After Hours: Minnesota Fraud Whistleblower

Summary

Podcast Summary: Full Measure After Hours

Episode: Minnesota Fraud Whistleblower
Host: Sharyl Attkisson
Date: March 12, 2026

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Overview

This episode delves into Minnesota's massive state and federal welfare fraud scandals, largely involving programs intended to support the vulnerable but instead siphoning billions of taxpayer dollars, sometimes via organized efforts. Sharyl Attkisson interviews Faye Bernstein, a Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) compliance officer and long-term whistleblower, and Minnesota State Representative Kristen Robbins, chair of the legislature’s main fraud prevention committee. They expose how poor oversight, willful neglect, and retaliation against whistleblowers allowed such fraud to proliferate, and discuss steps needed for reform.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Systemic Problems: Culture of Retaliation and Poor Leadership

• Faye Bernstein (01:37):
  The DHS fraud problem "has lasted for, at least in my knowledge, six to seven years, likely before that."
  She blames "quite poor unqualified leadership" and "a real serious problem with retaliation towards employees who speak about anything that is fraud related."

• Whistleblowers like Bernstein were isolated, had job duties steadily reduced, and faced public humiliation, deterring others from speaking up.

2. Early Warning Signs and Ignored Red Flags

• Uncovering Risky Contracts (02:13–07:10):
  Bernstein, promoted in 2019, spotted contracts violating the law, including:

  • Double-dipping potential, where providers could bill both Medicaid and via direct contract for the same services.
  • Lack of guardrails and system checks meant even blatant conflicts of interest (e.g., contracts with relatives) could go unnoticed.

• After raising concerns about $1M+ in contracts likely enabling double-billing, Bernstein was sidelined, and approval was given by a probationary employee who then replaced her.

3. Retaliation and Harassment Against Whistleblowers

• Bernstein’s Exclusion (07:23–10:18):
  After objecting to fraudulent practices, Bernstein was increasingly shut out:

  • Not invited to regular meetings
  • Assigned trivial "collating"-level tasks
  • Explicitly told by peers they’d been ordered not to speak to her by top administrators

• Bernstein was publicly "paraded out of the building one day, and everyone saw that" (14:48), sending a strong message to other would-be whistleblowers.

4. The Fraud Environment and Enabling System

• Environment Ripe for Fraud (10:28–11:48):
  Bernstein describes a system with "not any of the normal guardrails," where "no one is going to notice" self-dealing and basic fraud.

  • Efforts to report or correct issues led to the whistleblower being branded “the bad employee.”

• Link to Major Scandals:
  While Bernstein didn’t see the high-profile daycare fraud directly, she emphasizes the vulnerable contract system laid the groundwork for much larger abuses.

5. Mishandling of Opioid and Other Federal Funds

• Opioid Funds (13:19–14:41):
  Bernstein claims "without question, that money was mishandled in numerous ways." She estimates $30–40 million received, with 10–20% potentially improperly spent, particularly on staff who "should not have been" paid from those federal opioid funds.

6. Call for Accountability and Lessons Learned

• Lesson (14:48):
  Main takeaway: "Employees who do this work every day… know when we’re doing something risky. You just have to listen to them."
  Retaliation stifles reporting of fraud, perpetuating the cycle.

• Bernstein’s job was only preserved due to public support of two Republican legislators, despite her being a Democrat (16:04), illustrating bipartisan backing for anti-corruption efforts.

7. The Role of Leadership and Oversight Fails

• State Government Complicity (16:47–18:21):
  Legislative audits repeatedly identified fraud and risk, but "that has been disregarded all the way from the governor all the way down to our commissioners."
  The same vulnerable practices remain in 2026.

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Representative Kristen Robbins: The Web of Fraud

8. Robbins’ Discovery and The Evolution of Scandals

• Hearing About Fraud (18:45–19:09):
  Robbins learned about daycare fraud after her 2018 election via a Legislative Auditor report.

  • DHS’s early approach: "They were handling it… it’s being prosecuted." Initial sums prosecuted ($5–6M) gave lawmakers a false reassurance that the problem was controlled.

• Over time, she discovered "how interrelated they are, how the webs of relationships have fostered this fraud, the lack of oversight, the lack of internal controls at DHS. This wasn’t a one off with childcare. It wasn’t a one off with Feeding Our Future. They’ve been … sort of a thread through all of it." (19:09–20:49)

9. The Mechanics of the Fraud

• The Subsidy Loophole (25:30):
  Fraudsters would register as service providers with "very low barriers to entry," then "start billing Medicaid and/or child care… lots of times it maybe started out with legitimate clients, but then quickly they morphed into fake clients, fake services, billing for things that didn’t actually even happen."

