MUST SHARE: Kenyans Told "Venture West to Minnesota & Fleece Taxpayers w Fraud"

Summary

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The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

Episode: "MUST SHARE: Kenyans Told 'Venture West to Minnesota & Fleece Taxpayers w Fraud'"

Date: April 30, 2026
Host: Ben Ferguson

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Ben Ferguson delves into explosive and ongoing allegations of massive childcare assistance fraud centered in Minnesota, where a network of daycare scams, largely tied to Somali-run businesses, have siphoned off public funds for years. Drawing from extended testimony at a Minnesota House oversight hearing—where Governor Tim Walz was notably absent—Ferguson airs whistleblower accounts, exposes bureaucratic failure and political complicity, and urges listeners to spread awareness of what he calls a national-level scandal.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Governor Walz’s Absence and Accountability Failures

• Governor Tim Walz did not attend the Minnesota House oversight hearing, despite previously taking public credit for recent FBI raids cracking down on fraudulent childcare centers ([04:00]-[09:10]).

• Walz’s claim: “If you commit fraud in Minnesota, you’re going to get caught.”

• Ferguson’s view: Walz’s administration did little to prevent fraud and only took action after federal intervention. Calls out the governor’s attempt to “rewrite history” and take retroactive credit for federal investigations.

  “There's a reason why he's not running for reelection. It's because everything in that tweet... was not happening while he was in charge.”
  — Ben Ferguson ([06:10])

2. Whistleblower Testimony: Scale and Method of the Fraud

• The episode features extensive playback and analysis of a former Minnesota law enforcement official’s opening statement to the legislature ([12:00]-[33:30]).

• Fraud involved child care centers billing for hundreds of children who did not exist, using falsified attendance records, with the centers often completely empty during spot checks.

• Investigators received overwhelming numbers of tips, mostly focusing on scams topping $700,000/year due to time and resource constraints.

• Ferguson stresses that the scheme was widespread, normalized, and ignored by political leadership due to alleged corrupt kickbacks.

  “We were so inundated with tips on centers receiving $700,000 to over a million dollars that we didn't have time to focus on centers receiving less.”
  — Whistleblower ([16:05])

  “If these are all fake centers… as soon as the government dollars disappeared, the centers would immediately close. Why? Because the government dollars was the scheme.”
  — Ben Ferguson ([20:37])

3. International Origins and Spread of the Scam

• Whistleblower reveals many suspects learned about the “daycare scam” in Kenyan refugee camps before immigrating to the US & Minnesota ([21:55]-[23:14]).

• Minnesota became known as the “easiest and most profitable” state for such fraud, a message passed among Somali immigrants both in the US and abroad.

  “More than once, I heard an owner or employee respond, when we asked where they first learned about the daycare scam, they would say they had first heard about it while in the refugee camp in Kenya.”
  — Whistleblower ([21:55])

  “So they're in a refugee camp. They then fight. We got to get to America, right?... And you don't care because it's not really your government because you're from Nairobi, you're from Kenya.”
  — Ben Ferguson ([22:28])

4. Political and Bureaucratic Cover-ups

• Ferguson and the whistleblower detail how investigators faced harassment and obstruction from high-ranking Department of Human Services (DHS) officials ([25:34]-[32:27]).

• Attempts were made to dissuade cooperation with legislative auditors, including intimidation, forced changes to investigative priorities, and even hiring outside consultants to downplay the fraud.

• Investigative decisions taken out of experienced law enforcement hands and handed to politically connected, inexperienced committees—to systematically defang anti-fraud efforts.

• Senior investigators resigned, citing an environment where pursuing fraud was punished rather than rewarded.

  “Not only was the theft of untold millions of dollars tolerated, but those who tried to stop it would be subjected to the wrath of high ranking department officials.”
  — Whistleblower ([33:00])

  “If you did your job as law enforcement, you were threatened. Good luck keeping your job because if you go there… somebody’s gonna come for you. Who? The political machine.”
  — Ben Ferguson ([26:50])

5. National Implications & Call to Action

• Ferguson frames the scandal as the tip of a much larger iceberg, alleging similar fraud occurs in other states and tying its exposure to the actions of the Trump administration.

