Minnesota’s rampant fraud involving taxpayer-funded day-care reportedly goes back at least as far as 2014 and allegedly involved scammers stuffing carry-on luggage with as much as $1 million a pop to smuggle out of the country.
Tens of millions of dollars in cash transported in luggage started flying out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport around a decade ago, with a marked uptick beginning in 2016 when travelers departed with a total of $84 million and another $100 million the next year, Fox 9 reported in 2018.
The troubling report has taken on explosive new significance since the feds alleged a mind-boggling up to $9 billion fraud scheme in which supposed businesses such as day cares lied about providing desperately needed services to the needy to illegally rake in millions off dollars in government funding.
Some of the airport suitcase dough — which was predominantly headed to the Middle East and Somalia — was suspected of coming from the Midwest state’s then-just-surfacing childcare fraud problem, the outlet reported at the time.
Air passengers are allowed to fly with as much as $1 million in a carry-on as long as they fill out the required paper work.
Surveillance footage from a related state fraud case and obtained by the outlet even showed parents arriving with their kids at one childcare facility — and leaving with them just moments later. In some cases, the parents didn’t even bother bringing their children.
Yet the center allegedly billed the state for full days of care for the kids who didn’t actually attend, supposedly giving a kickback to parents participating in its scheme.
Another video from the same criminal case showed a man handing out envelopes of cash as alleged kickbacks to some parents.
The North Star State started cracking down on such schemes in 2014 and as of 2018 had been looking into possible fraud by dozens of businesses suspected of receiving millions of dollars in government funds for bogus childcare services. At the time, they had active investigations open into 10 businesses.
“We believe that there’s a scope of fraud out there that we really need to get our arms around and ensure that those dollars are going to kids that really need them,” said Chuck Johnson, then the acting commissioner for the state’s Department of Human Services, to the outlet at the time.
Federal counterterrorism sources have said that millions of dollars in pilfered money has been sent to Somalia, ending up with al-Shabab, the al Qaeda-linked terror organization.
“The largest funder of al-Shabab is the Minnesota taxpayer,” a confidential source previously said.
It’s estimated that at least $300 million has been pilfered from the state’s food program Feeding Our Future, another $220 million from the state autism program and another $302 million from the Housing Stabilization Program, Fox 9 reported earlier this month.
Roughly 92 people have been criminally charged for allegedly running shady businesses and non-profits that received federal funding for social services they didn’t actually provide.
In addition to sending the ill-gotten gains oversees, the scammers also allegedly used the money to buy luxury cars such as Porsches and Mercedes, a costly honeymoon trip to the Maldives and even a suite at a Minnesota Timberwolves game.
To date, 57 people have been convicted in the crackdown.
https://nypost.com/2025/12/29/us-news/minn-s-day-care-fraud-reportedly-stretches-to-2014/
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