/Associated Press)

In addition to the fear of the “racist” label, Minnesota politicians realize it is difficult to win elections without the support of the Somali community, Gallan told Fox News Digital.

“The Somali community is very concentrated in the state of Minnesota and very concentrated in Ilhan Omar’s congressional district, and in a few other pockets where the Somali vote swings in elections, and at the state level, it’s large enough to have some very close statewide elections, and the Somali vote is very homogeneous, and votes Democratic,” Galan explained. “They made the difference in statewide elections, and then in local elections, where all the Democrats are Democrats, they made the difference in the primaries. So, if you’re running in a primary against other Democrats, if you don’t have the Somali vote on your side, you’re not going to make it to the general election.”

The result of the fear of a full fraud investigation was predictable: Fraudsters exploited this reluctance, taxpayers lost billions, and the vulnerable communities the programs were supposed to serve suffered the most.

As the country continues its struggle for accountability and reform, one lesson stands out starkly. According to those who spoke to Fox News Digital, fighting fraud requires courage, not only to follow evidence wherever it leads, but also to resist the inevitable attempts to distort legitimate auditing into something it is not.