• He urges listeners to share the episode to “break the mainstream media blackout” and spread awareness of government waste, fraud, and political complicity ([33:31]-[35:00]).

  “Please share this wherever you can… we're gonna keep exposing it. Even when the media refuses to play things like this, we will play it.”
  — Ben Ferguson ([33:40])

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the normalization of fraud:
  “There were people that were telling them this was happening. And what did the Democrats in Minnesota and the governor do? They look the other way. Why? Because they were part of the scheme.”
  — Ben Ferguson ([14:20])

• On scale and impunity:
  “I checked and found that in the last 12 months we had paid the center approximately $1 million and that they were billing for the care of approximately 90 children at a time during two shifts from 6am to 10pm seven days a week.”
  — Whistleblower ([15:27])

• On fraudulent centers’ rapid shutdown:
  “The stop payment orders always resulted in the immediate closure of the center. Because the centers we investigated never had any private paying clients, only publicly funded CCAP clients.”
  — Whistleblower ([20:09])

• On whistleblower intimidation:
  “A senior DHS official told me to delete a number of paragraphs of the document that I had sent. I then advised this official that I believed what they were telling me to do was illegal.”
  — Whistleblower ([25:34])

• On the bureaucratic “continuous improvement” sham:
  “We were giving homework assignments to work on between the meetings… the huge amount of time our team spent resulted in investigators and supervisors being unable to conduct hardly any investigative activity.”
  — Whistleblower ([27:36])

• On the international reputation of the Minnesota scam:
  “They found out about the scheme in a refugee camp in Kenya… this fraud is now like… it's worldwide fraud, folks. They're like, yeah, yeah, go to America. Do this. You'll make a lot of money.”
  — Ben Ferguson ([22:28])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:12] — Segment opens: Text messages among fraudsters discussing buying homes in Nairobi
• [06:00] — Ben Ferguson explains Governor Walz’s absence from oversight hearing
• [12:01] — Whistleblower’s opening remarks on the extent of CCAP fraud
• [16:05] — Volume of tips and resource constraints described by investigator
• [18:45] — Text messages show owners’ motivations (“another year or two, gonna buy some nice homes in Nairobi”)
• [21:55] — Discovery of the fraud’s origins in Kenyan refugee camps
• [25:34] — Investigator describes being pressured to alter or hide findings
• [27:36] — Deliberate obstruction and reassignment of investigative work
• [33:31] — Closing analysis: National implications and the need for grassroots exposure

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

This episode uses official testimony and Ben Ferguson’s commentary to allege a sprawling, deliberate fraud with international roots, enabled by political indifference (or worse), and suppressed by hostile bureaucracy. The picture painted is one of systemic failure and corruption, with an urgent call for transparency and accountability. Ferguson positions the exposure of this scandal as both a Minnesota and national issue—and a reason for listeners to remain vigilant and involved.

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Transcript

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[A]

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[B]

From an owner's cell phone, I was shown a text conversation between the owner of the center and a friend. The friend had asked the owner, how much longer are you going to do the daycare scam? The owner replied, another year or two. Going to buy some nice homes in Nairobi.

[C]

