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MUST SHARE: Kenyans Told "Venture West to Minnesota & Fleece Taxpayers w Fraud" · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: From an owner's cell phone when I was showing a
0:02
Speaker 1: text conversation between the owner of the center and a friend.
0:06
Speaker 1: The friend had asked the owner, how much longer are
0:09
Speaker 1: you going to do the daycare scam? The owner replied
0:12
Speaker 1: another year or two. I'm going to buy some nice
0:14
Speaker 1: homes of nairobiees.
0:15
Speaker 2: You're listening to the forty seven Morning Update with Ben ferguson.
0:19
Speaker 3: Good Thursday morning.
0:20
Speaker 4: Nice to have you with us on the forty seven
0:22
Speaker 4: Morning Update, and we've got a bombshell for you. Governor
0:26
Speaker 4: Tim Wall to Minnesota a no show at the Minnesota
0:30
Speaker 4: House Oversight hearing, but those that were testifying they had
0:34
Speaker 4: a lot to say, and you'll understand exactly why Governor
0:37
Speaker 4: Waltz went in hid making sure he was nowhere close
0:41
Speaker 4: to their testimony.
0:42
Speaker 3: We have it all for you in an extended version,
0:46
Speaker 3: but before.
0:46
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Speaker 4: forty seven Morning Update and it starts.
2:20
Speaker 3: Right now, story number one.
2:22
Speaker 4: All right, we've got some really interesting, I would actually
2:25
Speaker 4: say stunning developments coming out of Minnesota when it comes
2:29
Speaker 4: to former vice presidential candidate Governor Tim Waltz. Now he's
2:33
Speaker 4: already said he's not going to run for reelection because
2:36
Speaker 4: of the massive Somali fraud in his state. But now
2:39
Speaker 4: what we're witnessing is something that's even more shocking than that. Now,
2:42
Speaker 4: Governor Wall said he was going to show up and
2:45
Speaker 4: he was going to be at this key Minnesota House
2:50
Speaker 4: oversight hearing that was investigating fraud that's been tied to
2:53
Speaker 4: all the taxpayer funded childcare programs. In a stunning turn
2:58
Speaker 4: of events, he was a no sho. Now this is
3:01
Speaker 4: hours after he took credit for the FBI rating the
3:07
Speaker 4: Leering Center in twenty other different learning centers quote unquote,
3:12
Speaker 4: and he acted like he was a part of it.
3:14
Speaker 4: In fact, even on x he put out this tweet
3:17
Speaker 4: yesterday that said, quote, if you commit fraud in Minnesota,
3:21
Speaker 4: You're going to get caught. And that's exactly what we
3:23
Speaker 4: saw today. We catch criminals when state and federal agencies
3:27
Speaker 4: share information, joint investigations work and securing justice depends on it. Now,
3:34
Speaker 4: that is like a complete opposite of what actually happened
3:37
Speaker 4: with Governor Waltz.
3:38
Speaker 3: There's the reason why he's not running for reelection.
3:40
Speaker 4: It's because everything in that tweet that, by the way,
3:42
Speaker 4: I support, was not happening while he was in charge.
3:45
Speaker 4: So not only does Governor Waltz try to like rewrite
3:48
Speaker 4: history and take credit for the FBI raids in Minnesota,
3:51
Speaker 4: but Caspttel, the FBI director, actually threw down on this.
3:55
Speaker 4: He wrote this in response, quote this, FBI and d
3:59
Speaker 4: O Jay executed every warrant. Go ahead and take credit
4:04
Speaker 4: while we clean up the mess under your watch. Now,
4:08
Speaker 4: I want you to hear what Fox News had to
4:11
Speaker 4: say about this, as again, not only is the governor
4:13
Speaker 4: acting like he's cleaning up the city, but then he
4:16
Speaker 4: immediately knows shows for the committee hearing about cleaning up Minneapolis,
4:20
Speaker 4: Saint Paul and the entire state, You're.
