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The story of the massive fraud in the Somali community in Minnesota just keeps getting more shocking. CBS News reported Thursday that that “a series of multimillion-dollar alleged fraud schemes in Minnesota has drawn the Trump administration’s attention,” to the degree that President Donald Trump has termed Minnesota a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.” Trump has also harshly criticized Minnesota’s Somali community, in which the fraud has been going on, and with good reason.
First, there was what federal prosecutors called the “largest pandemic fraud in the United States,” a $250 million scheme that “revolved around a nonprofit group called Feeding Our Future that partnered with the Minnesota Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture to distribute meals to children.” It seems that during the COVID hysteria, Feeding Our Future and some of its accomplices “submitted fake meal count sheets and invoices to trick state and federal officials into thinking they had helped serve food to thousands of children. The group allegedly raked in millions in administrative fees for the fake meal distributions, and got kickbacks from people who ran their distribution sites.”
The Somali community was deeply involved in all this. The New York Times reported last week that “the fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness… Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.”
When challenged, the Somalis showed how well they had adapted to the realities of twenty-first-century American society: they played the race card. CBS noted that “state officials felt they needed to handle Feeding Our Future carefully because the group had responded to a 2020 slowdown in food site approvals by accusing the Minnesota Department of Education of racial discrimination and of depriving needy children of food. In the Feeding Our Future’s lawsuit against the state, it noted that it ‘caters to members of a protected group of racial minorities and foreign nationals.’”
The race card worked: “The threat of legal consequences and negative media attention affected MDE’s decisions about the regulatory actions it did and did not take against Feeding Our Future.”
And that wasn’t even close to all. “In August,” CBS reported, “state officials shut down a fairly new program designed to help seniors and people with disabilities find housing after discovering ‘large-scale fraud.’” Then “in late September, a person was charged with defrauding a third state program — in this case, one that provides services to children with autism. Her company was accused of hiring unqualified ‘behavioral technicians’ and submitting false claims to the state that indicated the staff had worked with children enrolled in the program. She also allegedly paid kickbacks to parents who agreed to enroll their children in the program, in some cases sending them as much as $1,500.” That person was a Somali, Asha Farhan Hassan, as were most of the others involved in these schemes.
A federal prosecutor notes that “from Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money.”
Nor is the Minnesota fraud an isolated incident. Toronto Crime Watch reported Thursday that “the Toronto Police Service Financial Crimes Unit has announced two additional arrests connected to a long-running synthetic-identity fraud and money-laundering scheme. Between 2017 and 2023, the accused took part in a synthetic-identity fraud operation. They allegedly secured fraudulent mortgages on residential properties across the GTA, helping to launder proceeds tied to the scheme.” The two men who were arrested were Misbah Akram, 55, and Muhammad Akram, 59, both of Brampton.
Is the Muslim identity of all these fraudsters just a coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not. Non-Muslims paying for the upkeep of Muslims is a Qur’anic dictate: “Fight against those do not believe in Allah or the last day, and do not forbid what Allah and his messenger have forbidden, and do not follow the religion of truth, even if they are among the people of the book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” (Qur’an 9:29)
The caliph Umar said the jizya payments from the dhimmis were the source of the Muslims’ livelihood: “Narrated Juwairiya bin Qudama at-Tamimi: We said to `Umar bin Al-Khattab, ‘O Chief of the believers! Advise us.’ He said, ‘I advise you to fulfill Allah’s Convention (made with the Dhimmis) as it is the convention of your Prophet and the source of the livelihood of your dependents (i.e. the taxes from the Dhimmis.)’” (Bukhari 4.53.388)
UK jihad preacher Anjem Choudary said in February 2013: “We are on Jihad Seekers Allowance, We take the Jizya (protection money paid to Muslims by non-Muslims) which is ours anyway. The normal situation is to take money from the Kafir (non-Muslim), isn’t it? So this is normal situation. They give us the money. You work, give us the money. Allah Akbar, we take the money. Hopefully there is no one from the DSS (Department of Social Security) listening. Ah, but you see people will say you are not working. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the Kuffar (non-Muslim). So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.”
In the absence of the formal payment of the jizya, some Muslims believe themselves entitled to take the infidels’ money. After all, non-Muslims giving Muslims money is the natural order of things. Could that be one of the perpetrators’ justifications among themselves for all this fraud? Whether it is or isn’t, one thing is certain: investigators won’t even dare to try to find out.