You're listening to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson. Good Thursday morning. Nice to have you with us on the 47 Morning Update. And we've got a bombshell for you. Governor Tim Waltz in Minnesota. A no show at the Minnesota House oversight hearing, but those that were testifying, they had a lot to say. And you'll understand exactly why Governor Waltz went and hid, making sure he was nowhere close to their testimony. We have it all for you in an extended version, but before we get to that, I want to tell you about our good friends at Patriot Mobile. America is entering the 250th year and the direction of this country is being decided right now in our culture and our economy and who we choose to support matters more than ever. Most wireless companies don't care who you are or what you believe. They just want your money. Patriot Mobile, they're different. For more than 12 years, they've stood with Americans who believe freedom is worth defending, funding the Christian conservative movement. When others stay silent, that's what they do. So here's the deal. You don't have to give up quality or service when you switch to Patriot Mobile. They deliver premium priority access on all three major U.S. networks. So you'll get the same or better coverage than you have today. Think switching is a hassle? It isn't anymore. In 2026, you keep your number, keep your phone or Upgrade and their 100 US based support team can activate you in minutes. Still paying off a device, Patriot Mobile even offers a contract buyout. This is a defining year. We must work together to save our country. So go to patriot mobile.comBen47 or call 972 Patriot. And if you use the promo code Ben47, you'll get a free month of service. That's patriot mobile.comBen47 or 972 Patriot and switch. Today it's the 47 Morning Update and it starts right now. Story number one. All right, we've got some really interesting, I would actually say, stunning developments coming out of Minnesota when it comes to former vice presidential candidate Governor Tim Waltz. Now, he's already said he's not going to run for reelection because of the massive Somali fraud in his state. But now what we're witnessing is something that's even more shocking than that. Now, Governor Wall said he was going to show up and he was going to be at this key Minnesota House oversight hearing. There was investigating fraud that's been tied to all the taxpayer funded child care programs. In a stunning turn of events, he was a no show. Now, this is hours after he took credit for the FBI raiding the leering center and 20 other different learning centers, quote, unquote. And he acted like he was a part of it. In fact, even on X, he put out this tweet yesterday that said, quote, if you commit fraud in Minnesota, you're going to get caught. And that's exactly what we saw today. We catch criminals when state and federal agencies share information. Joint investigations work and securing justice depends on it. Now, that is like a complete opposite of what actually happened with Governor Waltz. There's a reason why he's not running for reelection. It's because everything in that tweet that, by the way, I support was not happening while he was in charge. So not only does Governor Waltz try to like rewrite history and take credit for the FBI raids in Minnesota, um, but Casp Patel, the FBI director, actually threw down on this. He wrote this in response, quote, this FBI and DOJ executed every warrant. Go ahead and take credit while we clean up the mess under your watch. Now, I want you to hear what Fox News had to say about this as again, not only is the governor acting like he's cleaning up the city, but then he immediately no shows for the committee hearing about cleaning up Minneapolis, St. Paul and the entire state.

[B]

You're gonna get caught. And that's exactly what we saw today. We catch criminal. We, we, we catch criminals when state and federal agencies share information. Joint investigation work and secure injustice depends on it.

[C]

They didn't do anything, Ainsley.

[B]

No agents, no nothing. It was the federal government. And by the way, Ainsley, they criticized them when they were on the ground in Minnesota doing this exact work.

[C]

I know. And Cash Patel, who is the FBI director federal agent, he wrote. Come again? This FBI and DOJ with our DHS partners drafted and executed every search warrant today. But go ahead and take credit for

[A]

our work while we smoke out the

[C]

fraud plaguing Minnesota under your governorship.

[B]

Yeah. 22 separate locations were raided. They're talking about hundreds, if not billions of dollars. Most of them are Somali run businesses. Here's the governor.

[C]

Last night I promised you that I would devote my energies to fighting fraud in our state's human resources program.

[B]

I've said the buck stops with me. And as I know some of you will take that as an open invitation to play politics with every incident of fraud that takes place here in Minnesota, even though I have to tell you the statistics show it's happening in red

[C]

states more than here. My ask for you tonight is simple.

[B]

If you're taking fraud seriously, take your

[C]

responsibility seriously and pass legislation to stop it. If you talk about oversight, vote for

[B]

that oversight in the bills that are

[C]

working their way through the chamber. Now, by the way, I want to be clear, I can get behind that governor with most of what he said. And he got a standing ovation for what he said there. So why not actually show up for the actual meeting that deals with exactly what he says is so important? And so it's a simple question. Where is the accountability? Because instead of facing lawmakers in the public, the governor's absence is only adding fuel to an already growing controversy over oversight failures which the governor's office supposed to be involved in whistleblower claims, and whether state leadership turned a deliberate and purposeful blind eye. I believe they did to because they were getting kickbacks on the massive fraud that was unfolding right under their watch. That also includes the governor. Now, I play that for you to go to what actually happened. Okay. And this is really interesting because Governor Waltz is a no show. His administration is actively combating fraud. They claim that I, I think is not happening. He also notably declined to testify on the same day that the FBI raided nearly two dozen facilities in Minneapolis, including daycares, and suspected of stealing federal public assistance funds. So that's the lay of the land here. Now, lawmakers on the Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee noted that they reached out to Waltz more than a month ago, followed up multiple times, and that he had his picks of dates to choose from to come before their committee. And guess what? He's a no show. Now we are also learning why and I want you to listen to one testimony here. This is a testimony from a whistleblower and they are explaining how bad the fraud and corruption is, how long it's been going on. Now this is what the media should be leading with on every show in this country. They're not going to play for you this whistleblower and I want you to please share this. Okay? This is literally why I do this show and why I do the podcast. Without you guys putting it out there and sharing this, people will not see it. So take a moment, share the podcast wherever you can on social media so people hear this. I want you to listen to a Patriot. This is a 30 plus year, three decades of his life he has given to law enforcement in Minnesota. A man that was overseeing some of the fraud that was taking place in Minnesota. And what this patriot at this incredible hearing for the Minnesota House Oversight Hearing where Governor Ten Waltz refused to show up a no show, this brave man tells the world exactly how bad it is in Minnesota.