• Federal COVID aid, particularly via the Meals Act sponsored by Rep. Ilhan Omar in March 2020, removed program guardrails, making large-scale fraud easier.

10. Institutional Resistance & Complicity

• After the March/April 2019 Legislative Auditor reports, "the criminal investigation unit was shut down," preventing investigations into reported fraud. Whistleblowers were discouraged or outright blocked from reporting to the Legislative Auditor.

• An organized lobby, the Minnesota Minority Child Care Association (linked to later Feeding Our Future defendants), opposed internal controls and was backed by DHS (22:46–25:02).

11. Prosecution & Public Perception

• Current Status (27:03):
  Ongoing federal investigation:

  • 78 indictments and 61 convictions linked to Feeding Our Future
  • Related prosecutions in autism centers, housing stabilization, adult care

• Robbins pushes back against the narrative that child care fraud was "debunked," citing on-site reviews showing many closed or non-existent facilities, despite later superficial compliance checks (28:35–30:04).

12. The Path Forward

• Culture Change & Accountability (31:38):
  "You have to have a governor and executive branch leadership who has a culture of accountability. We don’t have that in Minnesota, clearly. But you have to have a no fraud, no excuses culture. You have to fire someone."

  • She calls for firing and replacing those complicit in oversight failures, and building standardized internal controls.

• Scale of the problem: "A minimum of $9 billion estimated by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Medicaid programs. That doesn’t include SNAP, TANF, child care." (30:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Faye Bernstein (on being silenced):
  "I was just very publicly paraded out of the building one day, and everyone saw that. ... So why would anyone want to stick their neck out and become another Faye Bernstein?" (14:48)

• On retaliation and leadership: "The retaliation puts such a chill on anybody speaking again." (14:48)

• Kristen Robbins (on lack of controls):
  "Child care led to the Feeding Our Futures scandal. ... The same network, in the same business model. All because there were no internal controls at DHS, low guardrails in these programs." (24:59)

• On fraudulent sites:
  "Our staff over two different years went to many of these sites and found the same thing. Locked, boarded up, no evidence of even furniture, no evidence of a playground, no evidence of people being there. So I would say it certainly hasn't been debunked." (28:35)

• On broken bureaucracy:
  "I used to say it was, oh, they didn't know, or the scope was too big. I think it was more willful and I'm very disturbed by it." (30:04)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:37: Faye Bernstein describes origins of the fraud problem and retaliation at DHS
• 02:53: Example of suspicious contract and resistance to oversight
• 04:31–07:10: Bernstein recounts million-dollar contracts and being sidelined after refusing approvals
• 07:23–10:18: Retaliation detailed: exclusion from meetings, menial tasks, explicit orders not to communicate
• 10:28: How flawed contracting systems enabled mass fraud
• 13:19: Opioid money: "Without question... mishandled in numerous ways"
• 14:48: Lessons: listen to employees; chilling effect of retaliation
• 16:47: Audits ignored at all leadership levels; risks continue
• 18:45: Robbins: initial exposure to fraud as a new legislator
• 19:09–20:49: Robbins’ realization that fraud was not isolated but systemic
• 22:46: Internal investigation unit at DHS shut down after audit reports
• 25:30: How the fraud was actually perpetrated at a practical level
• 28:35: Robbins explains why the fraud was never debunked, despite revisionist reports
• 30:03: Robbins on the scale of fraud and need for root-and-branch reform

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Conclusion

The episode provides a damning, richly detailed portrait of a state system that made fraud easy through weak oversight, discouraged internal dissent with retaliation, and failed to act on repeated audit warnings. Political and bureaucratic inertia, combined with lobbying efforts, allowed billions to be lost to fraud in programs for children and vulnerable populations. Both Bernstein and Robbins stress the need for cultural and systemic reform—emphasizing empowered whistleblowers, strong internal controls, and clear governmental accountability—to prevent future scandals.

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For the full investigative report, tune in to "Full Measure" on Sunday, March 15th.

Transcript

[Faye Bernstein]

Foreign.

[Interviewer]

Hi, everybody.

