Minnesota is now facing one of the largest documented government service fraud scandals in United States history. Under Gov. Tim Walz’s evidently unwatchful eye, federal prosecutors have estimated that approximately $1 billion in taxpayer funds have been siphoned from multiple state- and federally funded social service programs over the last five years.

As of this writing, 87 individuals have been charged in connection with the scheme, with 61 convictions already secured and more charges continuing to be filed against these fraudsters. The bulk of the fraud scheme centers around two government programs.

The first target was the Minneapolis-based not-for-profit Feeding Our Future, which distributed federal child nutrition funds during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning in April 2020, the organization’s founder and executive director allegedly oversaw an elaborate fraud operation that involved over 250 fake meal sites throughout Minnesota, siphoning over $250 million in taxpayer funds.

The second scheme involved Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program, which provides treatment to people with autism. Defendants allegedly fraudulently billed Medicaid for autism therapy services that were never provided. They recruited children from Minneapolis’ Somali community who did not have autism diagnoses. Their parents were then paid between $300 and $1,500 per month as kickbacks to keep their children enrolled. To put this into perspective, one company billed Medicaid over $850,000 in one year for one child and was paid out $438,000. Federal prosecutors are still working to determine the full scale of the fraud.

But none of this should have happened. It could have been stopped far earlier.

There were early warning signs as far back as July 2019, when Minnesota state officials discovered that there was potential fraud occurring within Feeding Our Future. However, according to former employees of the Minnesota Department of Education, after the state caught wind of the potential fraud, it temporarily stopped payments to Feeding Our Future, which then sued the state. Under pressure from Feeding Our Future leadership, state officials decided to continue providing the payments.

But everything came to light. Walz blamed the judge in the Feeding Our Future case for forcing the state to continue making the payments, yet this evidently was such a blatant misrepresentation of the facts that the judge himself came out and said, “The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspect payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursements payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”

Any meaningful due diligence seemingly would have tipped off investigators to the blatant fraud that was occurring. Reports note that nearly $700 million in EIDBI claims have been paid out.