[B]

In my opening remarks, I'm not going to use the names of individuals involved in the events I will describe. I'm not hearing a vendetta. My goal is to help you understand how this happened. I did provide the names to the Legislative Auditor when I was interviewed in the 2018-2019 timeframe. You should also know that a few of the senior level DHS officials who harassed and abused our unit for committing the sin of trying to expose a huge amount of fraud in the CCAP program are still working at DHS today. From 2014 to early 2017, our unit received tremendous support from the original Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General. These folks, along with the great staff at the DHS Child Care Licensing Unit were the first ones to discover very strange and unusual activity at certain Minnesota child care centers, as well as suspicious behavior by their owners. This led them to believe that significant CCAP fraud may be taking place. The DHS child care licensing staff spent a great deal of time after we were hired teaching us what would be normal activity at a child care center and what would be abnormal or suspicious. Just so you're aware, our investigators were all retired police officers. They averaged 20 years of experience with extensive experience investigating everything from fraud to narcotics trafficking to homicide. These were veteran cops, but they knew nothing about child care centers. But the DHS licensing folks took care of us from the beginning. Our unit began receiving information, tips or complaints from a wide variety of sources that we believed were likely indicators of fraud. As an example, one day we received a call from a CCAP mother who called to complain that her child care center owner had stopped paying her the monthly cash kickback they had agreed upon. Another day, a former co owner of a center called to say that he had been cheated out of his share of the fraud proceeds. Yet another day, a fire department called asking if a child care center was still operating.

[C]

Let me just pause and I want you to think about this call center. These are people that are calling in and they're like, where's my stuff? Where's my kickback? Where's my cut? This is normal business that's being described. And this has been happening again, as he's describing it, for years and years and years and years. And there were people that were telling them this was happening. And what did the Democrats in Minnesota and the governor do? They look the other way. Why? Because they were part of the scheme. They were getting political kickbacks to deliberately and purposely look the other way. Which is exactly why Governor Waltz. Waltz was a no show at the Minnesota House oversight hearing on Tuesday. You can say all you want to what, what he said earlier, which I played for you in front of the, of the, of the, the, you know, the, the House Senate, the State House. There you can, like, you can say, I, I just passed the legislation. You were involved in this corruption. You weren't ignorant of it. You knew it was happening. There were people telling you it was happening. This man in law enforcement was telling you it was happening and you guys did nothing to stop it.

[B]

Because they had been trying to conduct a fire safety inspection and had made multiple trips there on different days at different times. But there were never any children or staff at the center. I checked and found that in the last 12 months we had paid the center approximately $1 million and that they were billing for the care of approximately 90 children at a time during two shifts from 6am to 10pm seven days a week. I wish I could tell you that these types of incidents were rare, but they weren't. This is what our team dealt with on a weekly basis. Once our unit received information we believed was an indicator of CCAP fraud, we would prioritize these tips primarily based on the amount of CCAP funding the center received. Frankly, we were so inundated with tips on centers receiving cities 700,000 to over a million dollars that we didn't have time to focus on centers receiving less funding.

[C]

Did you hear that? They had so many tips, so many tips that were coming in of major massive fraud that if you were under 700,000, like, yeah, like we can't there's nothing we can do. Like, I mean, we're doing the best we can. We don't have enough manpower to stop this type of fraud. By the way, I don't know what this guy makes, but let's just say it's under a hundred grand. You're telling me that you can't spend a hundred grand to stop millions in fraud? You understand my point here, right? Like, this is insanity. And they're explaining it because this is how bad it actually got. And it had been this way for years. And no one in the Democratic Party did anything to stop it. They said, double down, keep going, look the other way, and just give us our kickbacks. The same kickbacks. They're getting the phone calls like, hey, where's my payment?

