How the Minnesota Star Tribune analyzed alleged fraud totals in Minnesota

When President Donald Trump said Somalis in Minnesota had stolen “billions” of dollars in public funds, his claim raised some eyebrows among Star Tribune reporters and editors who have reported extensively about numerous fraud investigations over the years.

There’s no doubt that those schemes involved huge amounts of public money, but was it billions — with a b?

To answer that question we conducted our own accounting based on court records, criminal charges and convictions across dozens of cases that have dominated headlines in the state for years.

Our tally: $217.7 million to date. That number is likely to grow as fraud investigations continue, but it is currently far short of both Trump’s claim and the figures commonly cited by prosecutors and widely reported by some local and national media outlets.

Our calculation has been criticized by conservative activists, media outlets and others who’ve followed the cases. Here’s a closer look at how we got there.

First, we set some ground rules:

We first analyzed a database the Star Tribune built during the Feeding Our Future investigation that focused on a meals program overseen by Minnesota’s Department of Education. The database tracks every criminal case involving the theft of state and federal funds since the first Feeding Our Future indictment was issued in September 2022.

Next, we included $66 million from the meals program linked to two businesses sponsored by Partners in Nutrition, a nonprofit that has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing. The owners and operators of those companies — Empire Cuisine & Market and Haji’s Kitchen — were convicted on federal charges in 2024.

We also included fraud alleged in the most recent indictments involving two state programs that have experienced very rapid growth since they were launched. One aimed to provide housing for the homeless; another was supposed to provide support services for people with autism.

Eight people have been charged for misappropriating $10 million from the housing program. One person was charged for defrauding the Autism program of $14 million.

Widespread fraud fears prompted the state to shut down the 5-year-old homeless housing program in late October, prompting some critics to conclude the entire program is fraudulent. But even if you count every dollar spent on both the housing and autism programs in fiscal 2025, that would add $330 million to the fraud total — still far less than $1 billion.

The Star Tribune is not counting all of that money as fraud.

Joe Thompson, who served as acting U.S. Attorney between May and October, declined an interview request, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office issued a statement in response to the Star Tribune’s reporting. The office asked that the statement be printed in its entirety.

“This summer and fall, while serving as the Acting United States Attorney, Joseph H. Thompson made several statements, of increasing urgency, concerning the scope of the fraud in Minnesota and the coming iceberg he saw ahead,” the statement reads. “Mr. Thompson, a career prosecutor, has been leading the investigation of fraud against the government, including the Federal Child Nutrition Program fraud (itself more than $300 million in proven fraud loss), the EIDBI Autism fraud, the Housing Stabilization Services fraud, and fraud in other state Medicaid programs. To date, these prosecutions have resulted in 86 defendants charged and 59 convictions. These efforts have also helped identify another dozen programs for which the state of Minnesota has issued a payment suspension due to rampant fraud and abuse. Mr. Thompson predicted that when the ongoing fraud prosecutions are finished, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will have prosecuted a billion dollars in fraud against the government. Mr. Thompson further explained that he believes that the true scope of the fraud will run into the billions of dollars. The office fully stands by these comments. They are accurate and, if anything, understated.”

In a prior interview, Thompson acknowledged it’s a herculean task to gather enough evidence to prosecute every suspected fraud case. It took four years and a major commitment of resources to bring the current crop of cases.

Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at the University of St. Thomas, said prosecutors will likely argue the highest figure possible to obtain the stiffest penalty for Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock.

“The sentence and the amount of restitution will be tied to the amount of loss,” said Osler, an expert in criminal procedure. “They’ll have the opportunity to prove that higher number out if they’ve got it. But that hasn’t happened so far ... It seems like it would be a hard pull.”