4:23
Speaker 5: Gonna get caught.
4:24
Speaker 6: And that's exactly what we saw today.
4:26
Speaker 5: We catch we catch.
4:29
Speaker 6: Criminals when state and federal agencies share information, joined investigation
4:33
Speaker 6: work and secure in justice depends on it. They didn't
4:36
Speaker 6: do anything, No agents know nothing. It was the federal
4:41
Speaker 6: government and by the way Hasley, they criticized them when
4:45
Speaker 6: they were on the ground in Minnesota doing this exact work.
4:49
Speaker 7: I know in Cash Patel, who is the FBI director
4:51
Speaker 7: federal agent, he wrote, come again. Just FBI and d
4:56
Speaker 7: OJ with our DHS partners, drafted and executed every search
5:00
Speaker 7: warrant today. But go ahead and take credit for our
5:03
Speaker 7: work while we smoke out the fraud plaguing Minnesota under
5:08
Speaker 7: your governorship.
5:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty two separate locations were rated.
5:13
Speaker 8: They're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, most of
5:17
Speaker 8: them with Somali run businesses.
5:19
Speaker 5: Here's the governor last.
5:20
Speaker 8: Night promised you that I would devote my energies to
5:23
Speaker 8: fighting fraud in our state's human resources program. I've said
5:26
Speaker 8: the buck stops with me, and as I know, some
5:29
Speaker 8: of you will take that as an open invitation to
5:31
Speaker 8: play politics with every incident of fraud that takes place
5:33
Speaker 8: here in Minnesota, even though I have to tell you
5:35
Speaker 8: a statistics show it's happening in red states more than here.
5:38
Speaker 8: My ask for you tonight is simple. If you're taking
5:41
Speaker 8: fraud seriously, take your responsibility seriously, and pass legislation to
5:46
Speaker 8: stop it.
5:46
Speaker 3: If you talk.
5:47
Speaker 8: About oversight vote for that oversight in the bills that
5:50
Speaker 8: are working their way through the change.
5:53
Speaker 4: Now, by the way, I want to be clear, I
5:55
Speaker 4: can get behind that governor with most of what he said,
5:58
Speaker 4: and he got a standing out vation for what he
6:00
Speaker 4: said there, So why not actually show up for the
6:04
Speaker 4: actual meeting that deals with exactly what he says?
6:07
Speaker 3: Is so important?
6:08
Speaker 4: And so it's a simple question where is the accountability
6:12
Speaker 4: because instead of facing lawmakers in the public, the governor's
6:15
Speaker 4: absence is only adding fuel to an already growing controversy
6:21
Speaker 4: over oversight failures, which the government's office supposed to be
6:23
Speaker 4: involved in whistle blower claims, and whether state leadership turned
6:27
Speaker 4: a deliberate and purposeful blind eye. I believe they did
6:31
Speaker 4: to because they were getting kickbacks on the massive fraud
6:34
Speaker 4: that was unfolding right under their watch. That also includes
6:38
Speaker 4: the governor. Now I play that for you to go
6:41
Speaker 4: to what actually happened. Okay, And this is really interesting
6:46
Speaker 4: because Governor Waltz is a no show. His administration is
6:50
Speaker 4: actively combating fraud they claim that I think is not happening.
6:55
Speaker 4: He also notably declined to testify on the same day
6:59
Speaker 4: that THEI rated nearly two dozen facilities in Minneapolis, including daycares,
7:04
Speaker 4: and suspectives stealing federal public assistance fund. So that's the
7:08
Speaker 4: lay of the land here now. Lawmakers on the Minnesota
7:12
Speaker 4: House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee noted
7:17
Speaker 4: that they reached out to Waltz more than a month ago,
7:21
Speaker 4: followed up multiple times, and that he had his picks
7:25
Speaker 4: of dates to choose from to come before their committee,
7:29
Speaker 4: and guess what, he's a no show. Now we are
7:32
Speaker 4: also learning why. And I want you to listen to
7:36
Speaker 4: one testimony here. This is a testimony from a whistleblower,
7:42
Speaker 4: and they are explaining how bad the fraud and corruption is,
7:47
Speaker 4: how long it's been going on. Now, this is what
7:51
Speaker 4: the media should be leading with on every show in
7:53
Speaker 4: this country. They're not going to play for you this whistleblower.