[B]

Cases were assigned to investigators who would then conduct research on the center and owner and would then initiate physical and electronic surveillance of the center. The surveillance would determine how many adults and children entered the center and the times that they did so. This would later be compared with building records the center submitted for CCAP payment. If the investigation to this point indicated significant fraud, the information was shared with the BCA agent, who then continued the investigation. If warranted, the agent would eventually obtain a search warrant for the center, at which time computers and phones belonging to the owner and business were seized. At the time of the search warrant, we ordered all payments to the center to be stopped. The DHS forensics lab would then perform forensic examinations on the electronic devices. These exams often resulted in us obtaining our most powerful evidence against those committing fraud. Here are a few of the examples of the evidence I was shown over the years by lab supervisor and staff. From an owner's cell phone, I was shown a text conversation between the owner of the center and a friend. The friend had asked the owner, how much longer are you going to do the daycare scam? The owner replied, another year or two, I'm going to buy some nice homes in Nairobi.

[C]

Another year or two, I'm going to buy some nice homes in Nairobi. They were clearly hoping that Kamala was going to win, right? Because then this would still be happening right now. The only reason why these people are not getting paid right now is because we have Donald Trump as President of the United States of America. That is it. If. If anybody else was in office, we still wouldn't know about the leering center, in my opinion. And even if we did, they wouldn't do anything about it. Like, they wouldn't do anything about it. This is the tip of the iceberg by the way. Keep listening to what he says.

[B]

The owner was on public assistance at this time. They happened to be on vacation in Dubai when this text conversation took place.

[C]

So you've got really, really rich people on government aid who are. And this goes back to Brooke Rawlings yesterday. And. And if you missed that, go back and listen to yesterday's show. Because yesterday's show we talked about some of the fraud here of the number of people on government aid that were driving Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Bentleys and Maseratis. Like, like this is. They came in and they knew that they could commit massive fraud at a massive level and that no one was going to stop them. And they could then get government aid and benefits as well. It gets worse. Keep listening.

[B]

Up to this point, which was early 2017, in the roughly two and a half years of our existence, our unit had directed CCAP payments to be stopped to 11 child care centers that we could prove had fraudulently billed dhs. The stop payment orders always resulted in the immediate closure of the center. Because the centers we investigated never had any private paying clients, only publicly funded CCAP clients.

[C]

Okay, so here's your fraud. If these are all fake centers, right? With. With. With no real people that they're helping, as soon as the government dollars disappeared, the centers would immediately close. Why? Because the government dollars was the scheme. And there wasn't even kids tied to the scheme that would show up and actually do anything. We also learned that, right, the learning center is a great example of this. Many of these centers were just that. They were. They were paper shops, they were fictitious, right? It was like, it's like having a business in a P.O. box. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't exist. That's why you'd have so many of these learning centers in these areas and no kids present, no playgrounds, nothing that screams kids. And when you go there and try to enroll a kid, they're like, we don't do that, right? Like, we're full. We don't need you. We don't want you. Like, because it wasn't about the kids. It was about committing a fraud. They didn't even try to like, have normal kids, by the way. All right? Like, like some kids in here and then have fraud running through it with like 50 missing. They didn't even try to do that, folks. Okay? Like, like there was zero kids that were in there. Zero. And that is the point of this fraud, where you know how deliberate it actually was. Keep listening.

[B]

Additionally, five cases had resulted in felony convictions. For fraud related crimes. I regularly joined with various investigators and agents as we interviewed the owners and employees of the child care centers being investigated. More than once, I heard an owner or employee respond when we asked where they first learned about the daycare scam, they would say they had first heard about it while in the refugee camp in Kenya. These individuals told us, hold on.

