Hundreds of state workers at the Minnesota Department of Human Services publicly excoriated Gov. Tim Walz for allowing a “massive fraud” scandal to unfold under his watch and retaliating against their whistleblowers.
Over $1 billion in taxpayers’ money was fleeced by dozens of scammers in Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, the largest known COVID-19 fraud case in the country.
“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response,” the Minnesota DHS employees X account, which represents over 480 staffers, chided Saturday.
“Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation,” the account charged.
“It’s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to.”
Just last week, the Justice Department prosecuted the 78th defendant in what prosecutors have dubbed the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. At least 59 people have been convicted so far.
During the past five years, fraudsters targeted Minnesota’s generous social safety net by setting up companies that billed the state for social services prosecutors alleged were never actually provided.
Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit founded in 2016 that purported to help feed school children, had partnered with dozens of local businesses under the pretense of providing food aid.
The nonprofit, which dissolved in 2022, and its partners billed the state, claiming to have helped feed tens of thousands of needy children. In reality, most of that money was squandered on foreign real estate projects, luxury cars, and more.
Other organizations besides Feeding Our Future committed fraud with Minnesota’s social safety net as well.
The fraud largely revolved around dozens of people in the Somali diaspora. Minnesota is home to about 80,000 Somali Americans.
“As staff, we firsthand witnessed and observed fraud happening yet we were shutdown, reassigned and told to keep quiet,” the Minnesota DHS employees’ X account alleged.
“Sometimes more. Leadership did not want to appear to discriminate against certain communities and were unwilling to take action, such as stopping fraud, that would have an adverse impact on their image.”
Federal prosecutors began charging individuals associated with Feeding Our Future in 2022. As federal investigators parsed through documents, they quickly realized that the fraud was widespread.
One homelessness program started as $2.6 million in 2021, saw its costs soar to $104 million last year, after being rife with fraud, the New York Times reported.
“Minnesota has become the land of 10,000 frauds under Tim Walz,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told The Post about the scandal.
“This is a total slap in the face to the hardworking, law-abiding people of Minnesota. The Walz administration is either too incompetent or completely unwilling to clean up their own mess.”
The egregious scandal also drew attention from President Trump, who ripped Minnesota as “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.”
Walz returned fire against Trump and noted that “I take responsibility for putting people in jail,” despite federal prosecutors leading many of the charges.
“Donald Trump: Deflect, demonize, come up with no solutions. He’s not going to help fix anything on fraud,’ Walz told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday. “My God, there’s a big difference between fraud and corruption. And corruption is something he knows about.”
The Minnesota DHS employees’ X account also accused Walz of weakening safeguards and disempowering the Office of the Legislative Auditor during the alarming fraud.
“This is a cascade of systemic failures leading up to Tim Walz,” the workers alleged. “Agency leaders appointed by Tim Walz willfully disregarded rules and laws to keep fraud reports quiet – even to the extent of threatening families of whistleblowers.”
“We can’t fight fraud in Minnesota alone, hence why we’re appealing to the federal levels of government. We need all the help we can get.”
The Post reached out to Walz’s office for comment.
Walz launched his campaign for a third term as governor of Minnesota in September.
Minnesota is one of over a dozen states that don’t have term limits on its governor. But no Minnesota governor has been elected three times since gubernatorial terms were extended from two to four years in 1963.