[Cheryl Atkison]

Cheryl Atkison here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure. After hours today, a Minnesota fraud whistleblower. If only someone influential had listened to state employee Faye Bernstein years ago when she warned of a system ripe for fraud. Sunday, March 15th on full measure. I'm reporting from Minneapolis on that notorious theft of taxpayer dollars you've heard so much about. The web of fraud that's taken place there largely by residents from Somalia siphoned billions of dollars from programs meant to help the vulnerable. And this is taxpayer money, in many cases your taxpayer money, federal money. But years before the national headlines, insiders were sounding the alarm about a system primed for abuse on a wide scale. One of those insiders is Faye Bernstein. You'll hear from her in today's podcast. Then Minnesota state representative Kristen Robbins. She's been listening to numerous whistleblowers. She heads up the legislature's main fraud prevention committee and has some new information about revelations in the massive fraud scandal. But first, here's whistleblower Faye Bernstein, who's a compliance officer and at the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Her job to make sure welfare related contracts followed the rules.

[Faye Bernstein]

The fraud problem that we have at the Minnesota Department of Human Services has lasted for, at least in my knowledge, six to seven years, likely before that. And I think so much of the problem can be attributed to tooth things. We have quite poor unqualified leadership and we have a real serious problem with retaliation towards employees who speak about anything that is fraud related.

[Interviewer]

When and how did this first come to your attention? What did you notice?

[Faye Bernstein]

In 2019, I got a promotion that allowed me to see the contracting habits processes of other staff. Prior to that, I had just seen my own. So when all the contracts in my work area started to be funneled through me, then I, then I started to notice some, some things that were clearly in violation of law, other things that were very risky, not something that we should be doing.

[Interviewer]

Can you describe an example that would be easy for outsiders to understand if something you saw that raised a red flag?

[Faye Bernstein]

An example would be there was a contract with a former employee and I immediately recognized her name. She had only been gone for maybe a year or so. And when I went to the person who had initiated the contract and said, can I see the background of this? Why are we doing a contract with a former employee? The person that I spoke to, the contract initiator, immediately got up and ran to our deputy director and said, faye's asking questions about this contract with this person. And it became a big deal. And I Just needed to be satisfied that we had met the basic requirements of it being a public solicitation and a fair scoring process, and that we had just awarded this contract fairly. And I was really quite shocked that this was a big deal. Ultimately, I got what I wanted and I was satisfied, and it was a perfectly fine contract. There was no conflict of interest there. But it really impressed in my mind that we're not supposed to be asking questions. We're just supposed to let all of these go through.

[Interviewer]

When do you remember the story of the first contract you looked at or uncovered where there was a red flag that was substantiated or what you found that was more than just that?

[Faye Bernstein]

We had a set of contracts. I believe there was about seven of them, and they totaled more than a million dollars. So it was something that needed to be looked at closely. That's quite a lot of money for us. And when I looked at what the services that were being performed under the contract, I immediately recalled that just the prior session or possibly two sessions ago, at the Minnesota legislature, that had been included as a billable service. So we would not contract for it. It would just be billed through Medicaid. So if we did contract for this, what that opened up was the possibility that these providers could both bill Medicaid as well as under the contract. It would make double dipping so easy. Anybody could have done it. And those two systems between our contract invoices, our contract payments, and our Medicaid billings don't in any way connect. That would never be noticed. And so I said, but we passed this. This is a Medicaid billable service now. And I got an incredible amount of resistance on that. And I ultimately said, after going back and forth for several weeks, I can't do these contracts. And so it was given to a brand new employee, and he did them.

[Interviewer]

When you say did them, were you supposed to improve, approve them or Correct? Okay.

[Faye Bernstein]

I was in the. In a layer of approvals, and so I would have to approve them and pass them on to the next level. And I said I couldn't. I couldn't approve that. And so it was given to a new employee, a probationary employee, and he did them. And when I was later removed from the division and transferred to a different job, involuntarily, of course, he then was promoted up into my job. And then I continued to speak about that. These contracts were not okay. I didn't let up on it. And finally we had to pull them all back and adjust them way down, because when was that? It Was about a year later, we finally pulled them all back.

[Interviewer]

So what year was that?

[Faye Bernstein]

Oh, I'm sorry. So all this would have occurred in the summer of 2019.