7:57
Speaker 4: And I want you to please share this. Okay, this
7:59
Speaker 4: is literally why I do this show and why I
8:02
Speaker 4: do the podcast. Without you guys putting it out there
8:07
Speaker 4: and sharing this, people will not see it.
8:09
Speaker 3: So take a moment.
8:11
Speaker 4: Share the podcast wherever you can on social media so
8:14
Speaker 4: people hear this. I want you to listen to a patriot.
8:19
Speaker 4: This is a thirty plus year three decades of his life.
8:23
Speaker 4: He is given to law enforcement in Minnesota, a man
8:26
Speaker 4: that was overseeing some of the fraud that was taking
8:30
Speaker 4: place in Minnesota. And what this patriot at this incredible
8:35
Speaker 4: hearing for the Minnesota House Oversight hearing where Governor ten
8:40
Speaker 4: Waltz refused to show up a no show, This brave
8:44
Speaker 4: man tells the world exactly how bad it is in Minnesota.
8:50
Speaker 1: In my opening remarks, I'm not going to use the
8:52
Speaker 1: names of individuals involved in the events I will describe.
8:56
Speaker 1: I'm not here in a vendetta. My goal is to
8:58
Speaker 1: help you understand how has happened. I did provide the
9:02
Speaker 1: names to the Legislative Auditor when I was interviewed in
9:05
Speaker 1: the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen timeframe. You should also know
9:10
Speaker 1: that a few of the senior level DHS officials who
9:13
Speaker 1: harassed and abused our unit for committing the sin of
9:17
Speaker 1: trying to expose a huge amount of fraud in the
9:20
Speaker 1: SEACAP program are still working at DHS today. From twenty
9:25
Speaker 1: fourteen to early twenty seventeen, our unit received tremendous support
9:30
Speaker 1: from the original Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General. These folks,
9:35
Speaker 1: along with the great staff at the DHS Childcare Licensing
9:39
Speaker 1: Unit were the first ones to discover very strange and
9:43
Speaker 1: unusual activity at certain Minnesota childcare centers, as well as
9:48
Speaker 1: suspicious behavior by their owners. This led them to believe
9:52
Speaker 1: that significant SEACAP fraud may be taking place. The DHS
9:57
Speaker 1: Childcare Licensing staff spent a great deal of time i
10:00
Speaker 1: am after we were hired, teaching us what would be
10:03
Speaker 1: normal activity at a childcare center and what would be
10:06
Speaker 1: at normal or suspicious. Just so you're aware, our investigators
10:12
Speaker 1: were all retired police officers. They averaged twenty years of experience,
10:17
Speaker 1: with extensive experience investigating everything from fraud to narcotics, trafficking
10:22
Speaker 1: to homicide. These were veteran cops, but they knew nothing
10:26
Speaker 1: about childcare centers. But the DHS licensing folks took care
10:29
Speaker 1: of us. From the beginning, our unit began receiving information, tips,
10:35
Speaker 1: or complaints from a wide variety of sources that we
10:38
Speaker 1: believed were likely indicators of fraud. As an example, one day,
10:43
Speaker 1: we received a call from a SEACAP mother who called
10:46
Speaker 1: to complain that her childcare center owner had stopped paying
10:50
Speaker 1: her the monthly cash kickback they had agreed upon. Another day,
10:55
Speaker 1: a former co owner of a center called to say
10:58
Speaker 1: that he had been cheated out of his share of
11:01
Speaker 1: the fraud proceeds. Yet another day, a fire department called
11:05
Speaker 1: asking if a childcare center was still operating.
