How a viral video uncovered Somali migrant scandal that has rocked US: Woke politicians saved quiet as lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} have been paid to immigrant fraudsters who threatened to cry racism when questioned

A US influencer is being credited with uncovering a nationwide scandal after he made a viral video exposing millions of taxpayer dollars being fraudulently collected by members of the Somali community in Minnesota.

On Friday, right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video on YouTube, claiming that day care centres operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100m in fraud.

In the video he stands outside two deserted ‘daycare centres’ which have collected $2.6m in federal grants despite not appearing to be in operation and highlighted a number of other alleged frauds. 

The explosive accusation sparked nationwide anger, and the Trump administration announced on Tuesday it is freezing $185m in child care funds to the state and demanded an audit of fraud schemes involving government programmes.

The city of Minneapolis-St Paul’s Somali community began in the 1990s when it accepted refugees fleeing the country’s civil war, and there are now around 94,000 city residents who speak the language. 

Radical socialist Democrat Congresswoman for Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, Ilhan Omar, was born in Somalia and now faces questions of how her family wealth grew to $30m in a year. 

Politically-correct politicans in the Democrat controlled state now stand accused of turning a blind eye to the fraud scandal for fear of being accused of racism. 

And Donald Trump has weighed in, branding Minnesota a ‘hub of fraudulent money laundering activity’, while FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X that ‘this is just the tip of a very large iceberg’. 

Shirley’s video – which amassed 2.5 million views on YouTube in a few days – is just the latest alleged scheme in a string of scandals plaguing Minnesota, which prosecutors say have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. 

It followed the White House launching a crackdown on illegal immigration in the state – the home to the largest population of Somali immigrants in the US – after Trump said America would ‘go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage’. 

In addition to Shirley’s new bombshell claims, 14 Medicaid-funded programmes in Minnesota are already under federal investigation for an alleged $9b COVID-era fraud scandal. 

Throughout Shirley’s video, entitled ‘I Investigated Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal’, the YouTuber visits several facilities purporting to be daycare centres accommodating hundreds of children.

But when he visits the centres, many of them are closed, the windows are blacked out, and no children can be seen.

‘They’re open seven days a week, 7am to 10pm it says here on their sign, yet there’s absolutely nobody here,’ he says, standing outside one centre.

Later, the content creator visits another facility, and asks a man who says he has lived in the neighbourhood since 2018 if he’s ever seen children entering the centre.

‘I’ve never seen anybody go in there,’ the man says.

On several occasions, people inside the centres refuse to open the door to Shirley and ask for him to leave.  

As Homeland Security agents flock to Minnesota for what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called a ‘massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud’, longstanding investigations dating back to 2022 continue.

Federal charges have already been filed against 98 people in Minnesota, and at least 60 have been convicted. 

As Attorney General Pam Bondi stressed on Monday – 85 of the defendants accused of embezzlement of public funds are ‘of Somali descent’. 

Joseph H. Thompson, the prosecutor conducting the investigation, said he had identified ‘staggering, industrial-scale fraud’ in Minnesota’s safety-net programmes. 

The fraud schemes – conducted mainly by Minnesota’s Somali community – targetted state initiatives meant to feed children during Covid-19, support minors with autism, and aid those at risk of homelessness.

But prosecutors say fraudsters billed the government for social services that were never provided.

Fifty-seven people have already been convicted in a scheme to divert $300 million in public grants intended to distribute free meals to children – but the meals never existed, prosecutors said.

The fraudulent payouts to the ‘Feeding Our Future’ programme constituted the nation’s costliest Covid-era scam.  

‘What’s happening in Minnesota is a microcosm of the immigration fraud in our system,’ Vice President JD Vance posted on X.

‘Politicians like it because they get power. Welfare cheats like it because they get rich. But it’s a zero-sum game, and they’re stealing both money and political power from Minnesotans.’

‘Somali scammers get rich off the programmes Governor Walz was supposed to be managing,’ Dr. Oz, Administrator for the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said in a video earlier this month.

Threatening to cut off federal funding for programmes administered by state officials, he said: ‘Minnesota politicians get elected with Somali votes and keep the money flowing.’

Announcing the expansion of the investigation into Minnesota’s social services programmes, prosecutor Thompson said new suspects included two men from Philadelphia who were engaged in ‘fraud tourism’. 

He said they travelled to the state ‘because they knew and understood that Minnesota was a place where taxpayer money can be taken with little risk and few consequences’. 

The fraud investigations arrive as Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar faces scrutiny after her assets, which appeared to skyrocket from only $1,000 to almost $30 million in just one year. 

Two companies, both owned by her husband and listed on Omar’s most recent financial disclosure form, seemed to explode in value between 2023 and last year.

In response to the significant increase, the National Legal and Policy Centre, a conservative nonprofit that monitors the ethics of liberal public officials, has confirmed it is ‘certainly looking’ at the progressive Congresswoman. 

Rose Lake Capital LLC was valued between $5m and $25m in 2024, according to the document, filed in May.