[Interviewer]

So get me from the point of you starting to raise concerns and feeling pushback, and if you could summarize what happened before, before the time that you got involuntarily transferred out of that job,

[Faye Bernstein]

My job duties were lessened and lessened. The first thing that I noticed was meetings that I had regularly attended. All of a sudden, I was not invited to them anymore. And when that happens, of course, you don't know what you don't know. So for a time, I just. I guess I thought the meetings weren't happening. But then I would walk down the hall and I would hear people talking about things that had occurred at the meeting. So I. I realized that I was being excluded. And then I would make meetings to speak to people about something that I needed to do at that time. It was a large. A large amount of opioid money. We were getting a lot of federal money from to do with opioid. And so I would make meetings with co workers that I had made meetings many times, and they would decline. And at one point, I went to one of the people that was my peer that I had worked with for years, and naively assumed that I had maybe just requested a meeting at a bad time for her. So I went to her and said, is there a better time, or do we need to put this off for a week or two? And she said, no, I've been told I can't talk to you about that anymore. And I said, well, why? And who in the world told you that? I was shocked. This was dealing with the opioid money was a huge amount of my job at that time. And she said that the commissioner of the Department of Human Services had told her not to talk to me anymore about this. So I had less and less job duties. And at a certain point in late 2019, I actually had very little to do. I had very little things to fill my time. Sometimes I would be assigned very minimal tasks. Editing something. Something comparable to collating. I don't believe I was ever assigned collating, but it was something like that. Those were now my job duties. And the more I would try to say, but I do this. I've done this for years. Why am I not doing that anymore? Our director and our deputy director just kept saying, nothing's changed, nothing's changed. But it obviously had because no one would meet with me anymore. What year were you hired there 2005. How, I'm sorry, 2006.

[Interviewer]

How does your experience link into what we, I guess, have come to think of as the Somali fraud, the daycare fraud, and what's happening today?

[Faye Bernstein]

By my experience, how does what you

[Interviewer]

just described, in other words, maybe, maybe you were seeing a system that was ripe for fraud. Even if you didn't see, I assume you didn't see this specific fraud, or maybe you did. You can tell me how it ties in.

[Faye Bernstein]

Okay. I did not see at that time anything to do with the daycare fraud. That was something in another area. So that was not something I saw. What I saw and what I was concerned about is that we had very risky practices. We had a great environment for fraud. I used to always say, I can do a million dollar contract with my sister right now and because she has a different name, I can pay that out and no one is going to notice. It was that type of environment. There was not any of the normal guardrails. There was nothing that would prevent that sort of thing. And then if I did point that out or anyone else pointed that out, you were immediately targeted and you were the bad employee. And from that point on, there was nothing you could do. Everything you did was wrong.

[Interviewer]

How did your story then come to light now, years later? In other words, did you contact the congresswoman's office or how were you found to talk about the systems as you learned they were in that time period?

[Faye Bernstein]

In the last six or seven years, I've continued to work at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, but I've also continued to work at this. I still did occasionally have contact with media and I still did occasionally have contact with legislators. I sort of didn't let up on it. I continued to speak very openly about retaliation at work, at large meetings. I made it a point to always bring it up. I think a lot of people would say that I was maybe too persistent some days. Some days I even annoyed myself because I talked about it so much, actually. But it seemed that the problem was only getting worse. It was definitely not getting better. And I always felt that something bad was going to happen.

[Interviewer]

From what you gather, would you think there's a pretty good chance that there is fraud related to opioid money that's

gone out the door or other programs

we haven't yet focused on?

[Faye Bernstein]

Oh, I can guarantee you there is in the opioid money. Yes, yes.

[Interviewer]

Someone looking at that now.

[Faye Bernstein]

I did recently send to CMS some particular things that. And I haven't heard back. I don't know if they're looking at it, but yeah, there is. Without question. Without question, that money was mishandled in numerous ways.

[Interviewer]

How much money does the state or did the state get? Can you quantify, like, we're talking about tens of millions of dollars over the years?

[Faye Bernstein]

Tens of millions of dollars? I would say there was, boy, this is a brilliant estimate, but maybe 30 or 40 million that came in, and the majority of that probably was fine. I would say maybe 10 or 20% of it should really be looked at again, particularly related to how staff were paid. For instance, as my job duties were narrowed down to the level of collating, I continued to be paid out of the federal money, and I shouldn't have been. And there was many of us who were being paid out of federal money and we should not have been.

[Interviewer]

Because your jobs didn't involve opioid resources.

[Faye Bernstein]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

What is the lessons to be taken away from your experience? What are the lessons?