11:08
Speaker 4: Let me just pause, and I want you to think
11:10
Speaker 4: about this call center. These are people that are calling
11:14
Speaker 4: in and they're like, where's my stuff, where's my kickback,
11:18
Speaker 4: where's my cut? This is normal business that's being described.
11:24
Speaker 4: And this has been happening again as he's describing it,
11:26
Speaker 4: for years and years and years and years. And there
11:28
Speaker 4: were people that were telling them this was happening. And
11:31
Speaker 4: what are the Democrats in Minnesota and the governor do
11:33
Speaker 4: they look the other way?
11:34
Speaker 3: Why? Because they were part of the scheme.
11:37
Speaker 4: They were getting political kickbacks to deliberately and purposely look
11:41
Speaker 4: the other way, which is exactly why Governor Waltz was
11:44
Speaker 4: a no show at the Minnesota House Oversight hearing on Tuesday.
11:48
Speaker 4: You can say all you want to what he said earlier,
11:51
Speaker 4: which I played for you in front of the of
11:54
Speaker 4: the of the the you know, the House, Senate.
11:56
Speaker 3: The State House.
11:57
Speaker 4: There you can say, I just so legilation you were
12:02
Speaker 4: involved in this corruption. You weren't ignorant of it. You
12:06
Speaker 4: knew it was happening. There were people telling you it
12:09
Speaker 4: was happening. This man in law enforcement was telling you
12:11
Speaker 4: it was happening, and you guys did nothing to stop.
12:14
Speaker 1: It because they had been trying to conduct a fire
12:17
Speaker 1: safety inspection and had made multiple trips there on different
12:22
Speaker 1: days at different times, but there were never any children
12:26
Speaker 1: or staff at the center. I checked and found that
12:29
Speaker 1: in the last twelve months, we had paid the center
12:31
Speaker 1: approximately one million dollars and that they were billing for
12:34
Speaker 1: the care of approximately ninety children at a time during
12:38
Speaker 1: two shifts from six am to ten pm, seven days
12:42
Speaker 1: a week. I wish I could tell you that these
12:44
Speaker 1: types of incidents were rare, but they weren't.
12:47
Speaker 5: This is what our.
12:48
Speaker 1: Team dealt with on a weekly basis. Once our unit
12:52
Speaker 1: received information we believed was an indicator of seacamp fraud,
12:56
Speaker 1: we would prioritize these tips, primarily based on the amount
12:59
Speaker 1: of seak kept funding the center received. Frankly, we were
13:03
Speaker 1: so inundated with tips on centers receiving seven hundred thousand
13:08
Speaker 1: to over a million dollars that we didn't have time
13:11
Speaker 1: to focus on centers receiving less funding.
13:14
Speaker 4: Did you hear that they had so many tips, so
13:19
Speaker 4: many tips that were coming in of major, massive fraud
13:23
Speaker 4: that if you were under seven hundred thousand, Like yeah, like,
13:25
Speaker 4: we can't there's nothing we can do like that. I mean,
13:28
Speaker 4: we're doing the best we can. We don't have enough
13:31
Speaker 4: manpower to stop this type of fraud. By the way,
13:33
Speaker 4: I don't know what this guy makes, but let's just
13:35
Speaker 4: say it's under one hundred grand. You're telling me that
13:37
Speaker 4: you can't spend one hundred grand to stop millions in fraud.
13:43
Speaker 3: You understand my point here right?
13:45
Speaker 8: Like?
13:45
Speaker 4: This is insanity and they're explaining it because this is
13:48
Speaker 4: how bad it actually got and it had been this
13:53
Speaker 4: way for years, and no one in the Democratic Party
13:58
Speaker 4: did anything to stop it. They said, double go down,
14:00
Speaker 4: keep going, look the other way, and just give us
14:02
Speaker 4: our kickbacks, the same kickbacks they're getting phone calls Anywhere's
14:06
Speaker 4: my payment.
