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Jack
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Nick Shirley
Fraud is everywhere in the United States.
Local News Reporter
The national spotlight continues to be right here in Minnesota as federal authorities investigate.
Podcast Host
Allegations now of widespread fraud today with several daycare centers.
Local News Reporter
Now, this all comes in the wake of a viral video on daycare centers in Minnesota.
Nick Shirley
We'd like to ask where the money's going. I mean, I literally uncovered and showed people potentially the largest fraud, fraud scandal in U.S. history.
Podcast Host
$110 million in fraud at Minnesota daycare centers.
Jack
Why do you think this went so viral?
Nick Shirley
Because we always talk about fraud. You always hear about issues here in the United States. And so it's the first time where Americans could really see that fraud is taking place openly and people are receiving millions of dollars and they're actually not doing anything. We have a governor who doesn't care.
Jack
What's been the downside to this much virality?
Nick Shirley
They're trying to give people reasons to take me out because of what I've exposed. Police have now appeared on scene.
Jack
When you were making that video, did you un other fraud in the process?
Nick Shirley
This is just the beginning.
Podcast Host
Nick. Shirley, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour podcast. I can only imagine how busy you've been over the past 72 hours. It's been blowing up.
Nick Shirley
It's been the most crazy and hectic 72 hours of my entire life.
Podcast Host
I gotta know, how many times did Elon Musk tweet about you yesterday?
Nick Shirley
Just yesterday alone, referring to my video was 40. 40 times that had anything to do with the Minnesota fraud scandal.
Jack
Has he reached out to you?
Nick Shirley
We dmed actually, like, I sent him a dm. I was like. Because I noticed he followed me back and that he had been keep retweeting my stuff. I was like, when's he gonna follow me? And then he followed me. Then I saw that he followed me. I could see that I could then send a message. And so I just said, thanks for the support. Means a lot. He's like, yes, thanks for the work you're doing. Wow.
Podcast Host
Is that all you guys have said?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, that's it.
Podcast Host
So if you could just Briefly explain what you've been going through in the past 72 hours. And what is this news that's been erupting everywhere you're.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. Over the past 72 hours, I uncover what could potentially be the largest fraud scandal in the US history that's been openly discovered on a broad level and a national level to where there's actually proof where people could see with their eyes that fraud was taking place. And so since I've launched my video in the past 72 hours, it's the most viewed video ever by somebody who's not named Mr. Beast. That's a long format video that's pure organic reach. No ads, nothing like that, just pure organic reach. Over 130 million views on just the video alone on X. And then if you count all the other impressions, it did over 500 million views within 72 hours.
Jack
When you were filming this, did you expect it to go so viral?
Nick Shirley
No, I knew I had, I knew it was a great video, but because I've been making videos for so long that I just thought it just to be the, the weekly upload. But no, this has completely changed. Why?
Jack
Why do you think this went so viral to that degree?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, there's a mix of it went so viral is because we always talk about fraud. You always hear about issues here in the United States. Oh, fraud, we're sending money there, we're sending money there. Why are we sending money to this country? Why are we sending money to these organizations? How come these politicians are getting rich and how are they doing it? But what I did for the first time ever is I actually went to a location, multiple locations, had the numbers, had the exact amount of dollars they were receiving. And I went and just asked them, hey, can I enroll a child, my son, little Joey into daycare? Can I go, can I talk to somebody? Can I get a brochure? Where are the children at? We don't hear them anywhere. There's no footprints in the snow. And so it was the first time where Americans could really see that fraud is taking place openly. And people are receiving millions of dollars for running these daycare home healthcare companies and they're actually not doing anything now.
Jack
A lot of this seems to be the work of David, who spent a lot of time going through this. Who is David and how did you get connected to him?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, so David, he's a man in Minnesota. He's been a lifelong advocate to stop crime and political corruption and to stop fraud inside of Minnesota. Because Minnesota, they have a long history of fraud. This isn't just new that they've been doing these daycares. But I knew about the fraud taking place back in June. I went to Minnesota to do a video about the demographic change, the rise of Islam, how mosques are now replacing Christian churches, is how entire cities and communities are being taken over by the Somali population and people are getting pushed out of, of these, of these locations. And when I was there, people started telling me about the fraud. They're like, you need to go check the daycares, you need to go talk to the home healthcare, the assisted living. Like, why are there all these transportation vehicles running around with nobody in them? And I said, well, I can't make the video now because before I do, I want to make sure it's. You just can't accuse people of millions dollars of fraud without evidence. And so I continued to work on it and tried my best to get the resources and the numbers, but it was super hard. And then David just DMed me out of the many DMs I get, I just for some reason happened to open up David's and he actually provided value. Inside of the comment he said, I have all the numbers. So I gave David a call and he's like, I have everything. I've been getting information from inside of the Capitol. And he had all the numbers. And I was like, well, are you sure? Like this is Friday. He's like, this has been happening for so long. I've never seen a child at any of the daycares I drive by every year for the past seven years of going to work and I've never seen a single child.
Jack
Now what's David's background? Because I was really curious about him, of how he was able to compile so much information. Is this just like a hobby of his?
Nick Shirley
He's been fighting fraud for years. Even like when he was my age, he was just interested in the well being of his communities. And so David, he's, he's just seen the fraud and he's seen the Somali population just expand. He's seen what Tim Waltz has done as far as pretty much destroying the state. For instance, Minnesota was in a $16 billion surplus in the last binnium and now they're in a four or six billion dollars deficit.
Podcast Host
So was this already a really well known local issue? So like people just knew about it in the town or was this something that like a few people knew about who are really attuned to like, you know, governments and stuff like that?
Nick Shirley
People knew about it inside of Minnesota because the fraud's not new like, there's videos back from like 2015 where the FBI went into these daycares, or in 2017, they're talking about the fraud, but nobody could really get it to a national level because one, back in those days, censorship's pretty heavy. You didn't have the power of X, you didn't have the power of just being able to post freely onto the Internet. And then it was just kind of a local issue. When the local news is doing their videos, they don't really know how to portray something to a way where it reaches national level. And they just have to go through all these different editorial processes versus a YouTuber like me who can edit film and then upload, versus going from filming the editing room, okay, final editing process. Then we post it on our news website and. And then we'll post onto our YouTube. And then it never actually gets reaches the masses. And it's usually an older person who people can't relate with.
Podcast Host
So when you say they are committing fraud, they are creating these daycare centers, they're embezzling millions, defrauding millions of dollars. Who are they?
Nick Shirley
The government in Minnesota, the people at the Capitol, because they're the ones writing the checks. They know that that fraud is taking place because they have all the violations. They have all the many times where a lot of these daycares are ran by the same person. And then 89% of the population that is committing the fraud is Somalians.
Jack
In terms of fraud, could you walk us through the flow of money step by step in terms of who applies, who pays the money, who is behind that payment, who audits this and who investigates it.
Nick Shirley
So with the fraud, all the checks are being written from the capital. They're all being written from the people inside of the capital of Minnesota. And the way they get this money, some of it's federal money, federal money, it's also state money. And inside of departments like the Home and Health Services, the hhs, they give funding for things like childcare. And so what happens is Tim Waltz, for instance, he's openly bragged about expanding daycare inside of Minnesota. He said, like, we're going to give them raises back in 2023. And then even in the debate with JD Vance, he was talking about how, how great it was of their childcare system inside Minnesota. The Minnesota government's so incompetent that multiple people will have violations or they'll have history of doing crime, but they'll still let them open up a daycare and then they'll receive this federal money and so there's entire whistleblowers who have created all these charts and everything about this one man having this one home health care business. He also has a daycare. He has six violations, and he's still getting millions of dollars. But I believe it's all because the people are afraid to be called an Islamophobic. Islamophobic or racist.
Jack
So basically, the state sets up a fund, and some of that's from state money, some of it's from federal government money. The fund says, we're going to give money to people who open up daycares.
Nick Shirley
On welfare purposes.
Jack
On welfare purposes. That enables anybody to apply for this, get federal funding with basically saying, hey, we have X amount of students here. X amount of kids are coming. Then they give that in. And then what's the audit process like to make sure that's legitimate?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, that's the problem. And that's why the fraud's been able to go on for so long. Nobody really knows exactly how that audit process has been working because they've been enabling fraud for so long. Tim Waltz has openly said that we've been fighting fraud since 2019. Okay, well, Graham, if you're running a business and you have millions and billions of dollars being funneled to places, how long do you think it would take for you to cut off the funding?
Podcast Host
How. Fighting fraud for six years.
Nick Shirley
Exactly.
Podcast Host
Shouldn't the fight end?
Nick Shirley
He's been in. He's been enabling the fraud to happen. And that's why. What, why what I did was such a compelling piece of content? Because it's showing that they're enabling this fraud to happen and nobody's even checking up. And these daycares can't even give you a brochure to enroll a child.
Podcast Host
Do you think that there's anything going on between the government and the people that own these daycares? Is there any money that's being funneled back into the government, or are these so Somalians just becoming rich?
Nick Shirley
100%, because Elon Omar, congresswoman from Minnesota. Well, she's from Somalia. She was then brought here to the United States. Her net worth went from negative to allegedly $30 million.
Jack
So when you went into this, did you expect this to be more so just government waste, or did you expect full blown fraud?
Nick Shirley
I expected a little bit of both. Like, I remember David saying, like, we're gonna go to the daycares. And so in the first clip of the video, you'll see me go to the daycare center. I'm like, all right, let's Go in and I go to open the door, and it's locked, but their sign says open 7am to 10pm right above me. And I'm like, what's going on? All the windows are blacked out. But yet they received millions of dollars this year.
Jack
Now, what do you say to people who say, well, the door should be locked because we want to protect the students. We want to make sure that they're not like, just going to open the door and run off. And we want to protect people like observing inside the windows. And that's why it's important to have privacy.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. CNN asked me that same question. I said, okay, well, fair point. Then how come when I call that phone number, nobody answers? And how come when I ring the doorbell and ask for a brochure, they can't give me any paperwork to enroll a child? So, yeah, you maybe lock the door. Go ahead and do that. But you should be able to answer a simple question. How do I, when I ask, how do I enroll my son Joey into daycare? How do I do it? They can't even answer it.
Jack
What was the most shameless thing that you saw in person?
Nick Shirley
Just the fact that they couldn't give me any responses. They. They're receiving millions of dollars and I can't even get a brochure to enroll an imaginary son Joey in the daycare.