[C]

I want you to just understand. They found out about the scheme in a refugee camp in Kenya. That this fraud is now like, that's. It's worldwide fraud, folks. They're like, yeah, yeah, go to America. Do this. You'll make a lot of money. So they're in a refugee camp. They then fight. We got to get to America, right? We got to get there as fast as we can to get our hands on some of this money, because it's a lot of money. And you set it up and they'll give you food stamps, you'll have a better way of life, and you'll get all this government aid, and then you can drive Ferrari or Lamborghini or Bentley or Maserati and defraud the U.S. government. And you don't care because it's not really your government because you're from Nairobi, you're from Kenya. Do you care if you're. If you're. If you're sucking the life out of the United States of America? No. As long as you're the one that is the bug that is sucking the life out of this country. You're the mosquito.

[B]

So if they had heard, you could run the scam in a number of different states, but it was easiest, and you could make the most money doing it in Minnesota. Additionally, at about this same time, the DHS investigators and BCA agents initiated an investigation of another child care center and found a high amount of billing fraud. Federal agents from the FBI, the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit, and agents from the US Health and Human Services Office Inspector General were invited to join in the investigation due to some of the unusual activity and suspected crimes that we believe we saw. This investigation resulted in the federal indictment in 2017 of the owner of Salama Child Care Center. That owner eventually pled guilty and was sentenced in 2018 to two years in prison and was ordered to pay restitution of over $1.54 million. The Salama Child Care center was located at 1411 Nicolette Avenue in Minneapolis. That address might ring a bell for some of you because of a YouTube video taken last December at the Quality Leering center, which was being operated at the same address.

[C]

Okay, so he. What he's describing to you is multiple people that had already been brought down. Who then the other people just keep using the same address. How hard is it to figure that out? Now, luckily, the federal government, the feds are raiding these places, the FBI is raiding this address. But you, you notice like the, the Somali is like, no, no, we just use the same thing. Like, yeah, they got one. Who cares? We set up another one. They're not gonna, they're not gonna shut all of them down, right? Like, they're not gonna shut every single one of them down. So we don't have to worry about that. We can, we can just open up a quality leering center and, and that'll work because they're never going to stop us. They're like, there's too many of us. There's too many Somalis here. There's too much fraud that we want to commit. And so we're just going to keep our head down and rock and roll with this thing and no one is going to stop us. I'll say it again, keep listening. No one is covering this. And share this everywhere you can on social media.

[B]

By mid-2018, our cases had generated some publicity and the legislature then directed the Office of Legislative Auditor to conduct a special review of the CCAP program. In August of 2018, as I was preparing answers to questions posed to me by the OLA in an email, I was told by a DHS official to submit my answers to them instead of sending them directly to the ola. When I forwarded my answer regarding what fraud trends we were seeing in CCAP as I had been directed, I soon had a senior DHS official in my office, angry, red faced and almost yelling. The senior DHS official told me to delete a number of paragraphs of the document that I had sent. I then advised this official that I believed what they were telling me to do was illegal. I advise them that Minnesota law requires state employees to cooperate with the OLA and to turn over information as requested. A few days later, the same official told me, I just came from the commissioner's office and they're sending your document to the ola. You better be ready for the blank storm that's coming your way.

[C]

So you're now being threatened that if you do your job and actually expose fraud that you better be ready for what comes at you from the government that you're supposed to be. Supposed to be telling the fraud to so that they can do their jobs and get rid of the fraud. And now you understand how many Democrats out there all Right in Minnesota that were getting the kickbacks, including the governor. So this was all done by design and they knew it. And if you did your job as law enforcement, you were threatened. Good luck keeping your job because if you go there, we're that somebody's gonna come for you. Who? The political machine.

[B]

