DOJ Calls Minnesota ‘the Epicenter for Fraud in America’ as $29 Million More in Alleged Schemes Surfaces

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on November 2, 2026

“Minnesota is the epicenter for fraud in America.” That is not a talk-radio line. It is the Justice Department’s own words, from Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, in a release dated Oct. 30.

The headline number: about $29.1 million in fraud uncovered in newly charged Medicaid and SNAP cases. Counting convictions and sentences, DOJ says 13 defendants have been charged, convicted or sentenced since Sept. 30 in schemes with nearly $83 million in intended losses. TNT covered the St. Cloud arrests on Sunday. Today, a closer look at what the release shows about how the money was taken, and who was supposed to be watching.

How the money went out the door

The cases are allegations unless a jury or plea says otherwise. But the methods DOJ describes are strikingly simple.

In Minnesota’s EIDBI autism therapy program, DOJ alleges one provider billed for services “purportedly provided by employees while they were traveling and located outside of the United States,” and that “almost every claim was billed at the same amount regardless of the service provided.” In a home-care case, prosecutors allege billing for services to recipients “while they were traveling” and while providers “were actually working other jobs.” In another, DOJ says the defendant used “Super Intelligence to create fake patient notes to justify his claims.”

A licensed social worker in Arizona is charged with signing on as the required supervising professional for autism providers without doing the supervision, letting claims through in a $7.7 million scheme. One woman is charged with paying kickbacks to parents of Medicaid recipients so she could bill for their children.

Off the Medicaid rolls, a tobacco shop manager from Blaine is charged with trafficking SNAP benefits for cash after a USDA and Homeland Security operation called “Operation Cold SNAP.”

Not one scheme. Many. Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Oct. 30, 2026. Charges are allegations. (TNT graphic)

The ones already decided

Some of this is no longer alleged. A county worker and her husband pleaded guilty to taking at least 14 vehicles from the estates of dead Medicaid recipients, about $144,524, while pressuring grieving families, DOJ says. A Savage woman was convicted Oct. 21 of claiming 500 meals a day from a hallway café in a clinic. And after a jury trial in the Feeding Our Future case, someone left $200,000 in cash at a juror’s home with a promise of more for an acquittal. The juror called police. One of the men behind it got 78 months.

Who was watching?

Gov. Tim Walz’s office said the federal event in St. Cloud “offered no new information and amounted to a political spectacle,” MPR reported. But the state’s own auditor got there first. In June 2024, Minnesota’s nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor concluded: “MDE’s inadequate oversight of Feeding Our Future created opportunities for fraud.” It found the Education Department received at least 30 complaints about the group between 2018 and 2021, “inappropriately asked Feeding Our Future to investigate complaints about itself,” and never followed up on a 2018 review with “serious findings.” The department disputed the auditor’s characterization.

Walz has run that executive branch since 2019. In January he dropped his re-election bid, saying he would focus on fighting fraud.

Warnings, then prosecutions. Sources: Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor; NBC News; U.S. Department of Justice. (TNT graphic)

TNT’s view

The following is opinion. Every dollar in these cases was a taxpayer dollar meant for a disabled child, a hungry kid or a family on food aid. Billing for therapy while staff are abroad, or for meals no one ate, does not take a criminal genius. It takes a payer that does not check. Prosecutors can only arrive after the money is gone; preventing the loss was the state’s job. Credit to the investigators. But the real fix is a state government that verifies before it pays, and voters are entitled to ask why that did not happen.

All defendants charged but not convicted are presumed innocent.

TNT Staff