Podcast Host
Did they appear to have any guilt when you spoke to them or did they seem entitled and just everything was like, twisted?
Nick Shirley
Very much entitlement. They. They treated me like I was like scum to them. They called the police on me. They kicked me out of their buildings, and I was simply asking for rates and for brochures for. To enroll a child in daycare and for health, said I was doing some sort of propaganda piece. And, and this isn't about the race. However, when 89% of that population is committing fraud, that's just a fact. It doesn't make you a racist for talking about fraud.
Jack
Now, what about the counter arguments? I saw that people would be more closed off talking to you when you show up with a camera or you pull up in like some SUV and they don't know who you are versus just like some lady just walking up, knocking on the door.
Nick Shirley
My good. A good counterclaim would do that. Well, just answer the question so there's no confusion. I'm not coming across hostile. I'm just asking you the simple question. And in a lot of cases, for instance, the one lady who I interviewed, who I, well, I tried to ask for a brochure everyone else was in the car. I went up by myself. David was far away. She had all the opportunities in the world to just simply answer some questions.
Jack
Have you heard any counterarguments to your video that gave you any pause or that maybe you thought, hey, that's actually a good point?
Nick Shirley
No.
Podcast Host
You haven't had anybody reach out to you saying that I've actually, you know, had a kid at this childcare?
Nick Shirley
No.
Podcast Host
I would imagine the mainstream media has.
Nick Shirley
Tried to come after me so much to the point where they're defending fraud. Now, one of the daycares I went to, they went open the door. And then a few days later, since I released my video, CVS then went to the daycare. And I don't doubt that there are some children inside these daycares because you'd be super stupid to be running these and not at least have a few kids in there. So this one daycare is licensed for 40 children. CVS goes there. The guy can barely speak English. And they do this hit piece on me, and they're like, we're an operating daycare. We have four children here. Okay, well, they're licensed for 40. And you're receiving millions of dollars. Those. Each one of those children are worth $250,000 a year for government funding.
Jack
So how much were these centers making and how much were people taking home from that?
Nick Shirley
Well, the largest one was $3.45 million. And then the on the low, it'd be around 1.2 million.
Jack
So one thing I'm really curious about, the landlords of these buildings, do they know what's going on? Do you think they're in on it? Are they charging market rates for these places? Who owns the buildings that these people are leasing?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I haven't really looked into that, but I'm sure there are just happy to be committed. I'm sure they're happy to be receiving a check every single month.
Jack
Yeah. Because I gotta say, so when I looked into a lot of Los Angeles in California, it seems as though people will open up these, like, homeless centers, but they'll pay these absurd amounts in rent. And the landlords allegedly go in with the mindset of, like, hey, we're gonna charge either a lot of money, or we know these people, and we could kick back some money to the owner of this building. That could be something to look into that I was curious about.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I think if you're a landlord, you're probably just happy to have somebody inside your building. And, you know, they're getting money from the government. So, you know, they're going to pay every single month. So if I was a landlord, I'd probably rent to them, too. Just smart business.
Podcast Host
One thing I'm really curious about. You mentioned Ilhan Omar is now worth $30 million. And when she went into office, she was actually in debt with a negative net worth. Can you just go in and see where her money is coming from?
Nick Shirley
No, I don't think we can, but I think they. They have to. They have to make it public. Like, I think they have to make it public what their net worth is. Congressmen and Congresswoman, they have to provide.
Jack
They have to provide assets. The IRS would probably be the only one that would know where the money.
Nick Shirley
Is coming from, because I think they only receive $175,000 a year with their salary from Congress.
Podcast Host
It seems like, at least for the population, not necessarily for the Congress people, it would be bipartisan to mandate if you're in office, you show your net worth when you join office, and then you show up all of your tax returns or where your money is coming from while you serve. I feel like that would be. Every normal person that isn't in government would agree on that. But obviously any senator or congressperson, like left or right, would probably not vote for that.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I think it's hard because it's like, how do you. How do you say? Like, oh, they can trade stocks, but we can't, for instance. But when they're inside Congress. So it's like, maybe if that's something that the government should look into, like, okay, if you're going to become a congressman or congresswoman for these four years or for however long you're in here, your main focus is just to serve the American people and not to be having interest, outside interest, to boost your net worth. Because we can't just say, like, hey, no, you can't invest, or you're only going to have a 401k, because if you see an opportunity, you should be able to invest as well. But to have exponential returns like Nancy Pelosi or Elon Omar, that's just very suspicious.
Podcast Host
Or at least transparency. Like, where is Elhan Omar's money coming from? Like, if we were able to just see that she was collecting massive wire transfers from leering, you know, center, then we'd be able to prove something.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I think it would give a lot more people more transparency and then also a lot more trust.
Podcast Host
Why was Doge not able to do this?
Nick Shirley
What I just did was kind of more of a decentralized DOGE effort in a way where I went about it and did it in a way where people could just go ahead and see it. And I think doge, because they're with the government, I bet they'd have a harder time to kind of go out and produce something like this. And I think that's why you see Elon Musk giving me so much support right now. Because what I'm doing was kind of like the effort of doge, but to a decentralized way where people can see it. Because doge, they have all the contracts and they went and they did cut a lot of the funding and they did get down to a lot of what was happening, but they saw so much pushback from the public and from the left that they weren't able to go about and make all the changes that they wish they could.
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Jack
So what rules are out there to prevent abuse?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I don't exactly know what rules they have for abuse, but if. If Elon Musk can't figure it out, it just shows how many guardrails there are.
Podcast Host
If you were to then solve this issue, what do you think would be the best solution? To prevent something like this from happening.
Jack
And what would a paper trail look like?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I think now because of the video, now all of these companies have to prove that they are legit businesses before they receive their funding. All their payments are frozen right now in Minnesota. So if Minnesota actually cared about stopping the fraud, like Tim Waltz has been saying for six years, what I would have done is I would have done surprise visits and I would have not notified them when I'm coming. But more so done a surprise visit and say, hey, we're government officials, we just want to see how your business is operating. Okay, if you're licensed for 40 children and you have 35 kids here, perfect. But if you're licensed for 40 children and you HAVE four kids here and we're giving you a million dollars, we should probably look into this and figure out why this is happening.
Jack
It seems like it would be very easy to solve on a high level without even doing that by just looking how many centers are operating, how many children do they say are within those schools? And how many children exist in the area. And if you see, hey, there's 3,000 children in this area, but their capacity is 40,000 that we're paying for. And then maybe that's a red flag.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, it's a total red flag for a lot of these businesses. And if you drive around Minneapolis, you'll notice, if you start paying attention, you'll notice, wait, why is that industrialized building have a child care clinic? Or why is there an adult daycare right here? And why is there Somali daycare right here? Like legit? Like why is there African refugee immigration processes? Or why is there Eritrean services? Like all this weird stuff. What's the need for all that? Like me and you, us three, we all operate a business, whether it be a YouTube channel or selling coffee, selling T shirts, we have to work in profit. These guys don't have to even conceptualize the idea of turning a profit because they're receiving all this money. And so it's not fair to the hard working American who is trying to provide for their family. Family go to work and then pay normal daycare rates.
Jack
So is this just Minnesota or is it like we're driving around in Vegas and I see a daycare, Is it like, is there a chance? Hey, it's everywhere throughout the United States.
Nick Shirley
Fraud is everywhere in the United States. And now you're seeing all these other people go to these daycares because a lot of them receive money on welfare purposes. And so, and all that information is public and so you can go ahead and find that information. And if you're suspicious of a local daycare in your area, you could go get the information, or you could just simply go and ask like, hey, how's this? Is this, can I enroll a child in the daycare here and see it for yourself? But I don't want everyone to start going to daycares and saying, where are the children? Yeah, I think that would be bad.
Jack
I started seeing a lot of copycats now going and doing this.
Nick Shirley
And so what's hard about that is I actually did my due diligence when I went and made my video. You don't want to see just a bunch of people hopping up to daycares and saying, where are the children? But people also have the right to just simply ask the question. You have houses in Washington state that are legit houses that are licensed for adult daycares or for child cares inside of neighborhoods that you wouldn't even know.
Jack
See, what I worry about when it comes to copycats is that you have most people who go in with good intentions who say, hey, I see this, this, this upsets me. I, I want to help. And then you get people who just take it too far. And that's all it takes is you get one person who just starts like, absolutely harassing somebody. Maybe it's a legitimate daycare, takes it too far and it kind of ruins it for everybody.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I mean, people can do what they want. My job is to do my job. And so like the way I care about myself, the way I carry about myself is in a way that I can feel good about sleeping at night. If somebody wants to go harass a daycare, we can't stop them from doing it and it's bad on them for doing it. They should do their due diligence and figure out if it's a fraudulent daycare or not before they show up.
Podcast Host
So we have a few videos that I found online that basically claim that everything you were saying was fraudulent. So I want to get your response to these viral videos.
Nick Shirley
Yes, I'm ready. So most of our clients.
Podcast Host
Not most of our clients, all of our clients is after school hours. So schools earliest dismissal would be 2:15 to 2:30 ish. And the latest dismissal would be up to like 4:30 ish, 4:40 ish. So that's when our kids come to us. We don't have anyone in the morning.
Nick Shirley
So that man, while he's outside saying that the commissioner of children at the same time is on a live stream saying that they Closed that daycare a week ago. He's lying. The commissioner of children was literally on a live stream at that same moment saying they. They closed that childcare center at a week ago. I filmed my video December 16th. And so after I had filmed my video, they then had shut down that daycare. And while he's talking about that, the lady's literally on a live stream saying they closed down the daycare, they're busing in children, and then that same guy is in video partying with the mayor when the mayor got elected.
Podcast Host
Okay, so I saw that video as well, and I was actually going to get your reaction to that. So you're saying that this specific individual is somehow related to the. The mayor?
Nick Shirley
Yes.
Podcast Host
And they. So what's that relation? What's that relationship look like?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, he's in the background of the mayor winning the election and they're all dancing. And that guy's allegedly the manager and his parents are the owners.
Podcast Host
So did you go to the Quality Leering center during hours where kids should be present?
Nick Shirley
So I went there on December 16th. Their operation hours that said from 12 to 10pm however, that's actually illegal to be operating a daycare at that time from 12pm to 10pm and there's actually are restrictions and how at the certain hours where they do need to be operating. But the purpose was not to just barge into a daycare. The purpose was to show $1.9 million is going there. It's licensed for 99 children. And there's one door. The door's all blacked out, the sign spelled wrong. You can't even call the phone number and have anyone respond. There's not a reception for you to be received at. It's a fraudulent daycare.
