December 18, 2025
Walz's Minnesota was such a big playground for fraud it drew 'fraud tourism'
By Monica Showalter
How bad was Minnesota's problem with fraudulently dispensed state funds?
It was so bad it drew "fraud tourists," according to a CBS News report — eighteen billion dollars' worth.
Federal prosecutors announced new indictments Thursday in the widening Minnesota fraud scandal, this time involving two Philadelphia-based men accused of traveling to Minneapolis after a friend told them the taxpayer-funded programs there presented "a good opportunity to make money."
Anthony Waddel Jefferson and Lester Brown are accused of siphoning millions from federally funded programs administered by Minnesota officials that were meant to help people with disabilities and those suffering from addiction.
Unlike many of the individuals previously caught up in the state's sprawling fraud scandal, they don't appear to have ties to Minnesota's large Somali-American community. Prosecutors say they don't appear to have ties to Minnesota at all.
"Minnesota has become a magnet for fraud, so much so that we have developed a fraud tourism industry — people coming to our state purely to exploit and defraud its programs," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson, who brought the new charges. "This is a deeply unsettling reality that all Minnesotans should understand."
They defrauded Medicaid, others in this batch of busts defrauded a housing stabilization service for the homeless, still others defrauded child autism programs. They all found Minnesota a tourist's paradise, not for its lakes and scenery, but for every kind of fraud. That's because every agency on Gov. Tim Walz's watch apparently never said 'no' to anyone. Word got around about 'a good opportunity to make money' as one of the accused fraudsters put it, the cash went out like water through a sieve and now the busts are rolling in.
But the money's gone. And Minnesota is probably going to need some federal supervision, like a fourth-world country that can't keep its spending under control and needs itself some IMF.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/walz_s_minnesota_was_such_a_big_playground_for_fraud_it_drew_fraud_tourism.html