[Faye Bernstein]

I think the most important thing is that the employees, employees who do this work every day, not just me, but many employees who do this work every day know when we're doing something risky. You just have to listen to them. The retaliation puts such a chill on anybody speaking again, you know, I was just very publicly paraded out of the building one day, and everyone saw that. I remember so well. The hallways were full, the elevators were full. It was right after lunch. And so everybody saw it and it was clear what was happening to me that day. It was very, very clear. So why would anyone want to stick their neck out and become another Faye Bernstein? I don't blame my coworkers at all for sitting silently.

[Interviewer]

What year was that?

[Faye Bernstein]

That was July 10th of 2019.

[Interviewer]

And to what do you attribute the fact that you have a job, Maybe not that job, but you still have a job with the department? Well,

[Faye Bernstein]

you're probably going to want to edit this out, but I attribute my. The fact that I wasn't fired because I know that DHS wanted to fire me very badly. Instead, they went the route of just harassing me enough and hoping that I would quit. But I really think it has to do with a couple of Republican legislators who. And I'm a Democrat, so I don't know why they came to my aid, but they did, and they were very public about what I was doing, so I really have them to thank.

[Interviewer]

State legislators.

[Faye Bernstein]

Yes. I should also say that there is sometimes a question of how much awareness of this DHS leadership had, how much awareness our governor had. And I think there is no question that there was full knowledge, full awareness. We have something unique in the state of Minnesota called the ola, the Legislative Auditor. And our Legislative Auditor is a nonpartisan group and they are just a lot of auditors and they go around and audit the state agencies and they are highly regarded by everyone. You will not find anyone who says that our OLA is anything but perfection, really. They have done numerous audits on the Department of Human Services as well as we have had internal audits done even by our own auditors. And the results again and again have highlighted our risks, many, many cases of just downright fraud, but also our risks. And the OLA has been very clear about the practices that we have are an opportunity for fraudsters. And that has been disregarded all the way from the governor all the way down to our commissioners.

[Interviewer]

And the practice is still in place today?

[Faye Bernstein]

Oh, absolutely.

[Cheryl Atkison]

Up next, Minnesota Representative Kristen Robbins, chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee.

[Interviewer]

When did you first hear any inkling about this fraud that we're talking about today?

[Kristen Robbins]

You know, I was elected in 2018, so my first session was 2019, and that was the year that the Office of Legislative Auditor reports came out talking about the child care fraud. So as a new member, that was the first I knew about it.

[Interviewer]

And what was the top line of what you learned from that audit?

[Kristen Robbins]

You know, just that there was this child care fraud going on. DHS said they were handling it. There had been five to six million in prosecutions. And so as a member, we felt like, okay, they figured this out. It's being prosecuted. And honestly, I'm not on the DHS committee or the child care related committee. So I assumed like that was it. Right. And then over the years, you heard a couple years later, we had the huge Feeding our Future scandal. But it wasn't until this past year when I became chair of the Fraud Committee that I started really doing a systemic deep dive on all of these programs and understanding how interrelated they are, how the webs of relationships have fostered this fraud, the lack of oversight, the lack of internal controls at dhs. This wasn't a one off with childcare. It wasn't a one off with feeding our future. They've been, there's, there's sort of a thread through all of it. But we didn't, I think, know that. I didn't know it until I started doing the research as the fraud committee chair. And I don't think the public really started learning more about it until we had some great local investigative reports in the Last year here. And then of course, the Nick Shirley video brought it viral. So I think now the public really is fully. I think we're all just beginning to grasp the scope of it. I don't think we still have a handle on it, but clearly you can see the beginning of it. Back in the child care fraud, when

[Interviewer]

you say dhs, is that the State Department of Human Services?

[Kristen Robbins]

Yes, Department of Human Services. And back when they started, they had agency responsibility for child care. That switched to a new Department of Children, Youth and Families in April of last year.

[Interviewer]

In the simplest way possible. Can you explain what you've unraveled about the connections between these scams, what they were and how they are tied together?