Podcast Host
So what about this video then?
Local News Reporter
This is ABC Learning center in Minneapolis.
Nick Shirley
They have to learn.
Local News Reporter
ABC and numbers director Ahmed Hassan gave WCCO a tour after finding his daycare in the national spotlight.
Nick Shirley
All right, we've arrived to ABC Learning Center.
Local News Reporter
In a now viral video, right wing YouTuber Nick Shirley. Shirley claims nearly a dozen daycare centers in Minnesota are taking public funds but not providing a service. He says ABC Learning center is one of them knocking on the door in mid December.
Nick Shirley
I would like to check a child in the daycare.
Local News Reporter
Hassan says his employee didn't respond because Shirley was in a group of about eight people and his staff were concerned about recent ICE activity. Is the state here committing fraud?
Nick Shirley
No, no, no, we're not committing fraud.
Local News Reporter
Hasan showed us security footage from the same day Shirley was here. According to the timestamps in the videos, this woman takes a young child into the center at around 9am that day, about three hours before Shirley arrives at the door closer to the street. Within the hour after Shirley leaves, a woman arrives at the other door with a stroller. A larger family heads inside a few hours later, Tuesday afternoon, WCCO found at least a dozen children at ABC Learning center, which is licensed with the state. Records show Minnesota officials last visited the the daycare in November, noting some corrected and ongoing violations related to day to day operations, but no record of fraud.
Nick Shirley
So you're seeing the attack on me by them calling me a right wing, right wing YouTuber MAGA YouTuber Conservative. The mainstream media is extremely scared because I got more views than them on one video than they get all year. So their claim that they are a legit business, well obviously they're not going to admit that they're a fraudulent business to the local news. They're receiving millions of dollars. What's the purpose of receiving all these, these dollars if you have, even if it's 12 children compared to the 40 that they're supposed to have? And why are all their windows blocked out? Why can't, why are they so scared to show people what they're doing behind doors? So yeah, maybe actually they're not. They're fraudulent business. So what's the purpose of having a daycare where you can't even show the public?
Podcast Host
Did you get any valid criticisms though from your video? Anything that you thought like, okay, this might actually make sense?
Nick Shirley
No. Do you think, like, what could they, like, what do you guys think? Give me your opinion.
Podcast Host
I think the, the only argument that I could see a little bit is that you are showing up to daycares probably in a group of people with cameras, lighting equipment, stuff that generally causes a disturbance. And so if you're trying to enter, they obviously might be more apprehensive to let you in and fill out a document and you know, be in a room maybe with kids.
Nick Shirley
Well, if they're operating legally, why would they have any worries?
Jack
I wouldn't open up if I were a business. In fairness, if you come in with cameras and I feel like there's no, there's no benefit for me to do this. If you're showing up trying to record, you don't know the manner of which the content's gonna be used. It's inside a private business. I get that. I think if you were to show up as like some modest looking lady with a child with one of those like, you know, secret Reporters on glasses. I think that would go over differently.
Nick Shirley
So I showed up with meta glasses and a GoPro. I didn't have lighting equipment, have a big, massive camera. A lot of times I was just. I even had my GoPro just inside my pocket. And I was just using the meta glasses and the security because of how hostile. And I had been priorly jumped in June by Somalians, it was necessary to have security in the car.
Jack
Do you. Do you think there's. There's something higher up in terms of, like, running these? Because I'll give you an example. When I went to Paris, you see by the Eiffel Tower, like, everyone's selling little, like, trinkets and stuff like this.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, they've ruined the Eiffel Tower.
Jack
The police come and they all, like, pick them up really quickly and they run off. And then as I was walking around, I see some guys on, like, walkie talkies and stuff like this. The police comes out, they, you know, whisper something and everyone kind of bolts. And I was looking into this thinking, like, okay, how much money are they actually making doing this sort of business? Like, why sell this? I didn't realize. This is also just. Again, what I'm just reading online is that supposedly a lot of the people are trafficked in, and they're basically slaves to sell these trinkets. And if they don't do that, they're threatened or they're, you know, they could be beaten up or a. Things like this. So they're. They're kind of forced to do these things. Do you think that could be a possibility? That this is a much bigger operation than just individuals doing this? That maybe there's like a higher power or somebody controlling all of these? And the money just funnels up to one person.
Nick Shirley
It's a massive operation. That's why it's been able to happen for so long. And that's why you see Minnesota panhandling to the Somalian population, who's a small percentage of the population in Minnesota, to the point where they even said that the original Minnesota flag was bad and switch it to a flag that resembles the Somalian flag. And so within these communities, when this is just the simple effects of mass migration, a lot of people do come in and for instance, in Paris, they're all working inside those networks at the Eiffel Tower. I've been there myself. They're all inside the WhatsApp group chats. They're all coordinating. They're all taking my photo and they're sending off to everybody. But in the Case of what's happening in Minnesota is you have all these people living inside of the same communities. You have all these, these men with four wives who are able to then use these women to go out and do their dirty work for them while they stay inside. While they stay inside the office.
Jack
How do you think they pass the inspections every six months?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, a lot of them don't. For instance, Quality Leering center had multiple violations, upwards of 10 violations, but they're still able to give them the money. That's another. That's why this is such a big problem. This is why they should stop all the funding to these daycares. Because I don't doubt that there are some that are bringing in children. For instance, that ABC1. Good for them for having 12 children in on that day when the news came by and they let them know beforehand that they were coming. Good for them for doing that right in there. Another counterclaim they came to me with was, well, you filmed it during winter break. No, I actually didn't. I filmed it on December 16. So school and nobody people were not on break yet. And now you guys are bringing in kids to during winter break. Like their claims have been completely debunked just by common sense.
Jack
Did any of them show you documentation showing that they were legitimate?
Nick Shirley
No, that's the problem. They couldn't answer a single question. I gave them plenty of opportunities to say, where are the children? Where are the children at?
Podcast Host
How many did you visit?
Nick Shirley
I think we visited around seven or so.
Podcast Host
It would be interesting because you're working with this guy who does all of this research, if he could find one that is operating as it should and then you can go there and see how different the experience is compared to these fraudulent ones.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, it's been funny to see people on the Internet, they're like, all right, Nick, surely this is actually how daycare works. You see this? I'm going to click this button, I'm going to go in, I'm going to go talk to the receptionist and then I'm going to go grab my child. Those, those other businesses, those Somali ran businesses, those aren't real businesses. That's not how a daycare works.
Podcast Host
Did you see the other fraud that's going on now in Minnesota as well with the assisted living facilities?
Nick Shirley
Yeah. So there are all these welfare programs. So the daycare, it's tied into that fraud. The home health care, that's tied into that fraud. The assisted living, tied into that fraud. The transportation VI vehicles, that's all tied into the fraud. The Translators at the hospitals, which no one even knows about. That's tied into the fraud.
Jack
Who reached out to you from the video?
Nick Shirley
Everybody. Like I have. I can't even get. I can't even respond to somebody, then get back to the text message after, because it's 10 people deep within five minutes. But on the Internet, JD Vance, he republished video. Elon Musk, the Attorney General of the United States, the Director of the FBI. So many people. That's just. Those are. That. Think about that. The richest man in the world, the second most powerful man in the world, the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of the FBI, they all had to come out and talk about that video.
Podcast Host
Did the governor of Minnesota reach out to you?
Nick Shirley
No. He actually blamed the fraud on Trump.
Podcast Host
And what did he say Trump did?
Nick Shirley
He said, well, Trump keeps letting fraudsters out of prison. And he blamed and deflected everything. He actually called me a white supremacist. He called anybody who's speaking out against a fraud white supremacist.
Jack
And what's your response to that?
Nick Shirley
I'm not in. Fraud is fraud. And Tim Walt.
Jack
But here's the thing. That's exactly what a white supremacist would say. Yeah, well, just like the daycares would say, well, we're not fraud. You would say, well, I'm not.
Nick Shirley
Well, I'm not a white supremacist. All right, Tim Waltz, he is so scared to be called a racist and for speaking facts that he's allowed billions of dollars to be sent overseas and fund terrorists like the Al Shabaab. So Tim Waltz is a coward.
Jack
And what's the benefit to Tim Waltz?
Nick Shirley
The benefit to Tim Waltz, he gets votes. When you have a hundred thousand people that will all go and vote for you, that's a huge percentage of the people that will vote. And this happens in Europe as well. And this is why you're seeing the rise of Islam inside of these countries like the UK and that's why you see the Labour party in the U.K. for instance, or so powerful. And you're seeing so many Muslims be elected inside of. In Europe because they come into the country, they go, then go to their mosque. And then when a politician needs the vote, he'll go to the mosque where they have a thousand people inside the community. All right, we're gonna. We're gonna. And then they say, well, we're gonna let you vote. Or we're gonna say. And then they say, well, we're gonna do what you guys want. We're gonna make sure you guys are protected, which they already are, especially in the United States, Free. We have the Constitution, so. But in these other places, then when it comes time to vote the mosque, the people that run the mosque will then take everyone and go vote. In Minnesota right now, you can vote. You can vouch for eight people when you go and vote.
Podcast Host
What does that even mean?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, so one person can vouch for eight people.
Podcast Host
And how do you prove that you've been vouched for?
Nick Shirley
Yeah. So if you're living inside of the same community or I believe, like organization, you can then vouch for the other eight people if you can provide that, show their documentation or that just their license. And you don't need to be a legal citizen to receive a license in the United States and a lot of states.
Jack
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Podcast Host
Are you concerned at all though, when you're speaking in broad terms of like these communities do this, these communities do that, that somehow when that gets diluted over and over, eventually it's going to turn people, you know, hate, hateful towards a certain group of people that like, eventually, you know, people are going to be actually Islamophobic.
Nick Shirley
No, because I'm just showing people for what it is. If it's 89, if 89% of the population is committing the fraud in Minnesota. Yeah, you might piss off a lot of people. If everyone's paying taxes and then 81% of that population's on welfare receiving your dollars while they're committing 89% of the fraud, receiving millions of dollars. Yeah, you're gonna piss off a lot of people.
Jack
Some would make the argument that the fraud in Minnesota is only a fraction of a percent compared to something like the pandemic unemployment fraud, which was somewhere in like a hundred plus billion dollars.
