WASHINGTON — Conservative journalist Nick Shirley testified before a congressional panel Wednesday that the “red flags” he witnessed while reporting on the welfare scandal in Minnesota were in plain sight.
Shirley, whose viral reporting on the flagrant welfare fraud in Minnesota gained national attention late last year, argued that taxpayers are getting screwed over by the rampant theft and warned that other states, such as California, are likely worse.
“I’m here today to speak on behalf of all hardworking, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens here inside of the United States,” Shirley said during his opening remarks. “We the people have had enough of our hard-earned money going towards fraudsters, as if it’s no big deal.”
“Gov. [Tim] Walz has said that he’s been fighting fraud in Minnesota since 2019 and said the buck stops with him,” he later added. “How long would it take for you to notice $1 million leaving your bank account and not knowing where it was going?”
GOP lawmakers have been investigating the scope of the welfare fraud issue in Minnesota and are trying to figure out what went wrong. Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee heard from multiple state lawmakers, and the panel is seeking testimony from Gov. Tim Walz (D) next month.
Estimates on how much taxpayer dollars were stolen vary, but it is generally thought to be over $1 billion, with former assistant US Attorney Joseph Thompson estimating last month that it was over $9 billion.
Walz, who dropped his reelection bid amid the growing scandal, has publicly cast doubt on Thompson’s eye-bulging estimate.
“Fraud in California might be worse than the fraud in Minnesota,” Shirley stressed during the Wednesday hearing during an exchange with Rep.
Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) “$24 billion went missing for homelessness. They’ve been trying to build this train for years, yet there’s hardly anything to prove for that. Fires.”
That’s a reference to an audit that found California didn’t have a consistent method for tracking the outcomes of the $24 billion it spent on combating homelessness. Shirley also alluded to the roughly $15 billion spent on a controversial high-speed rail project, which was at one point expected to be completed by 2020 and initially estimated to cost $36.7 billion but later ballooned to $77 billion.
Shirley, whose over-40-minute-long video on the fraud in Minnesota took the internet by storm last year, revealed that he stumbled across the issue while reporting on radical Islam and demographic changes in the state.
“I actually became aware of the fraud that was happening in Minnesota in June of 2025, as I was there for a separate video and Minnesotans started reaching out to me asking if I was making a video on the fraud,” he recounted.
Initially, he held off on making a video, keen on amassing more proof. Then he got a tip from a man named David, who informed him that he had been driving by daycare centers in the state that didn’t seem to provide for any children. That tip inspired Shirley to go back and investigate.
“We go to a daycare, and I’m instantly surprised by what we see,” Shirley said. “We continued to go to other daycares, and we noticed the same pattern: no children, blacked out windows.”
“I made this video to document the widespread fraud taking place, as I truly believe all fraud is bad, and people like me, my generation, we’re sick of seeing tax dollars going to fraud.”
One example Shirleycited was a daycare learning center spelled “Quality Learing Center” which got some $1.9 million from taxpayers.
At least 98 people have been charged over the growing fraud scandal, including 64 who have either been convicted or pleaded guilty.
The Trump administration revealed plans to name an assistant attorney general to specialize in probing fraud, starting with Minnesota. The Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Small Business Administration, both froze funding for key grants in the state amid the fraud concerns.