14:07
Speaker 1: Cases were assigned to investigators who would then conduct research
14:10
Speaker 1: on the center and owner, and would then initiate physical
14:14
Speaker 1: and electronic surveillance of the center. The surveillance would determine
14:18
Speaker 1: how many adults and children enter the center and the
14:21
Speaker 1: times that they did so This would later be compared
14:25
Speaker 1: with building records the center submitted for seacamp payment. If
14:29
Speaker 1: the investigation to this point indicated significant fraud, the information
14:34
Speaker 1: was shared with the BCA agent, who then continued the investigation.
14:38
Speaker 1: If warranted, the agent would eventually obtain a search warrant
14:41
Speaker 1: for the center, at which time computers and phones belonging
14:44
Speaker 1: to the owner and business were seized. At the time
14:48
Speaker 1: of the search warrant, we ordered all payments to the
14:51
Speaker 1: center to be stopped. The DHS Forensics Lab would then
14:55
Speaker 1: perform forensic examinations on the electronic devices. Exams often resulted
15:01
Speaker 1: in US obtaining our most powerful evidence against those committing fraud.
15:07
Speaker 5: Here are a few of the examples of the evidence.
15:10
Speaker 1: I was shown over the years by lab supervisor and
15:13
Speaker 1: staff from an owner's cell phone. I was showing a
15:16
Speaker 1: text conversation between the owner of the center and a friend.
15:22
Speaker 1: The friend had asked the owner, how much longer are
15:25
Speaker 1: you going to do the daycare scam? The owner replied,
15:29
Speaker 1: another year or two, I'm going to buy some nice
15:32
Speaker 1: homes in Nairobi.
15:34
Speaker 4: Another year or two, I'm going to buy some nice
15:37
Speaker 4: homes in Nairobi. They were clearly hoping that Kamala was
15:42
Speaker 4: going to win, right because then this would still be
15:44
Speaker 4: happening right now. The only reason why these people are
15:46
Speaker 4: not getting paid right now is because we have Donald
15:49
Speaker 4: Trump as President of the United States of America.
15:52
Speaker 3: That is it.
15:54
Speaker 4: If anybody else is in office, we still wouldn't know
15:57
Speaker 4: about the leering Center, in my opinion, and even if
15:59
Speaker 4: we did, they wouldn't do anything about it. Like they
16:02
Speaker 4: wouldn't do anything about it. This is the tip of
16:05
Speaker 4: the iceberg. By the way, keep listening to what he says.
16:08
Speaker 1: The owner was on public assistance at this time. They
16:12
Speaker 1: happened to be on vacation in Dubai when this text
16:16
Speaker 1: conversation took place.
16:17
Speaker 4: So you've got really really rich people on government aid
16:23
Speaker 4: who are and this goes back to burgrawlings yesterday And
16:27
Speaker 4: if you miss that, go back and listen to yesterday's show,
16:29
Speaker 4: because yesterday's show we talked about some of the fraud
16:33
Speaker 4: here of the number of people on government aid that
16:35
Speaker 4: were driving Lamborghini's and Ferraris and Bentlead's and Maserati's like
16:42
Speaker 4: this is. They came in and they knew that they
16:45
Speaker 4: could commit massive fraud at a massive level and that
16:50
Speaker 4: no one was going to stop them, and they could
16:52
Speaker 4: then get government aid and benefits as well.
16:55
Speaker 3: It gets worse, keep listening.
16:58
Speaker 1: Up to this point, which was early twenty seventeen, In
17:01
Speaker 1: the roughly two and a half years of our existence,
17:04
Speaker 1: our unit had directed seacamp payments to be stopped to
17:07
Speaker 1: eleven chaldcare centers that we could prove had fraudulently built dhs.
17:13
Speaker 1: These stop payment orders always resulted in the immediate closure
17:17
Speaker 1: of the center because the centers we investigated never had
17:20
Speaker 1: any private paying clients, only publicly funded seacamp clients.