Nick Shirley
People should be equally mad about that. But with that, you can't go and see it. For instance, in Minnesota, they had a feeding our Future. They received $250 million to feed children inside Minnesota and they only ended up feeding 40 children.
Podcast Host
Another thing that people aren't talking about enough is the Califraud California fraud. The railway that they're trying to build between Los Angeles and San Franc, they've so far spent $15 billion on it. Not a single track has been laid. And some estimates are saying that it could take up until 2032, 2033, with also some people claiming up to 2038. This hasn't approved 150 billion with a B dollar budget, which is insane.
Jack
And what's crazy is that even if they do it, they spend $135 billion and they finish in 2038, it's going to be obsolete anyway because we're going to have self driving cars. No one is going to use it. We're all going to get in like a Tesla taxi cab and just be in your own little pod and just go there anyway.
Podcast Host
It would be fascinating to uncover that because I imagine you said actually that you were having billionaires reaching out to you, asking you to uncover more fraud, specifically in California.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, because imagine how Maddie, you'd be if you're a billionaire and all of a sudden you just. They just impose a new tax. They're trying to pose a new tax on these billionaires and you're seeing stuff like that happen.
Podcast Host
Elon Musk Just tweeted today that he actually broke the IRS software because he sent a tax payment that was so large that they couldn't process it, and they had to update the software.
Jack
It had to have an extra digit.
Nick Shirley
Wow.
Podcast Host
For him to make the tax payment.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. Yeah. Elon's the beast. Like, Elon is the. One of the biggest net benefits for civilization that. That we have lived in our lifetimes, we have experienced.
Podcast Host
Why do you think it is that he gets so much hate?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, because he speaks the truth and he creates innovation. People don't like that.
Podcast Host
Why do people not like truth or innovation? Innovation, specifically. Why do people not like it?
Nick Shirley
Yeah. Because it goes against what they're trying to do. For instance, if you're trying to receive hundreds and billions of dollars for the homeless population. And then Elon Musk goes on Joe Rogan, he says, well, that actually could probably be solved, but these people are incentivized to keep homeless so they can keep the funding. Meaning. So when he's trying to talk about stuff like AI, like, AI is a complicated one because we don't really know what it's going to be like because we're just sitting here. We're just average people, but we have to. I think with AI, that's very important, that we're on top of what's going on with AI. But Elon Musk, he's been like the biggest net benefit as far as giving us a platform to post free speech and not worry about getting censored on. To give us stuff as like, Starlink or to give us Teslas. What bad has he done for a civilization?
Podcast Host
What benefit have you seen from using X?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, X is YouTube. People go to get informed X, they go to get their news, and TikTok, they go to get entertained. And so when you post on X, you have no cap on how many impressions you can get on YouTube. It's very hard to get a video over a million, especially to get one over 5 million. And good luck ever getting a video over a hundred million on X. On X, you can simply just upload and then it can get shared to everyone. And the most powerful people in the world use X.
Podcast Host
That was an interesting point that you made, which is billionaires are probably not going to be spending 40 minutes watching a documentary on YouTube. And so even if your video got 4 million views on YouTube, the hundred million views that you got on X, you're going to have a different caliber of viewers there that, you know, will not spend all the time trying to do the deep dives. Into research because their time is spent, you know, running billion dollar company.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. So they're simply like on their breaks or when they're doing stuff for in their office, they're just, all right, let's get the quick news. What's happening for today? What's Trump saying? And boom, it's just right there. Instantly.
Podcast Host
We got a post on X. Yeah. What are we doing?
Jack
Yeah, I agree.
Nick Shirley
We should.
Podcast Host
We got a post on X. What opportunities have risen for you for posting on X?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I think X, like I said, it's the place where people go get their news. So for me, I mean, I've been able to get reach different audiences. For instance, on YouTube, I'm not going to reach an audience of people that are. Are literally like trying to make the change in the United States. You're getting more consumers and less producers. The producers are on X. The people that are making the changes in the world, they're on X. You have the crypto people, they're on X. You have the AI people, they're on X. The government, they're on X. So you have all the most powerful people literally getting information from people just like me who are posting on X.
Podcast Host
Do you make money on X?
Nick Shirley
You don't. That's the problem with X is you don't make that much money. However, the opportunities that you could get could lead to more money as far as like people, people, people. Then when they go to YouTube and they see your thumbnail, then they then click on your video because it gives your face more recognition. It's just like posting on TikTok. You really don't make that much money posting on TikTok. But then when they go to YouTube and they see your face, they then click on the button.
Jack
What's been the downside to this much virality?
Nick Shirley
The doxing. Because they don't really have. They can't get anything on me because I haven't really done anything. Like, I've don't have much controversy. I've lived my life in a way where I can feel like I try to live a life where I can feel shameless if I have to, if I ever die, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to go up to heaven and have a bunch of sins after repent for. So like I've always lived my life in a way where I'm going to have fun, do my thing, but I'm going to make sure I stay within the guidelines of what I believe to be correct. And so with that, since they can't come after me. They're coming after people around me or my family members or they're trying to get information on stuff. And it's like, well, there's really not much you can get. And why would you be Be putting my information out onto the Internet? Why would you be putting my message?
Jack
How did they get your information like that?
Nick Shirley
I don't know. Like, I've done such a good job at, like, keeping all my information private. I have not included really anybody in my family into my YouTube channel channel other than my mom. So I've tried to keep everyone kind of stepped aside from my content, and they're just seeing how evil people are for wanting to come and kill me for talking about fraud.
Jack
How do you protect yourself and make sure that you're safe? Yeah.
Nick Shirley
Now it sucks because now I have to have security. Like, I never expected to have to go film a video and have four security people inside of a car watching around or walking to. To the corner to make sure that no threat comes. Because in Minnesota, I go and film part two, and a man, a Somalian man, stops in the middle of the intersection, stops his car in the middle of a red light in the middle of the intersection, hops out, and just comes and literally tries to come and attack me.
Jack
What happened?
Nick Shirley
This lucky security was there to stop him. But if he wasn't, that footage. Yes. Whoa. And so luckily, like, now I just can't go and do stuff because especially with. I pissed off a pretty bad group of people to piss off the Somali population. Because if it's one. If you piss off one Somali, you're pissing off the whole entire community.
Jack
Do you worry about maybe, like, you should wear, like, a bulletproof vest or something?
Nick Shirley
Yeah. Every time I'm out in public now, especially when I'm filming, always wearing a bulletproof vest.
Jack
And how do you protect your identity if. Let's just say you're gonna stay in, like, a hotel or, like, order an Uber? Like, would you ever worry that someone would see this and be like, oh, wait, this is the guy? Make a few phone calls. Him dropping him off here.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. Yesterday at the airport, I told you guys, like, I'm not getting an Uber, so you need to get someone to pick me up? So that's, like, a big issue. I have now.
Podcast Host
And have you ever had any other nasty encounters with people that. That want to do you harm?
Nick Shirley
Oh, plenty. Especially I get very positive reactions from people when I'm out in public. However, when I'm live streaming, I go to a Protest like I'm walking into the dens of the lions, bro. They like just come after me. Like they'll literally come and swarm me. And I used to not bring security with me, but so now I don't know how I'm going to be able to go do those live streams because people have became so radicalized in what you're seeing with the news right now is they've came and attacked me so hard. And what they try to get you on is your, they say, say you're a MAGA influencer, conservative, anti immigration, Islamophobe. So when they do get to the point where they then try to do something to my life, they can justify it.
Podcast Host
I think you probably should not be going live anymore at this point. You could just be doing, filming videos and honestly, honestly maybe even disguising yourself. Like having a makeup team. That's what I said, having some sort of a makeup team to. Because also so people are going to recognize you and they're going to behave differently when you walk up to a place wanting to film them. And if you were to just put on a wig and do some makeup and look completely differently, you're going to have a more unbiased perspective when you're trying to investigate things.
Nick Shirley
Exactly. And kind of going back to the point of like being on X versus just being a YouTuber. For instance, a lot of other YouTubers, I mean they probably still go into, they might have a lot more subscribers than me. However, they don't have as much recognition because I'm on all platforms and I focus on all platforms. And so like for instance, a few other YouTubers, for instance, like Tommy G. I really like Tommy G's video but he's not really in the political aspect of things where his videos are getting posted on X. So people probably aren't trying to make attacks on him. Attacks on him and he's not as controversial as me, but because I kind of do news based videos and now you're seeing the left come at me for being a, a MAGA influencer or for being a conservative, for being a YouTube prankster when I was younger. They're all being anti immigration, they're all trying to put this picture on me so then they can come and attack me.
Jack
Why has it turned so politicized? Why can't we all just be in agreement that we're against fraud no matter who commits it?
Nick Shirley
Wouldn't you think people would be celebrating that I just went exposed one of the largest fraud scandals in American history. Like shouldn't Be people be happy that, oh, our taxes. We're finally going to be able to at least get a hold of one of the fraud scandals here in the United States. Shouldn't people be happy about that? Instead, they're. Instead, the news is investigating the journalist versus investigating the fraudsters. CNN did a whole entire thing on me when I went outside of Quality Learning center and I talked to them, and then they're like, we called seven other daycares. One of them answered, and they said they weren't fraudulent. Trying to debunk my claim.
Podcast Host
I'm like, these are incredible reporting from one of the most trustworthy sources ever.
Jack
They said it was legit. So. Yeah.
Nick Shirley
And I even gave them the opportunity to interview me live at that same location when they were on live. And they said no.
Podcast Host
Really? They said no. So they would rather talk about you than talk to you.
Nick Shirley
And so I knew when I was having that interaction how they were going to clip it up. But they actually did a fair job in making me, making me look very well because I answered all of her questions.
Jack
So one thing I'm really curious about, there is a proposed tax strike going on right now on Twitter that a lot of people are saying, hey, we shouldn't pay our taxes because all of it's going to waste. What are your thoughts on a tax strike?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I mean, the Boston Tea Party, they. They freaked out because of just a few percentages. We're paying 40, 30, 20. Some people are paying 50% of taxes of their dollars to the government. So I don't think it's a bad thing. It's not. It wouldn't be anything new for America. But the problem is they'll imprison you if you don't pay your taxes. But if you're a politician who allows $9 billion of fraud, nothing happens.
