This is what betrayal looks like when you are the one paying the bill.
For years, U.S. taxpayers, low-income families, seniors, and people with disabilities trusted that government aid meant to help the most vulnerable would actually reach them. Instead, that trust has been shattered by what federal prosecutors now say could be a $9 billion fraud disaster — one of the largest public-aid scams in Minnesota history.
According to investigators, dozens of individuals tied to Minnesota’s day-care and social-services sector — described by authorities as convicted or accused Somali scammers — allegedly siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars meant for the needy. Fake or barely operating day-care centers allegedly billed the state for services never provided, while Medicaid-funded disability and housing programs were reportedly looted as well.
In viral videos that enraged victims nationwide, supposed child-care centers appeared empty, even as records showed they had received millions in taxpayer funds. One center reportedly collected $4 million despite displaying a misspelled sign — a glaring symbol, for victims, of how casually public money was allegedly stolen.
Now, as this scandal continues to unfold, Abdi Daisane — a Somali-born day-care owner and Democratic–Farmer–Labor candidate — has announced he is once again running for the Minnesota state legislature in 2026. While Daisane is not accused in the fraud, his timing has sparked anger and frustration among victims who say the system failed them.
Daisane opened Blooming Kids Child Center in St. Cloud in 2018, citing a need for affordable early-childhood education. Yet state records show the center was repeatedly cited by the Minnesota Department of Human Services for violations since 2021, including staffing shortages, missing medical documentation for children, inadequate worker qualifications, and poorly maintained equipment. Though all violations were later corrected, victims say these failures reflect broader systemic neglect that allowed abuse of public funds to flourish.
Daisane has accepted responsibility for those violations, arguing that low pay and lack of benefits make staffing nearly impossible — a claim that rings hollow for families who depended on the very programs now revealed to be riddled with fraud.
Federal officials say the damage goes far beyond paperwork violations. FBI Director Kash Patel warned that the alleged crimes are “just the tip of a very large iceberg,” vowing to pursue deportation of convicted scammers and anyone illegally present who helped steal from American aid programs.
Prosecutors say the schemes date back more than a decade, beginning with overbilling Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program and expanding into Medicaid disability and housing fraud — money that should have helped the poor, the elderly, and the disabled, but instead vanished into alleged criminal networks.
For the victims — taxpayers, families in need, and the vulnerable Americans these programs were created to protect — the anger is not political. It is personal. Every stolen dollar meant fewer services, longer waitlists, and broken promises from a system they were told to trust.