17:25
Speaker 4: Okay, so here's your fraud. If these are all fake
17:29
Speaker 4: centers right with with no real people that they're helping.
17:35
Speaker 4: As soon as the government dollars has peered, the centers
17:37
Speaker 4: would immediately close. Why because the government dollars was a
17:42
Speaker 4: scheme and there wasn't even kids tied to the scheme
17:44
Speaker 4: that would show up and actually do anything. We also
17:47
Speaker 4: learned that right the Leering Center is a great example
17:49
Speaker 4: of this. Many of these centers were just were they
17:52
Speaker 4: were paper shops. They were fictitious, right It like it's
17:55
Speaker 4: like having a business at a po box. It doesn't
17:57
Speaker 4: you know, it doesn't exists. That's why you'd have so
18:00
Speaker 4: many of these learning centers in these areas and no
18:04
Speaker 4: kids present, no playgrounds, nothing that screams kids. And when
18:08
Speaker 4: you go there and try to enroll a kid, they're like,
18:10
Speaker 4: we don't do that, right, Like we're full, we don't
18:12
Speaker 4: need you, we don't want you, like because it wasn't
18:14
Speaker 4: about the kids, it was about committing a fraud. They
18:17
Speaker 4: didn't even try to like have normal kids by the way,
18:22
Speaker 4: all right, like some kids in here and then have
18:26
Speaker 4: fraud running through it with like fifty percent missing. They
18:29
Speaker 4: didn't even try to do that, folks. Okay, Like there
18:34
Speaker 4: was zero kids that were in there, zero And that
18:37
Speaker 4: is the point of this fraud where you know how
18:39
Speaker 4: deliberate it actually was.
18:41
Speaker 3: Keep listening.
18:43
Speaker 1: Additionally, five cases had resulted in felony convictions for fraud
18:48
Speaker 1: related crimes. I rarely joined with various investigators and agents
18:53
Speaker 1: as we interviewed the owners and employees of the childcare
18:57
Speaker 1: centers being investigated. More than once I heard an owner
19:01
Speaker 1: or employee respond when we asked where they first learned
19:05
Speaker 1: about the daycare scam. They would say they had first
19:10
Speaker 1: heard about it while in the refugee camp in Kenya.
19:13
Speaker 5: These individuals told us.
19:16
Speaker 3: I want you to just understand.
19:18
Speaker 4: They found out about the scheme in a refugee camp
19:21
Speaker 4: in Kenya, that this fraud is now like that's it's
19:25
Speaker 4: worldwide fraud.
19:25
Speaker 3: Folks.
19:26
Speaker 4: They're like, yeah, yeah, go to America, do this, You'll
19:28
Speaker 4: make a lot of money. So they're in a refugee camp.
19:31
Speaker 4: They then fight, we got to get to America, right,
19:33
Speaker 4: we got to get there as fast as we can
19:35
Speaker 4: to get our hands on some of this money, because
19:37
Speaker 4: it's a lot of money. And you set it up
19:39
Speaker 4: and they'll give you food, sam to have a better
19:40
Speaker 4: way of life, and you'll get all this government eight
19:42
Speaker 4: and then you can drive Ferrari or Lamborghini or Bentley
19:44
Speaker 4: or Maserati into fraud the US government and you don't
19:47
Speaker 4: care because it's not really your government because you're from Nairobi,
19:50
Speaker 4: you're from Kenya. You care if you if you're sucking
19:54
Speaker 4: the life out of the United States America. No, as
19:56
Speaker 4: long as you're the one that is the bug that
19:59
Speaker 4: is sucked the life out of this country.
20:01
Speaker 3: You're the mosquito that they had heard.
20:03
Speaker 1: You could run the scam in a number of different states,
20:08
Speaker 1: but it was easiest and you could make the most
20:10
Speaker 1: money doing.