Jack
See, how do you explain to the taxpayer the discrepancy when they want to track Venmo payments of more than $600? But there is so much fraud going on every day that you could blatantly see. How do you explain that to the taxpayer in terms of a discrepancy of like, we want to track this, but there's so much just wasted.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. I don't know. It's like, shameful how much money we give to taxes and not into the nitty gritty of the irs. I'm not a taxed. I'm not a tax person. I'm not a cpa. But I just know that we pay way too much taxes.
Jack
And what happens to a society if people stop believing that their tax dollars are going to the right places.
Nick Shirley
You're seeing it right now. People are very upset. Like you said, people are attempting to go on a tax strike and it'd be amazing if we could actually do something. And people are so mad at Trump for putting tariffs on other countries. And the whole goal is eventually to kind of make instead of have the IRS have a different way of funding for our country.
Jack
There was a really interesting tweet that said that roughly one and a half trillion dollars a year is wasted due to fraud or overspending. And that if we could just get rid of that, you could literally implement no income tax on all income under $650,000 a year.
Nick Shirley
I believe.
Jack
Just get rid of the waste and the fraud.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I 100% believe it. And why, why should the government be paying for people's lifestyles? Why should they be paying for giving people millions of dollars? Why should they be giving people millions of dollars where they're churning profits for systems like daycare centers? If anything, it should just be a nonprofit.
Podcast Host
Do you think that the fraud is partisan? That one side engages in more fraud than the other?
Nick Shirley
Yes, 100%.
Podcast Host
And how do you know that?
Nick Shirley
Just look at Minnesota, look at California. There's fraud in all 50 states. But you're seeing massive fraud take place inside of these states. For instance, just with the illegal immigration fraud that took place when we started letting in millions of people inside the United States. That was a total left wing issue. Democrats were flying people in, literally flying them into the United States.
Podcast Host
So how was that fraud to let in immigrants?
Nick Shirley
So when we talk about, like spending, then they're giving the money to the NGOs. And so explain.
Podcast Host
An NGO.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, so NGO is a non government organization. And in California, for instance, you'll see a ton of NGOs. And I even had a mayor of a California town tell me why they create these NGOs. So, for instance, say you're going to run for office and you need campaign money, and you're currently in office, but you're going to need more money for your next campaign. Well, you go and tell somebody, hey, go start this ngo. We're going to give you the money. Once the money's sent over to you, we'll get it back into our hands for the campaign. And so then there is an label. This is allegedly because I don't want to get sued, but that's one of the ways. By there you see so many NGOs, and that's why, for instance, the Migrant crisis. People were making millions and millions of dollars off of that migrant crisis.
Jack
Now, when you expose all the fraud, are you worried about getting sued or being dragged into a lawsuit that could take a long time and cost a lot of money?
Nick Shirley
They'll have to defend themselves as well. They'll have to prove that they're a legit business. So Quality Learning Center. They can't prove they're a legit business because they're a fraudulent business.
Jack
Here's what could be the potential, though.
Nick Shirley
I should start saying allegedly a little bit more, maybe.
Jack
But the issue that you run into is someone could just say, hey, I'm going to sue you for saying this, for defamation. The damage is $100 million. And because we have so much money behind us, we're just going to drag it out for years. And so we're going to cost you 500 grand. And either you have to pay it or, hey, we just settle and you give us $50,000 and you agree not to talk about us. How are you planning to combat that if someone were to sue you?
Nick Shirley
Yeah. So when did, like, journalism become criminal, too? Like, that's a whole other thing of. It's like, I'm a journalist. I go out and show people what's happening. And do you think, like, cnn, they came after me yesterday, and it's like, okay, they're like, are you 100% sure about your video? I said. I said, well, I presented you how it was. You can go ahead and make your own analysis. And she said, well, are you 100% sure? I said, yeah, I am sure. And then someone comments like, hey, were you guys 100% true about Russian Gate, about mass immigration, about COVID Were you guys 100% sure about all these other things? So it's like, how can.
Jack
Well, the unfortunate aspect of lawsuits is that you could make any claim you want to, even if it's completely false. And then it's up to the other person to defend themselves legally, which costs a lot of money.
Nick Shirley
Yeah.
Jack
At that point, it really just becomes a battle of. Of money, of just who has more resources to bully the other person.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, it is scary.
Jack
But I have a feeling if in the event you get hit with a lawsuit, that you would be able to basically just post on Twitter. And I bet someone would be willing to either give you free legal service or fund it.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. Cause I think, like, for instance, the Minnesota stuff, it's fraud. Like, if someone wants to try and sue me for that, they're gonna have to prove that they're not Fraudulent.
Podcast Host
Did you see that? Over 40 centers opened up on the same day actually linked to the same inactive shell company.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. There's massive fraud in Minnesota. Inside of one building I went to there was 14 home healthcare businesses and then inside of another one there was 22. If you're a business, why would you have all of your competitors in the same business as you like? There's no need for the fraud that's taking place in Minnesota.
Jack
So what do you think is wrong with traditional journalism?
Nick Shirley
One is they go through all this stuff. It's like the same reason why like going to college is almost a disadvantage these days, I feel like, because you're having these professors teach you about marketing. Meanwhile They've never received 100 million views on a social media page. And that's where our future is, is through social media. And so with the new main, with the mainstream media, I mean they're defending fraud right now versus they're investigating the person who's found fraud instead of investigating the people that are committing the fraud. Like I, like me and other people like myself, we're the biggest threat to them because we're doing what they can't in mainstream media. They have all these editorial rooms, they have people above that are paying for them. They have all this stuff going on where they just can't go from phone editing to publishing. They have to go to phone editing editor, look at it, make sure it looks good, make sure the higher ups approve of it. And then we publish the video and then if they speak out against it, we saw people like for instance Sage Steele for espn, she spoke at out against some stuff that happened. They then fired her. So people don't feel like they can speak freely on the Internet or on their, on these, on these mainstream platforms.
Podcast Host
Do you think that mainstream media will end up dying 100%?
Nick Shirley
No, not completely. Because you still do have maybe like a hundred years from now. Yes. But for the next 20 years or so you'll still see these companies because one, a lot of these billionaires are operating them so they can just continue to embezzle money into these mainstream news media like in these, these news companies. And so they'll be able to continue to operate, but you'll see people lose less and less trust. I believe after my Minnesota video the trust for the mainstream media went down the all time low.
Jack
When you were making that video, did you uncover other fraud in the process?
Nick Shirley
Yeah. So I have a part two coming out that we are going to go into a whole separate thing of the fraud that enables the fraud to continue, which is these transportation companies that allows the fraud to kind of make it look like it's not as fraudulent.
Jack
So explain this.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, so you have the home healthcare business, you have the daycares, you have the adult daycares. And like, when did we ever hear about adult daycares? Like, what the heck? Like, how many.
Podcast Host
What does that look like?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, like a bunch of old people in diapers. I don't know.
Jack
I guess elderly care is my guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Shirley
But like, why so many of them.
Jack
Them.
Nick Shirley
But in y. Like assisted living. So they have all these. They have all these welfare programs and they have autism as well. Autism rates have skyrocketed throughout Minnesota as they've received millions and millions of dollars. Autism rates have significantly went up for some random reason. But so with these transportation companies, they're all linked. It's like a. It's like what keeps the bike chain spinning. The transportation company. Because what these transportations do is these home healthcare companies are able to say, okay, well, our client needs to. To this healthcare provider to receive his treatment. But there's actually no treatment that needs to get. There's no service that actually needs to be rendered. But to get their payment, they say, okay, we're going to move this elderly person from the adult daycare center to our healthcare company. And then we're going to charge the transportation vehicle. And then because we charged him, we have proof that somebody showed up to that service. And so then we're going to charge the service, and then we're going to send the person back into transportation vehicle. But they never actually send a person and they just write false claims and false services. But because they're transportation companies, that's like their proof of being able to say, like, yes, the service was rendered.
Jack
So they're driving around and there's no one in the car.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. If you drive around Minnesota, drive around Minneapolis, you'll see tons and tons of vans of Somalian men driving these Chrysler vans. They're primarily Chrysler vans for whatever reason. And there's nobody in the vehicle.
Podcast Host
And it's the Somalians doing this one as well.
Nick Shirley
Jack, 89% of the fraud happening in Minnesota is by Somalians.
Podcast Host
But don't you have any other group of people that are like, you know, doing the same thing?
Nick Shirley
Like, there was fraud being committed as well by white people and they were.
Podcast Host
Charged, but the Somalians weren't.
Nick Shirley
One Somalian man was caught for $7 million of fraud, charged. A judge overturned it after he had been charged for fraud. What was his fraud, I think it was adult daycare centers. It was one of the welfare frauds. He was charged for $7 million and the judge went and reversed it.
Podcast Host
Is this just a couple like Somalian kingpins that are very clever that are able to see how to create these fraudulent systems or how do you know who's at the top basically?
Nick Shirley
Well, that's the problem is it's so big, like the roots are so deep now, like where you have so many connections. That's why it's so hard. That's why it's been so hard for the FBI to really go in and do what they need to do because it's such a, so much fraud has been happening. Tim Walter said he's been trying to combat fraud since 2019. Within six years, a lot of things can happen a lot. The roots can just keep getting deeper and deeper. More appeal can be brought into the fraud. That's why it's getting, getting becoming so hard.
Podcast Host
And so at the top level, do you think it's mostly negligence of the people that make the policy or do you think that it's cowardice or do you think it's like legitimately just people that are not smart?
Nick Shirley
Cowardice. And it's a huge group of people to get votes. You have upwards of a hundred thousand people where you can go get votes instantaneously.
Jack
How much of this do you think was started innocently of like, hey, we want to support, support the community. We, we think that if we could help parents out, give them free access to child care, they could do better. The kids are gonna like how much started out as purely just we want to help the community.
Nick Shirley
Yeah. I think it started out in a good way by helping refugees at that time come to America. I don't know if like for instance, like a difference between a migrant and immigrant. One of those words means that they're here temporarily and the other one means they're staying here forever. Forever. But refugees, I don't know if the plan is ever to take them back to their country. Right. So I think they accepted them. They're coming from war torn country and they're, they didn't, they didn't think what would happen.
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Podcast Host
So if you were governor for a day, what would you do?