The venture capital management firm is headquartered in Washington, DC. Omar lists the asset as ‘partnership income’ on her form and claimed she doesn’t receive any income from Rose Lake.

However, in her 2023 report, released in May 2024, Rose Lake Capital is valued at between $1 and $1,000.

In the same report, the Somali-born socialist stated that another company, ESTCRU LLC, was worth between $15,001 and $50,000.

The firm is a winery in Santa Rosa, California. Its value is now listed between $1m and $5m, according to Omar’s recent disclosure.

Somali-Americans in Minnesota described their heightened fear following derogatory comments made by the US President, who said during a cabinet meeting earlier this month that Somalia ‘stinks’ and is ‘no good for a reason’.

‘They contribute nothing,’ Trump said, adding: ‘I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you.’

He hit out against Omar, calling the congresswoman an ‘incompetent person’.

‘Anyone who looks like me [is] scared right now,’ Jamal Osman, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, told CBS News.

‘My community is upset. Yes, people commit crimes, but an entire community should not be blamed based on what some individuals did.’

‘ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is already here,’ said Kowsar Mohamed, who lives in south Minneapolis.

‘We’re seeing boots on the ground activity where folks are just being plucked off of the streets and being asked about their residency status. That’s not a data informed approach.’

The Trump administration in recent months has latched onto news of the large-scale public benefit fraud scandal to carry out immigration raids and harsher policies targeting Minnesota‘s large Somali migrant community.

Republican elected officials and federal prosecutors have accused the local Democratic authorities of turning a blind eye to numerous warnings because the fraud involved Minnesota’s Somali community.

‘When whistleblowers raised concerns, they were told that they shouldn’t say anything out of fear of being called racist or Islamophobic, or because it was going to hurt political constituency of the governor and the ruling party, the Democrats here,’ state representative Kristin Robbins, a Republican who is running for governor, told AFP.

Democratic Governor Walz – former vice president Kamala Harris’s unsuccessful running mate in 2024 – rejects the accusation.

While the case became public in 2022, prosecutors ramped it up again this year with hotly politicised revelations.

Another Republican candidate for governor, state house speaker Lisa Demuth, told AFP the case is ‘finally getting the attention that it’s needed’ – especially following the viral video published by content creator Shirley. 

The video – which blew up on X with tens of millions of views and played repeatedly on Fox News – resonated with Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) circles, who are opposed to what they deem to be overly generous social and immigration policies.

The Trump administration responded to the outcry immediately, with DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin telling Fox News that hundreds of investigators were targeting local businesses in Minneapolis.

‘We believe that there is rampant fraud, whether it be daycare centres, health care centres, or other organisations,’ she said.

As part of the crackdown, federal health officials announced a broad freeze of funding to Minnesota and across the county.

‘We have frozen all child care payments to the state of Minnesota,’ Health and Human Services (HHS) deputy Jim O’Neill wrote in an X post Tuesday.

‘We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud.’ 

HHS has broad spending oversight for programmes for the underprivileged, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, early education of toddlers and foster care.

‘While we have questions about some of the methods used in the video, we do take the concerns that the video raises about fraud very seriously,’ said Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families commissioner Tikki Brown. 

Responding to the video, FBI Director Patel said his agency was aware of ‘recent social media reports’, and that investigations into fraud in Minnesota were ‘ongoing’ since the pandemic.

‘The FBI believes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. We will continue to follow the money and protect children, and this investigation very much remains ongoing,’ Patel wrote on X.

CBS, which conducted its own analysis of nearly a dozen daycare centres mentioned by Shirley, said it found no evidence of fraud when it reviewed public records for the facilities, although it did find citations related to safety, cleanliness, equipment, and staff training.

All but two of the centres mentioned in the video had active licenses and were all visited by state regulators in the last six months. 

Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer, a leading figure in the Republican majority of Congress, called for mass ‘denaturalisation and deportation of every Somali engaged in fraud in Minnesota,’ in an X post Monday.

President Trump preceded Emmer’s call with similar sentiments at the end of November, when a conservative outlet claimed money embezzled in Minnesota was being used to fund Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda linked Islamist militant group.

That accusation has since been denied by the prosecutor in the case.

But the US president was quick to accuse ‘Somali gangs’ of ‘terrorising’ Minnesotans and ended their Temporary Protected Status, a programme that exempted Somalis from deportation to their war-torn country.

A surge in immigration raids followed his comments, creating ‘a dangerous atmosphere of chaos and instability that is making it harder for our police officers to keep Minneapolis safe,’ mayor Jacob Frey said at the time.

Democratic lawmaker Zaynab Mohamed, whose family emigrated from Somalia when she was a child, decried the Trump administration’s actions.

‘Trump is scapegoating a tiny piece of the population,’ she said. ‘This is not about crime. It’s not about safety. This is about purging people like me from this country.’

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: The 40-person mob who hacked an 18-year-old to death in an explosion of Somalian gang violence