20:11
Speaker 5: It in Minnesota.
20:13
Speaker 1: Additionally, at about this same time, the DHS investigators and
20:17
Speaker 1: BCA agents initiated an investigation of another childcare center and
20:22
Speaker 1: found a high amount of billing fraud. Federal agents from
20:26
Speaker 1: the FBI, the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit, and agents from
20:31
Speaker 1: the US Health and Human Services Office Inspector General were
20:35
Speaker 1: invited to join in the investigation due to some of
20:38
Speaker 1: the unusual activity and.
20:40
Speaker 5: Suspected crimes that we believe we saw.
20:44
Speaker 1: This investigation resulted in the federal indictment in twenty seventeen
20:48
Speaker 1: of the owner of Salama Childcare Center. That owner eventually
20:52
Speaker 1: played guilty and was sentenced in twenty eighteen to two
20:56
Speaker 1: years in prison and was ordered to pay restitution of
20:59
Speaker 1: order one point four million dollars. The Salama Childcare Center
21:03
Speaker 1: was located at fourteen eleven Nikola Avenue in Minneapolis. That
21:08
Speaker 1: address might ring a bell for some of you because
21:11
Speaker 1: of a YouTube video taken last December at the Quality
21:16
Speaker 1: Leering Center, which was being operated at the same dress.
21:21
Speaker 4: Okay, so what he's describing to you as multiple people
21:25
Speaker 4: that had already been brought down who then the other
21:29
Speaker 4: people would just keep using the same address.
21:32
Speaker 3: How hard is it to figure that out? Now?
21:34
Speaker 4: Luckily the federal government, the FEDS are rating these places.
21:37
Speaker 4: The FBI is rating this address. But you notice like
21:40
Speaker 4: the smile, he's like, no, no, we just use the same thing, Like, yeah,
21:43
Speaker 4: they got one, who cares, we set up another one.
21:44
Speaker 4: They're not gonna they're not gonna shut all of them down, right, Like,
21:48
Speaker 4: they're not going to shut every single one of them down,
21:50
Speaker 4: So we don't have to worry about that. We can
21:53
Speaker 4: we can just open up a quality leering center and
21:57
Speaker 4: that'll work because they're never going to stop us. There's
22:02
Speaker 4: too many of us, there's too many somalis here, there's
22:05
Speaker 4: too much fraud that we want to commit. And so
22:08
Speaker 4: we're just going to keep our head down and rock
22:10
Speaker 4: and roll with us saying and no one is going
22:13
Speaker 4: to stop us.
22:14
Speaker 3: I'll say it again.
22:16
Speaker 4: Keep listening, no one is covering this, and share this
22:20
Speaker 4: everywhere you can on social media.
22:23
Speaker 1: By mid twenty eighteen, our cases had generated some publicity,
22:27
Speaker 1: and the legislature then directed the Office of Legislative Auditor
22:32
Speaker 1: to conduct a special review of the SEACAP program. In
22:35
Speaker 1: August of twenty eighteen, as I was preparing answers to
22:38
Speaker 1: questions posed to me by the OILA.
22:41
Speaker 5: In an email, I.
22:42
Speaker 1: Was told by a DHS official to submit my answers
22:45
Speaker 1: to them instead of sending them directly to the OILA.
22:50
Speaker 1: When I forwarded my answer regarding what fraud trends we
22:53
Speaker 1: were seeing in SEACAP as I had been directed, I
22:57
Speaker 1: soon had a senior DHS official in my office. Angry,
23:01
Speaker 1: red faced, and almost yelling. The senior DHS official told
23:05
Speaker 1: me to delete a number of paragraphs of the document
23:08
Speaker 1: that I had sent. I then advised this official that
23:12
Speaker 1: I believed what they were telling me to do was illegal.
23:15
Speaker 1: I advise them that Minnesota law requires state employees to
23:19
Speaker 1: cooperate with the OILA and to turn over information as requested.