Nick Shirley
I would cut all funding. I'd stop it. I'd put immediate pause to all funding and say, all right, you guys, we're going to send out this group, we're going to get everyone inside this room and here's the daycares we're going to go check out. And if they can't answer simple questions, then we're going to send them over to the federal government. And then from the federal government, they're going to go and do their investigation. Like it is so simple to stop the fraud. You literally would just say, all right, let's pause all payments or let's get all the groups that are receiving money from the government from welfare purposes, let's go to the autism clinics, let's go to daycares, let's go to the adult daycares, let's go to the home health, let's go to the home health care providers, let's go to the transportation vehicle companies and let's see what's happening. And let's just ask them, hey, can you show us how you guys are operating? Do it. They could solve it in a week.
Jack
What do you think is the best anti fraud measure that you've seen to.
Nick Shirley
Show you're a legitimate business before receiving money? Like, I think what they're doing right now by them freezing all that funding, Amazing. Why didn't they do that before? Like they should show that they're a legit business before they receive the money.
Podcast Host
Who decided to freeze it?
Nick Shirley
The hhs.
Podcast Host
So it was not Tim Waltz.
Nick Shirley
Not Tim Waltz. So in terms of my favorite new hobby is ratioing Tim Waltz on Twitter.
Podcast Host
I see you ratioing everybody on Twitter. That's your new favorite hobby? Apparently. What's your Twitter look like?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I'm getting pretty good at ratioing people like Tim Waltz on Twitter because they're speaking like idiots. And they're supporting fraud. And it turns out that the majority of the population doesn't support fraud. And so on Twitter, it's been actually crazy. For instance, just the past few days on Twitter, I put out One tweet, over 200,000 likes on me calling out the mainstream media. And a simple tweet of me saying, mainstream media is more mad at me than they are. Than they are at the fact that billions of your tax dollars are being used for fraudulent business. I am not an enemy of the people. They are. I'm with you. They are against you. Remember that 253,000 people like that tweet.
Jack
Wow.
Podcast Host
In one day.
Nick Shirley
One day.
Podcast Host
And then in terms of, like, ratioing, have you had any, like.
Nick Shirley
So some person, how does he.
Podcast Host
Is he just ignoring it?
Nick Shirley
Oh, he's been trying to. For the video got over 500 million views and impressions alone on the. Within the first 72 hours, Tim Walsh was posting about his cat at the fire at the. At his. At his house.
Podcast Host
What about the mayor, the one that was in cahoots with the Somalian guy?
Nick Shirley
I haven't heard anything from him. Nothing. Like, all they have to do is just like, simply say, all right, we're going to pause. Fraud, fraud. We're going to stop it. Tim Waltz just keeps blaming Trump for the fraud. And then you're also seeing people come out like, Hasan, biker. He's such a clown. Little commie.
Podcast Host
Have you spoke to Hasan?
Nick Shirley
No, and I'd actually be interested in speaking with people.
Podcast Host
We've had him on the podcast before, twice, actually.
Nick Shirley
And I'd be. But the thing is, I don't respect these people because they don't go out and actually go see stuff for themselves. They're literally just talk behind a streaming desk.
Jack
It would be interesting to go out in the field with Hasan pike to Minnesota.
Nick Shirley
I would do it.
Jack
I think it would be very.
Podcast Host
But.
Jack
But the problem now is that every single daycare is going to look legit.
Nick Shirley
Yeah.
Jack
They're going to throw kids in there and then it's going to be, ah, there we go.
Nick Shirley
I knew that was going to happen. And so for instance, Hassan, he retweeted some. So since I've gotten so much attention on X lately, some of the people that are running for re election in Minnesota have said, like, oh, we helped Nick Shirley, which is completely false. I saw this yesterday and I was like, wait, what? And so this person put out this tweet. He. He got 7,000 likes because this candidate said that she had worked and worked with Me in this video, which was false. And I simply put, this is completely false. I have no idea who this lady is. She is lying to make herself look good for her campaign. Shame on her. 73,000 likes in the original post got 7,000 likes. So I have way, way more support on my side because how can you defend fraud? You can't defend it. If you watch someone steal $100 from your grandma, you're just going to let them walk away?
Jack
What states do you think are the worst for fraud?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, California is very bad. Minnesota very bad. New York's going to become very bad. One of Mondami's things that he ran on was giving free childcare. And now what do we know about these daycare businesses? They're fraudulent. It's a great way to embezzle money into the hands of other people. People.
Podcast Host
The other thing I'm just curious about is we. We discussed how crazy your past 72 hours are. You said you've been reached out to by the Vice President, by, you know, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, by Elon Musk. I'm curious, any other opportunities that have risen from this? I saw you actually just went on valuetainment PD podcast. Any other thing?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I mean, a lot of people are trying to get. Get me offers and stuff, but I don't not. I'm not interested in really working for anybody else but myself.
Podcast Host
What do you mean offers? Like, is Fox News coming to you?
Nick Shirley
No, just like, people are like, come join on this platform. Come get on this thing. Come do this. And like, I'm just happy doing my stuff. 100 independent.
Podcast Host
And then in terms of the amount of exposure, you said that, like, you did feel a little unsafe walking through the streets of Minnesota. Anything else, like, walking even at an airport? I imagine just your life has been turned upside down. You're getting recognized everywhere. Even when I picked you up from the airport, you were completely disguised. Like, you had on your hoodie, you had your hat on, you had sunglasses on. You, like, totally, you know, hunched up. What other things have, like, just for you as a person, how has life changed?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, it's hard because you don't. Like, I, I was getting views on social media before this. So, like, I already had the. Like, I already get spotted. And I don't want to act like I'm some crazy famous person, but over the past 72 hours, I. I was like the most searched person on the Internet, whereas you couldn't escape me from whether it be the memes on TikTok or the post on X and so, like, that exposure in that time, when I post the video the day after Christmas, everyone's on break, they're on their phones. And so the exposure has been crazy. And then the threats and everything like that. For instance, just like getting on the plane to come to leave Minnesota, I was in aisle 10. And within those aisles of me getting on the plane, within those 10 rows, five people came up to me. Me, like, just to get to my seat. Five people will recognize me from those 10 aisles.
Jack
What's the interactions like with those people?
Nick Shirley
Positive.
Podcast Host
And never anything like someone screaming at.
Nick Shirley
You or like yelling, unless I'm at a protest. But it was a little worrisome at the Minneapolis airport, for instance, because a lot of the workers were Somalian. And so I was all covered up and everything. But then I'd look up and then they're looking at me. They're showing their phone to their friend, like, is that the guy Guy? Is that him? And it's like, oh, my gosh, get me out of here.
Jack
And what about with your parents?
Nick Shirley
Yes. Like, their reaction, like, my mom, she's involved in my channel. Like, she's a big character. She's like a character on my channel and everything like that. And so, yeah, they're just trying to go after anything they can potentially go after.
Podcast Host
And so what are your plans with the business? I imagine that you started making quite a bit of money from making this video, popping off in the way that you have. What do you. How do you move forward from here?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I mean, like, the money aspect didn't change from what I had before because I've always been making money on YouTube these past two years. And like I said, I just thought this was going to be a regular upload and I thought I need to focus on my next video. But when you post a video in the whole entire country that the media of the country that is not Fox News or newsmax comes after you, it kind of pushes you away from. From anything to do with that. They're trying to say, like, they're trying to give reasons for people to me.
Jack
Do you seriously worry about being like that?
Nick Shirley
I mean, there's constant attacks, and I've been attacked on live streams, and the police had to arrest two people in New York City on a live stream. This is before this happened. They had to arrest two people for attacking me live. People are deranged right now.
Jack
Does it ever make you pause and think, is this worth it if my life is on the line?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, it does. And so kind of going Back to what Jack was saying, like, where do I go now? So it's like, okay, do I post a YouTube video every single week now? Because I really just can't go out into the street and go make a video like I used to, like in, in Somalia or Minnesota. I had to go out and have four security guards with me so I could just go film my video. And so it's kind of like when you see, like, for instance, Riley Gaines, who spoke out against what was happening to her personally in her life, and it was just something super matter of fact, like super common sense what she was speaking out against. Yet the left came at her so hard and they attacked her so hard to that. To the point where her, herself, she's. She's her own movement in a way where she can go and talk about what they did because she has that backing of literally people turning on her for having common sense. And so what you just saw with me, just with everybody turning, all the mainstream media and the left coming out and defending fraud, like, my life has been changed over these past 72 hours. And at least for these next few months, I'm like, this is going to be a little harder to do what I got to do, but I'm not going to stop. Like, they're not going to stop me. They're not going to fear me away from doing it. I just have to go about it in a different way. But I do have an opportunity now to really move it towards something, and I've. Which is something I've been wanting to do for a while.
Podcast Host
And what do you think you're going to move it towards? Do you think you're going to do more fraud videos? Do you think you're going to build some sort of a network?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I think fraud's obviously very important and obviously people are passionate about it. Right. Because no one likes to see their money get stolen, because that's what fraud is. It's your dollars, my dollars, their dollars, all getting stolen. And so nobody likes to see it happening, especially when you can go and literally see it with your eyes. So I do have plans on creating some sort of, I don't want to say like a movement in a way, but something where people can be like, okay, I'm a part of this.
Jack
I would love to see a public tip network or something that is open for everybody to look at where you could submit anonymous tips for fraud that's going on. Or, you know, hey, we should look into this.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, like a decentralized doge.
Jack
I would love that. And then imagine you could type in a zip code and you could see, hey, these are all the fraud claims in this area. And, you know, you take it with a grain of salt, of course. But at least, hey, we could look into some of these things.
Nick Shirley
It might be hard because then you'd be, like, doxing individuals and businesses, like, if you don't know. But I do like that idea.
Podcast Host
There already is an IRS tip line.
Nick Shirley
Yes.
Podcast Host
Where you have to have bring forth some sort of an evidence that someone is committing tax fraud. And then you can actually take a percentage of what they claim from that individual. And then on top of that, if they're able to do that from the people they're supposed to be representing or serving, then why can't we do that with them? Like, why can't we detect government fraud?
Jack
So it's interesting on the IRS thing, I didn't realize they have to prove more than $2 million of tax revenue that gets collected to receive a payout.
Nick Shirley
Is that what it is? That's probably why it's so hard for people to actually go get that.
Jack
So it's not like you could just say, hey, hey, you know, so and so isn't paying their taxes. You have to go with receipts. And the IRS has to be able to collect $2 million minimum.
Nick Shirley
Yeah.
Jack
But it makes it. Because they don't want to be like, oh, we're not going to spend all these resources tracking down, like, a missed, you know, $400 payment or something like that.