[Kristen Robbins]

Yes. So I think the child care fraud was the genesis of it. And at the time that the Office of Legislative Auditor reports came out, they had prosecuted through a criminal investigation unit in Department of Human Services, five to six million dollars in child care fraud. And the Office of Legislative Auditor report contained an addendum from the head of the Child Care Investigative Unit saying they thought it went much broader. But the Office of Legislative Auditor said they couldn't verify that. People felt like, oh, maybe not. Maybe it's overblown. As a rank and file member, that's all we knew about it. But what I discovered as chair of the Fraud Committee, talking to people who were in that investigative child care unit after those reports came out, March and April of 2019, early in the Walls Administration, their unit was prohibited from doing criminal investigations. So this big explosive report came out. And rather than saying, okay, go to town, go, go do all these criminal investigations, the criminal investigation unit was shut down. And they were told, no, we're not doing criminal investigations in child care anymore. You can look at overpayments and then any overpayments you find can get referred to an overpayments committee. And we'll decide if we'll seek reimbursement. But they were no longer pursuing criminal investigation or charges on child care fraud.

[Interviewer]

What do you make of that?

[Kristen Robbins]

It's astonishing, but that part is all new. Like I found out about that, you know, from a whistleblower in the last, I would say, five weeks. So this is new information that we're all beginning to process. And what you find out when you look at reports from that period that I have been given from the whistleblowers, there were people who were trying to whistleblow who were shut down or told not to go to the Office of Legislative Auditor, lots of back and forth. It appears that people who knew? Including in dhs, there was a group of people involved from the Somali community who created a group called the Minnesota Minority Child Care Association. And that group would try to lobby against changes that would tighten the internal controls. Anytime the legislature did come forward with a proposal to say, oh, well, we should tighten this up or tighten that up, this minority child care association would say, no, we shouldn't do that. That will hurt our families. That's not going to work. And DHS would back them. Efforts that were done through legislation or attempted to do never got off the ground because they were blocked. Many of those people who were involved in the Minnesota Minority Child Care association then later became defendants and, and charged and convicted in the Feeding Our Future scandal. So the child care led to the Feeding Our Futures scandal. And my assumption is that when they saw how much they got away with in childcare and then the huge explosion of money from the COVID dollars and Feeding Our Future happened, they saw the next opportunity to layer in another layer of fraud. And then the Feeding Our Future sites, many of them had ties with autism centers or sober homes or non emergency medical transportation or housing stabilization. And now we're finding adult daycare and assisted living. So it just kept mushrooming, but in the same network, in the same business model. All because there were no internal controls at dhs, low guardrails in these programs,

[Interviewer]

and a lot of money at a basic level. And I'm not sure this is how it works, so you correct me where I'm wrong, but did people figure out that there was money to be applied for from either state or federal government, taxpayer money? Is this how it worked? They could apply for money with very little checks and balances to supposedly operate a business, and then they were pocketing or diverting the money elsewhere. Like what at its most basic level were they doing?

[Kristen Robbins]

Yes. So they would apply to be providers of services that you could then bill either the child care grants for or you could bill Medicaid for. So they would enroll as a provider that had very low barriers to entry, what a provider could be, and then they start billing Medicaid and or child care. And lots of times it maybe started out with legitimate clients, but then quickly they morphed into fake clients, fake services, billing for things that didn't actually even happen. I would say how we got from child care to Feeding Our Future was directly related to a bill that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar introduced in March of 2020. And she passed a bill early in the COVID scandal called the Meals act, which took the Guardrails off the child nutrition program. So all of a sudden there were no site visits, There were no income eligibility requirements, There was no requirement for who could distribute it. And because that program lost all the guardrails that she passed through Congress. And then a lot of the people who were donors to her set up these Feeding Our Future sites enrolled as providers. And that's where I think a lot of the genesis of the Feeding Our Futures scandal happened.

[Interviewer]

Where did things stand today with investigating and prosecuting?

The latest

[Kristen Robbins]

My understanding is that the investigations are ongoing through the U.S. attorney's office. That's been who's taking the lead on all these prosecutions that we've gotten great convictions and indictments on. I believe there's been 78 indictments in Feeding Our Future and 61 convictions. And they've also done other indictments in autism centers, housing stabilization, integrated community supports. So my understanding is the U.S. attorney's office is still doing that. They've had some change in their team of who's prosecuting it. But I know they've got a new woman at the head over there and she's fantastic in trial this week, as I understand it. So I think things are going on. And then I've testified at the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Oversight Investigations Committee, and they also, through their investigative teams, are interviewing witnesses, getting documents and continuing their own investigations. So we've had terrific help from the Department of Treasury cms. So a lot of our federal partners have really shown up here and are helping us get to the bottom of it.