In the following months, members of our unit were harassed and bullied by DHS officials in the following manner. First, DHS paid $90,000 to a consultant consultant with no experience in public benefit program integrity or financial fraud investigations to label the CCAP fraud allegations in my email as unreliable and unable to be proven. During an interview with the consultants, which became heated, I told them that I really didn't care what they put in their report, but if they said there was no fraud, I or that our investigators were making this up, that when this became public, their company would lose all credibility. I told them that the fraud was so huge that sooner or later it would come to light. Secondly, false derogatory information was placed on a supervisor's performance review by DHS officials. Third, DHS implemented a continuous improvement program with the Fraud Investigation Unit. This process started with the senior continuous improvement official berating our group for approximately 30 minutes, telling us in essence we were incompetent and terrible employees. I had never heard of something like this happening to any group of state employees in my 40 years in state government. A DHS Assistant Commissioner was in the room watching this. Over the next approximately six months, we were directed to attend many group meetings to discuss the investigative process at length, and we were giving homework assignments to work on between the meetings. These meetings were led by the same DHS official who had berated us so badly in that first meeting. The huge amount of time our team spent in those meetings and on our assignments resulted in investigators and supervisors being unable to conduct hardly any investigative activity over the roughly six months of this program. As a result of this program, significant changes were dictated to our unit by the lead official and this process. The changes to the process include included a myself and the unit supervisor. Keep in mind, together, between the two of us, we had 70 years of criminal investigative experience. We would no longer have the authority to decide which cases would be investigated. That would be done by a committee of three. Two members of the committee were DHS officials with no experience conducting public benefit financial fraud investigations. I would be the third committee member, although clearly outvoted. Next, the amount of CCAP funding would not play a role in prioritizing cases. We would spend as much time investigating centers receiving a relatively small amount of CCAP money as those receiving much larger amounts. The result of this meant that roughly 50% percent of our limited investigative capacity would be spent on centers, likely billing CCAP for less than $100,000 a year. It would also result in our team spending 50% less investigative hours on cases involving centers billing CCAP over a million dollars a year. Next.

[C]

Let me just stop there and go back to what you're hearing. There was so much fraud a decade ago that this guy's saying we just couldn't go after anybody that's doing a half million or 200,000 or 300,000, $150,000 a year in fraud. We just didn't have the manpower. We had to go after the big fish. The ones are doing millions and millions of dollars in fraud. We couldn't do it otherwise and they just didn't have what it needed. Now do the ROI on this. If you can hire 100 people to go after waste, fraud and abuse and every one of them cost you, let's just run it. $100,000 is 10 million. That is not nothing compared to what you're spending in, in, in corruption and fraud payments. Going out the way that they're describing it right now. Like there, I, I. There's nothing that comes close. And why would the state not do it? Because the politicians were getting their kickback. The politicians knew exactly what was happening and they were getting their kickbacks in the form of government, or I should say political donations. Here's some. Here's some more money. Mr. Waltz, the small community is behind you. Governor Waltz, we'd love to support you. Here's a check. Just leave our corruption and our business alone. That's what it was. As he wraps us up, listen, the last few things he says.

[B]

Investigators could only contact BCA agents after receiving permission from a DHS official. Lastly, DHS officials advised the BCA agents to vacate our building. They would no longer have an office at DHS at this point. In June of 2019, I submitted my resignation retirement notice. Effective July of 2019, I advised the members of the Fraud Investigation Unit that I was not going to be a party to this. In closing, I would like to make the committee aware that the CCAP fraud supervisor and I had each worked for the state for 25 and 34 years. Respectfully, each of us in the Department of Public Safety at the BCA and the State Patrol, where the theft or loss of even $50 would not have been tolerated. I can't tell you how shocked we were to come to the Department of Human Services and learn after a few years that not only was the theft of untold millions of dollars tolerated, but those who tried to stop it would be subjected to the wrath of high ranking department officials.

[C]

Now, what you just heard was only the opening statement you didn't get to hear. Unfortunately, we don't have time. You can look it up on the Internet and you can hear the Q and A and other things that he discussed. But what he laid out was two things. One, the waste, fraud and abuse was so good that Minnesota was ground zero and the best place to make a lot of money doing this. It's international scheme and it's being told and taught and preached in the refugee camps all the way in Kenya. That is insane. And they did this, by the way, all over the country. As you could hear from much of those communications. Like the best place to do this was Minnesota. But you could go set this up anywhere in America, which means it is set up, I'm sure, in every single state in America. I have no doubt that this is happening right now, that there is massive and extensive waste, fraud and abuse. Which is why I will say it again. Please share this wherever you can. All right? Share it wherever you get your wherever you can on social media. Help other people hear this. We're gonna keep exposing it. Even when the media refuses to play things like this, we will play it. Thank you for listening to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson. Please make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. And for more in depth news, also subscribe to the Ben Ferguson Podcast and we will see you back here tomorrow. All across America, Amazon offers hourly employees

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