Nick Shirley
Because by that time, Major. By that time, most likely that money has already gone to Dubai and then it was sent tax free to some other country, because that's what the Somalians do in Minnesota. If you go on to YouTube and you can look up this video from 2017, FO News did a video, I think the local Fox News did a video where Somalians were bringing in millions of dollars in cash through tsa and they then take it over to Dubai and then they send it off to Somalia. So, like, a lot of that money. This is another part that's gonna be in my part two videos. I interviewed a man who used to work at TSA in the airport, and he dealt with millions of dollars in cash that the Somalians would take through the airport.
Podcast Host
You're going to be Somalia's, like, number one enemy.
Nick Shirley
Me. Oh, for sure.
Podcast Host
How much would someone have to pay you to visit Somalia?
Nick Shirley
$9 billion. Get all our money back.
Podcast Host
9 million.
Nick Shirley
9 billion.
Podcast Host
$9 billion.
Nick Shirley
That's what we've given them.
Podcast Host
I mean, that would be extremely entertaining but also dangerous.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, that would be crazy, right? If I went to Somalia.
Jack
Well, because we're probably going to post this around the time you're posting your video. Is there anything you could tell us about that one?
Nick Shirley
Well, just the fact that, that the like in going deep into the transportation companies, none of them existed. We went to all of them. They had a. They had transportation companies listed in apartments and they receive money from the government to go and do these non emergency transportation.
Jack
Are you seeing any of these people with like a very flashy lifestyle, like fancy cars and nice clothes and things like this?
Nick Shirley
Yes. Outside the daycares, there's this one daycare that. This is another example of blatant fraud. So this daycare, they closed down because of violations and then that same day they reopened underneath a different name and continued to receive money. I went to the daycare. Three BMWs in a range Rover outside, no children. Hmm. It's like those shows where it's like, how stupid are you to show that you're committing fraud? Why are you driving around? How is our government funded daycare receiving three BMWs and a range Rover outside?
Podcast Host
I mean, those are really good for daycare.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, really good for the kids. I just, they just love the leather.
Podcast Host
Seats and what is your dream video to make?
Nick Shirley
Dream video to make. I've always wanted to interview like presidents.
Podcast Host
Oh, so it would just be an interview.
Nick Shirley
Well, that's like a dream video. Mine is to do like I really wanted to interview Naive Bukele in El Salvador.
Podcast Host
Have you spoken to, to him?
Nick Shirley
I've met him once. I shook his hand.
Podcast Host
But I was that brief because I know you made the, the first video I saw of you was at the seot.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, it was very. I literally just shook his hand and he just, he. I was just like in a press pool and I shook his hand and he just. And I've seen Trump, I met Trump in the Oval Office. I gave a speech to Trump, a briefing at the antifa thing. So that's another thing. Why, like how did you get that interview with Trump? Yeah, with. Well, I just, it was interesting because I got invited to the White House for. When Naive Bu. Kelly came, El Salvador actually invited me to the White House and I had no idea what was going to happen. I thought I was just going to be able to take photos when they go in to the White House and I thought that was going to be it. And they're like, oh, you're going to be in the, you're, you're going to go into the Oval. And I didn't know whether or not they said, you're going to go into the meeting where the President and Naive were speaking. And I didn't know whether it was going to be like, the Roosevelt Room, the. The Oval Office. So, like, I'm just in this press pool, and they just, like, push me up front. And I look up and I just see Trump. He's just like. I was like, what is going on? I was. It felt like a. And he has, like, so much makeup on. He kind of. He didn't even really look real. He's just, like, sitting there like this. And then Naive Kelly's just like this. And then Trump just looks at his cheek. He's like, all right, all right, everybody. And he starts speaking. And then they're like, all right. Then Trump goes, finishes talking to the Navy's, like, questions. And then everyone just starts yelling like, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President. I'm like, wait, am I gonna ask a question? And so I'm right next to CNN with Caitlin Collins, and me and her are battling to get a question off. And finally, I. I just get a question off him. You see, my hand is, like, shaking like this. And I asked Trump the question. That was very cool.
Jack
What was the question?
Nick Shirley
I asked him, like, how essential is it to be sending people to. I think to secot? Like, how essential is it to be getting these people out of our country? Because there are a bunch of, like, we don't want Venezuelan gangsters inside of our country. Like, and if Venezuela wouldn't accepted them, send them to secot.
Jack
Were you happy with Trump's response, Else?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I was happy with it. I was just happy to get the question off and not look like a fool, because you only have one shot to ask a question when you're inside the Oval Office. And I was the first YouTuber ever to document an Oval Office meeting.
Jack
Now, I'm curious based on that. You were on the PPD podcast and you put out a tweet and you said, hey, for these people, how could I help? Did any of them reach out?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, within, like, an hour after I left, I got, like, a call from the FBI. FBI?
Jack
How do they get your phone number?
Nick Shirley
I think it's the FBI. FBI.
Podcast Host
You're on something today. That's crazy.
Nick Shirley
Yeah.
Podcast Host
Yes.
Jack
They just.
Nick Shirley
Well, it's crazy, though. So they called me and I missed the call because I've had my phone. Don't disturb. I missed the call, and then I could. Then I had Received so many calls within those 10 minutes that I didn't, I couldn't track back the phone call call so I couldn't get back to him.
Jack
Wait, so they reached out. Did they leave a voice or anything?
Nick Shirley
No. So like you know on the iPhone, how now like you can screen a phone call? And so I was in the Uber car with the, I was in the car with the Uber and I was like, well, I don't want to answer the phone like with the Uber right there. And so I was like, okay, I'll call him back. And then by the time I had got out of the Uber to then call him back, I couldn't find my phone number phone.
Jack
You got to do another tweet and be like, at FBI, I missed your phone call. Please call me back and leave a voicemail.
Podcast Host
Yeah, and then put your phone number at the of the tweet.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, like right, right now I have over 450 messages that I can't even respond to.
Jack
Can I see, can I just see your phone?
Nick Shirley
Yeah.
Jack
Oh my gosh.
Nick Shirley
Like, I don't even know who's reaching out to you.
Jack
You were not kidding.
Nick Shirley
No, I literally don't know who's reaching out to me because there's a lot of these phone numbers I don't have saved and so I'm not just going to start responding to people.
Jack
Wow.
Podcast Host
Oh, nice. You got a text from Andrew Cathy Callahan.
Nick Shirley
Yeah.
Podcast Host
What do you think about Andrew Callahan?
Nick Shirley
I don't understand why he's kind of gone so left leaning on a lot of his stuff, but I think he's, he, he's a, he's a good person, he has a good heart.
Podcast Host
He would probably say the same thing to you. I don't understand why he's gone so right leaning on his stuff.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, he even called me out one of his videos for being right like right wing YouTubers in Portland when I was literally getting attacked by antifa. And so I was like, wait, come on, dude. Well, it's interesting me and him had lunch because I, I, I used to love channel fan5 and like all gas, no breaks. I really liked that the what he was doing and I thought it was interesting. So he was like one of the people I liked when I was kind of like getting inspired to do more political, more serious videos. And I had lunch or dinner with him one night when I was in California and we talked and he said he was excited to see what Trump was going to do. And then I was just kind of confused when I saw that like he went like very anti Trump Trump and like started just being very anti Trump.
Jack
What do you think when people call you a right wing influencer?
Nick Shirley
That's what they're going to call me because I'm speaking out against. I'm not even speaking out, actually. I'm. What you've saw from me the past two years has been me just acquiring knowledge about what's happening, interviewing people and seeing what's happening in the world. Now they have forced me me to use the knowledge I've acquired to give my opinion as they've attacked me over the past 72 hours. And people are loving it.
Podcast Host
You also gave a speech to President Trump as well.
Nick Shirley
Yeah.
Podcast Host
How did that go? What was the speech about?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, I got invited to the roundtable about Antifa because in Portland, literally inside of Portland, there was an entire block where Antifa had essentially took control of and they started like controlling the traffic, controlling the streets. Like at certain times when they were protesting, they were in aund. They were like, like in. They were in an over 160 day protest about ICE. And the Portland police did not do anything about it. And so they then invited us to go to this roundtable meeting with Trump. And I had no idea Trump was going to be there. I had no idea that I was going to give a speech. They just said like, some important people are going to be there from the cabinet and you're going to have the opportunity to be there. And then that morning when I get to the hotel, they're like, all right, we're going to hop on a zoom call. And Caroline Levitt hops on and she says, you guys, we're going to have, you're going to have the opportunity to kind of talk about your experience with what you've seen. It'll be super brief, like two, three minutes and just kind of share your experience with the President. I was like, what? Hold up, we're gonna have to give a speech. And then I wrote my speech like five minutes before I got picked up by an Uber to go to the White House and It did over 50 million views.
Podcast Host
I saw it. It was a really good speech. What's your favorite meme from this whole thing? Because there have been so many.
Nick Shirley
It's a photo of me and it says, my next trick, make Democrats support fraud. And it's a photo on my face. It's pretty funny.
Jack
What was up with that one lady who was given a speech and she said the word fraud and then visibly got upset and then seemed like at first she was like she said, I.
Podcast Host
Understand fraud is bad.
Jack
Yeah, fraud is bad. But then was like, should I have read that? And I couldn't tell, but. But then it seemed like she just broke down and started crying. And I was, I was confused because.
Nick Shirley
They'Re all going in on the fraud. She knows fraud's happening. So she openly admitted to fraud.
Podcast Host
She said she could have also just been misspeaking. Like when she said, I know fraud is bad. Like that's not necessarily her saying. It sounds like it, but like, I know fraud is bad, but we need to afford food. Like, you know what I mean? But it also could be like, I know fraud is bad and that's not what we're engaging in. So like you don't necessarily.
Nick Shirley
And then the next person, a white liberal woman speaking up and she says, she goes in her speech and then she accidentally says there is fraud and she freaks out too.
Jack
So are they given a script?
Nick Shirley
They're all reading a piece of paper.
Jack
So who's given them the piece of paper to read? And why don't they proofread this before saying it?
Nick Shirley
Well, then they went off the record and started speaking without the paper and they started saying this fraud is bad. And you're seeing like all these like white liberal women are their worst enemy. Their support, supporting people who are stealing from them. They support criminals that look at them as prey. Like their logic is so bad that they literally have gotten to the point where they support criminals and fraudsters. And that's why fraud's been able to happen. Because people are so scared to talk about things for what they really are. Like, fraud's bad. And if it's happening with 89% of the population inside of Minnesota and every single daycare I go to happens to be Somalians. That's the fact that you're not going to make me just not post my video because it's Somalians.
