Through the years: A decade of investigating fraud in Minnesota
Seth Kaplan | December 29, 2025 | 4:14pm CSTThe Brief- Since 2013, FOX 9 has been detailing and breaking stories of fraud in Minnesota, where millions of dollars were stolen from government programs.
- In 2015, the FOX 9 Investigators uncovered day care fraud, which lead to charges and guilty pleas.
- In 2018, the FOX 9 Investigators spent more than five months looking into significant fraud in a massive state-run program.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - While fraud in Minnesota has been gaining national attention recently, the investigations into these schemes by FOX 9 and others have been going on for more than a decade.
Dating back to 2013, there have been numerous FOX 9 Investigations into day care fraud, Medicaid fraud and other avenues of fraud in the state.
FOX 9 fraud investigationshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl1TiiSIzugIn February 2013, FOX 9 Investigator Jeff Baillon detailed fraud in the day care industry. The focus of the story was Yasmin Ali, the owner of Deqo Family Centers. Ali also owned All Nations Home Health Care.
The FBI, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Ramsey County Attorney's Fraud Unit raided a day care to expose a scheme that was costing Minnesota taxpayers millions of dollars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qV_ibwvb_0Ali recruited parents to work at the day care, while at the same time enrolling their own children. Ali was eventually charged with theft by swindle and racketeering.
A year after the FOX 9 investigation, Ali was arrested and charged with bilking the state out of about $4 million. Ramsey County prosecutors feared Ali was a flight risk, so they requested her bail be set at $1 million.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12kLlVnSNNgAli spent a couple of months in jail before getting a judge to lower her bail to $200,000. She claimed that was all she could afford, and had no plans of going anywhere because she is the mother of six children. But, at the start of her trial this week, Ali was a no show. Ali never stood trial.
The FOX 9 Investigators also discovered that, in addition to all the funding for child care centers, Deqo was also getting public money to pay for kids' meals. The Minneapolis center received nearly $90,000 for food in its first year of operation. The business that did the catering was run by Yasmin Ali's brothers.
Six years later, in 2019, the Deqo Family Centers fraud was detailed in this report from the State of Minnesota.
2015 Daycare Fraudhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyl3xuPxg44In October 2015, FOX 9 detailed the fraud the Hennepin County Attorney's Office said involved four metro day care centers that stole more than $1 million combined by billing for children that didn't exist. Officials stated that the owners made up names, submitted the names and were paid for having the children "in their care".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONClwvq3gXcInvestigators confirmed their suspicions by placing hidden cameras outside each day care center and counted how many children came and went. The count was often 30% less than the number of children they were billing the state for.
On one day, a center billed the state for 34 kids and not a single person showed up that day. Three of the four day care center owners were charged with theft by swindle and four people were arrested. Abdirizak Ahmed Gayre and Ibrahim Awgab Osman were both charged with over-billing the state of at least $103,000 over a six-month period.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC7I1fHRwr4In November 2016, Gayre and Osman pleaded guilty to felony theft by swindle pursuant to a plea agreement. Under the agreement, the state dismissed the charges against Gayre and Osman and agreed not to pursue further charges against any of the defendants.
The Court barred Gayre and Osman from working or having an ownership interest in any licensed child care provider in Minnesota for two years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hYNyOkvYs4In May 2018, FOX 9 Investigators spent more than five months looking into significant fraud in a massive state-run program. The reporting was based on public records and nearly a dozen government sources who had direct knowledge of what was happening. Those sources estimated as much as $100 million a year was being stolen by day care centers over-billing the state. . . .
https://www.fox9.com/news/fox-9-investigating-fraud-uncovering-minnesota-2025
And so on. And so on.