[Interviewer]

There are news articles that I recently saw that said the notion that there were these child care centers without children was debunked by subsequent visits that showed there were children there and everything was fine. And I had to kind of argue with the search engine that I was using to say, I'm not sure that's entirely true, but what do you say to those. There is that narrative out there that that was sort of the whole notion of the child care fraud was debunked?

[Kristen Robbins]

No. I mean, first of all, we've had the convictions on the record, but secondly, our staff looked in 2024 and 2025 in and we put together. So pre Nick Shirley we were looking at this as a committee and I did a hearing in February of 2025 where I provided to the department a list of 72 child care centers our staff had reviewed that we thought were problematic. So we were already identifying this, having public hearings on it a year ago. And then we gave the department the list to My knowledge they didn't do anything with it. And then Nick Shirley visited many of those same sites and now they've claimed they've gone and visited it. But our staff over two different years went to many of these sites and found the same thing. Locked, boarded up, no evidence of even furniture, no evidence of a playground, no evidence of people being there. So I would say it certainly hasn't been debunked. I think my initial understanding as committee chair coming in was that this had been a failure of internal controls. Over the year of investigating this and seeing the business model of fraud and the relationship between child care Representative Omar's Meals act that led to feeding our Future, that then led to all these other vectors of fraud in autism centers, housing stabilization, etc.

[Interviewer]

Etc.

[Kristen Robbins]

I think there was willful turning a blind eye. There have been numerous reports, both Office of Legislative Auditor and Investigative Journalism and whistleblowers who you're going to meet soon, very credible, who at great risk to themselves have tried to ring the bell on this. And so I feel like these mounting reports have all been ignored or tried to be debunked or people were retaliated against. So there's been, I used to say it was, you know, oh, they didn't know, or the scope was too big. I think it was more willful and I'm very disturbed by it. And we have to get to the bottom of it. A minimum of $9 billion estimated by the U.S. attorney's office in the Medicaid programs. That doesn't include SNAP, TANF, child care. So the, the scope of this fraud and the theft of taxpayer dollars is enormous. And if we don't get to the bottom of it, the, the lack of trust in state government and federal government is a real serious problem. And taxpayers work hard for their money. They don't want to see it absconded like this.

[Interviewer]

My last question is, I don't know what you could put in place that says this time it will be stopped, but is there something you can do to make sure that we're not here

in another couple of years with a similar scandal?

Again,

[Kristen Robbins]

I think you have to have a governor and executive branch leadership who has a culture of accountability. We don't have that in Minnesota, clearly. But you have to have a no fraud, no excuses culture. You have to fire someone. All the people involved in this who either turned a blind eye or as we saw in the OLA report that came out in January, DHS employees were falsifying documentation of site visits. They were backdating documents so the DHS employees themselves were complicit in some of this. So we have to clean house, fire everyone who had any role in this. And then we have to standardized internal controls so a dime doesn't go out unless you verified eligibility of the provider of the recipient. You know that the service is actually being provided. You know that there's not. You know a lot of these places had 15, 17 people at the same address. Like you have to, you have to do the work to do the internal controls and standardize that across all programs so you know it's happening in a systematic way. And then I think we will bring it into it.

[Faye Bernstein]

Foreign.

[Cheryl Atkison]

The Full Story Sunday, March 15th on full measure. And in addition to the wrap up of the fraud, we're also going to visit the Little Mogadishu community in Minneapolis. Little Mogadishu, named after the capital city of Somalia where so many Somalia immigrants and Somali Americans live in Minneapolis. And a lot of them feel like they've unfairly suffered the brunt of blame for the fraud scandal, even though they had nothing to do with it. So that side of the story too. I hope you enjoy today's podcast and that you will leave us a great review, share it with your friends and subscribe. And check out my other podcast, the Cheryl Akisson Podcast to Support Independent Journalism. You can pick up a copy of my latest bestseller and because proceeds go to independent reporting causes, it's Follow the Science, How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails. And you can also go to the Cheryl Atkison store by going to Sherylakisson.com and clicking the Store tab, because proceeds from sales there also support independent reporting causes like the Cheryl Atkinson ION Awards for Independent Investigative Reporting. And funds have gone to Project Censored. They've gone to the University of Florida Bruckner center for Freedom of Information as well as its journalism programs. The items at the store are exclusive and unique. They can make great gifts for independent thinkers with slogans such as do your own research, make up your own mind, Think for yourself.

[Faye Bernstein]

Sat.