Podcast Host
We got to know for your business, how do you produce your videos?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, it's just me.
Jack
It's just you to edit your own videos?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, for the long form videos on YouTube, it's just me.
Podcast Host
And so how do you film it? Like, what do you use to film your videos?
Nick Shirley
So I, I try to film in a. My whole goal is for people to feel like they're inside the video and, and they're feeling the video for what it really is. So I'm not filming with a huge big camera like this. I'm filming with something that feels real, like with your eye. Cause sometimes I feel like the big cameras, they Kind of put like a glossy feel or they put like some contrast in your skin. So I use cameras that are very like non professional in a way. And I focus highly on the audio. And I'll either film it or I'll bring somebody like my mom to come and film for me.
Jack
I think it'd be very interesting if you could go and show how. How easy it is to open a daycare. I think you should open a daycare.
Nick Shirley
I should open a daycare. We should all open a daycare.
Podcast Host
That would be funny actually for you to open up and then run it like an. As an actual daycare.
Nick Shirley
Yes.
Podcast Host
That would not help.
Nick Shirley
And I promise you guys, I will not block. I will not block out the windows. I'll keep it all fair and clean. I'll have a reception desk, I'll have a brochure to give everybody so they can enroll their child. And I'll have the most profitable daycare in all of Minnesota.
Jack
But I just think before your next expose, say, go and do the thing that you are exposing before you post the video, so.
Podcast Host
Oh, that would be interesting.
Jack
Yeah.
Podcast Host
You'd actually do the scam before you. Yeah, whatever it is.
Jack
Just to show and document. Hey, guys, here's how easy it is. I submitted my paperwork the same day I got approved, the same day I was eligible for $500,000 of funding. And I'm just a dude who applied online. Like, this is obviously a broken system.
Nick Shirley
Somebody who lives in Minnesota should do this, that. But they actually say they're not accepting anymore. I believe actually the licensing website, after I had exposed the Minnesota government, the website where you could see the licensing for all the daycares randomly crashed.
Jack
Yeah. Well, I'm going to say. But if you go to, let's say a state like California and you show some of the homeless fraud that's going on and you see, wait a second, these homeless shelters are getting $50,000 a month and all you have to do is do xyz. I think it would be in everyone's best interest to you. Walk them through. Here's how you do xyz and here's how much funding's available.
Nick Shirley
That would be a good idea before.
Jack
We post the video.
Nick Shirley
Fortunately, I don't live in California. I live in a state where you could find someone. I'm sure, sure I could find somebody. That's a good idea. Or you could just talk to somebody about how they went about and did it. Who's. Who's running the business?
Jack
Yeah, I think, I think the next one Though, honestly, I'd look at the landlord. Landlords look at the landlords of these.
Nick Shirley
Wouldn't you be happy if you're a landlord and you're receiving automatic money no matter what? Like, it's not like a morally bad issue if you're a landlord because you're trying to make a profit too?
Jack
It depends. I think either landlords could be turning a blind eye and just say, hey, listen, they're going to pay their rent. I don't care. I don't care what they do. I'm oblivious to it. And they could be just, just ignore. Boring. They could also just be ignorant and say, hey, this looks like a great business, I'm going to accept it. Or they could be complicit and say, hey, yeah, I, you know, they're running this and I'm gonna cash in on this too.
Podcast Host
And what's wrong with that, though? Like, if they're just existing and they're like, hey, these people are willing to pay me. It's my, you know, it's in my interest as a landlord to try to find someone to pay for this space. And then they do it. It's like, it's not like they're the ones that are actually committing the fraud. Fraud. They're just a person.
Nick Shirley
What would be interesting if. Yeah, let's just say, like, say it's a family member who owns a business.
Podcast Host
That's exactly that.
Nick Shirley
That's what would be interesting. But that's just. If it's just a random, random person.
Podcast Host
And then one. What literally one person is like, hey, I am obtaining this money, you know, amount per month, and I can pay you $5,000 a month. And someone else is like, I can pay you $3,000 a month. You're obviously going to go with the person that pays you $5,000 a month.
Jack
I'm just saying for a lot of commercial landlords, they do a decent amount of due diligence on who the tenant is and their ability to pay the rent. Rent. And you don't want to have an issue where a tenant stops paying. You have an eviction. Any one of these things could throw a wrench in the entire property or gets tied up in litigation. You don't want that. So I'm just saying there's a level of due diligence. The landlords have to go under to take a tenant like this. And when there are so many daycares around, I'm just saying it's just something to look at.
Nick Shirley
That's like a problem with the government because They've enabled it to happen for so long. They've allowed. Allowed. Tim Walt said he's expanding daycares. He said that. And so if you're a landlord, you're probably stoked to have a business that's not a building that's not been occupied. They're going to come in and rent for $10,000 or whatever amount money it is. You're stoked.
Jack
Yeah, it could be totally.
Nick Shirley
It's a whole, totally innocent. Because these cares are initial industrialized businesses. They're not just like daycares.
Jack
They're just saying look at who, look at who owns the businesses, who owns the real estate. There could be something there maybe not. There might be.
Podcast Host
What is your mission?
Nick Shirley
If you were to just say, yeah, now my journalism is turning into actual change. We've never seen something like this where after a video within hours the government launches full on investigations into a city about fraud. There was some investigations going on beforehand. However, multiple new investigations took place. You saw people going door to door. Hsi, Homeland Security started going door to door to some daycares to see what was happening to these Somalian ran businesses like you've never seen that before. So what I'm seeing now is that my journalism can actually create real change. I'm here to help people and to show people what's happening for things as they really are and to show them the reality of things. None of us are perfect, but at the end of the day the whole goal is to leave the world a better place than we received it and to create actual change.
Podcast Host
Where does that passion come from? Why does it matter so much to you?
Nick Shirley
I think God uses all of us in different aspects. The experiences I had when I was in high school have propelled me to where I'm at now. The experiences I had doing door to door sales in Florida, selling pest control allowed me to have conversations that I'm able to have now. Now and the opportunities I had the past two years of going around talking to people, that's propelling me to where I'm at now. My acquiring knowledge phase I like to call it, where I just soaked in as much knowledge as I could is now allowing me to give more of my opinion to people. And like I said, not everything's perfect. People might disagree with some things I have to say, but I'm just trying to point out stuff in a way that's as common sense as possible.
Podcast Host
Nick, thank you so much for carving out the time to come on the podcast. We really, really appreciate it. I imagine like you you know, we mentioned earlier, your schedule is just insane right now. So we really appreciate it.
Nick Shirley
Yeah, it's been great.
Jack
And coming out on New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, flying in to come hang with us, film with us on New Year's Day is really cool.
Nick Shirley
My biggest priority is to serve the people that are watching me. So by me coming on here, I hope new people are also become interested in what's happening in the country. Like I work for the people that watch my. If you watch my videos that give me views that allow me to continue what I'm doing. So I'm not here as a somebody who's just trying to get views at this point. I've got them already now I'm here to serve people.
Podcast Host
So if you're to provide a call to action for some people out there, they want to see more of you or they want to come support you, what can they do?
Nick Shirley
Yeah, the most important thing is just to follow me on all platforms, make sure truly and just follow me.
Podcast Host
All of that stuff will be linked down below. You're also selling this merch we got.
Jack
I like that. Yeah.
Nick Shirley
A lot of people need to be leering a lot more this year. So hopefully a lot people are leering and they're not opening up daycares and can't even spell the word learning right. So we're going to make the world a better place this year.
Podcast Host
Thanks so much for watching guys. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Till next time.
Jack
See ya.
Nick Shirley
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch limited limited time.
Jack
50 off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required. $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes.
Podcast Host
Per month when network is busy.
Jack
See terms.
Podcast: The Iced Coffee Hour
Hosts: Graham Stephan & Jack Selby
Guest: Nick Shirley
Date: January 3, 2026
In this explosive episode, Graham Stephan and Jack Selby sit down with YouTuber and investigative journalist Nick Shirley to discuss his viral exposé of alleged large-scale fraud at daycare centers in Minnesota. Within 72 hours of posting his investigation, Nick’s video garnered over 130 million views on X (formerly Twitter), rocketed into mainstream discourse, and triggered a national debate on government oversight, welfare fraud, and community accountability.
Nick delves into:
Shirley’s candid, sometimes provocative perspective leads to a lively and controversial conversation about exposing fraud, the power dynamics in investigative journalism, and his personal journey through a whirlwind of internet fame and real-life risks.
Scope & Reason for Virality
Process & Challenges
How the Fraud Works
Key Figures & Community Involvement
Lack of Accountability
Mainstream Media Response
Political Response
Support from High-Profile Figures
Personal Repercussions
Internet and Media Discourse
Ethical Questions and Copycats
Lawsuits & Retaliation
| Topic | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------|------------------| | Start of Discussion, Context | 00:33 – 01:35 | | Scope and Virality of Nick’s Investigation | 01:42 – 03:09 | | Daycare Fraud Mechanics: How it Works | 07:39 – 10:16 | | Political & Community Response | 33:40 – 34:08 | | Media Criticism & Counterarguments | 23:23 – 28:46 | | Security Risks and Personal Safety | 43:21 – 45:44 | | Reforms & Solutions | 65:47 – 67:01 | | Frauds in Assisted Living & Hospitals | 32:43 – 33:00 | | Copycat Concerns & Investigative Ethics | 21:43 – 22:59 | | Exposure and Life Changes | 70:38 – 71:54 | | Transparency for Politicians | 16:09 – 16:34 | | Broader Policy: National & Historical Context | 51:27 – 52:46 | | Media, Technology, and Platform Power | 41:08 – 42:21 | | Personal Mission & Future Plans | 93:05 – 94:48 |
Nick Shirley wraps up with a sense of mission:
“My journalism is turning into actual change… I'm here to help people and to show people what's happening for things as they really are and to show them the reality of things. The whole goal is to leave the world a better place than we received it and to create actual change.” (Nick, 93:06)
He encourages listeners to:
Want to dig deeper or support Nick Shirley?
“At the end of the day, the whole goal is to leave the world a better place than we received it and to create actual change.”
— Nick Shirley (94:48)