23:24
Speaker 1: A few days later, the same official told me, I
23:27
Speaker 1: just came from the Commissioner's office and they're sending your
23:30
Speaker 1: document to the OLA. You better be ready for the
23:35
Speaker 1: blank storm that's coming your way.
23:38
Speaker 4: So you're now being threatened that if you do your
23:41
Speaker 4: job and actually expose fraud, that you better be ready
23:46
Speaker 4: for what comes at you from the government that you're
23:48
Speaker 4: supposed to be supposed to be telling the fraud too,
23:52
Speaker 4: so that they can do their jobs and get rid
23:53
Speaker 4: of the fraud. And now you understand how many Democrats
23:57
Speaker 4: out there all right in Minnesota that were getting the kickbacks,
24:03
Speaker 4: including the governor. So this was all done by design
24:09
Speaker 4: and they knew it. And if you did your job
24:12
Speaker 4: as law enforcement, you were threatened. Good luck keeping your
24:16
Speaker 4: job because if you go there where somebody's going to
24:21
Speaker 4: come for you.
24:21
Speaker 3: Who the political machine.
24:24
Speaker 1: In the following months, members of our unit were harassed
24:27
Speaker 1: and bullied by DHS officials in the following manner. First,
24:32
Speaker 1: DHS paid ninety thousand dollars to a consultant with no
24:37
Speaker 1: experience in public benefit program integrity or financial fraud investigations
24:43
Speaker 1: to label the scamp fraud allegations in my email is
24:47
Speaker 1: unreliable and unable.
24:49
Speaker 5: To be proven.
24:50
Speaker 1: During an interview with the consultants, which became heated, I
24:55
Speaker 1: told them that I really didn't care what they put
24:57
Speaker 1: in their report, but if they said there was no
25:00
Speaker 1: fraud or that our investigators were making this up, that
25:04
Speaker 1: when this became public, their company would lose all credibility.
25:08
Speaker 1: I told them that the fraud was so huge that
25:11
Speaker 1: sooner or later it would come to light. Secondly, false
25:16
Speaker 1: derogatory information was placed on a supervisor's performance.
25:21
Speaker 5: Review by DHS officials.
25:24
Speaker 1: Third, DHS implemented a continuous improvement program with the fraud
25:30
Speaker 1: Investigation Unit. This process started with the senior continuous improvement
25:36
Speaker 1: official berating our group for approximately thirty minutes, telling us,
25:42
Speaker 1: in essence, we were incompetent and terrible employees. I had
25:47
Speaker 1: never heard of something like this happening to any group
25:50
Speaker 1: of state employees in my forty years on state government.
25:54
Speaker 1: A DHS Assistant commissioner was in the room watching this.
25:59
Speaker 1: Over to approximately six months, we were directed to attend
26:03
Speaker 1: many group meetings to discuss the investigative process at length,
26:08
Speaker 1: and we were giving homework assignments to work on between
26:11
Speaker 1: the meetings. These meetings were led by the same DHS
26:15
Speaker 1: official who had berated us so badly in that first meeting.
26:20
Speaker 1: The huge amount of time our team spent in those
26:22
Speaker 1: meetings and on our assignments resulted in investigators and supervisors
26:28
Speaker 1: being unable to conduct hardly any investigative activity over the
26:32
Speaker 1: roughly six months of this program. As a result of
26:36
Speaker 1: this program, significant changes were dictated to our unit by
26:41
Speaker 1: the lead official and this process. The changes to the
26:46
Speaker 1: process included a myself and the unit supervisor. Keep in mind,
26:53
Speaker 1: together between the two of us, we had seventy years
26:56
Speaker 1: of criminal investigative experience. No longer have the authority to
27:01
Speaker 1: decide which cases would be investigated. That would be done
27:05
Speaker 1: by a committee of three. Two members of the committee
27:09
Speaker 1: were DHS officials with no experience conducting public benefit or
27:13
Speaker 1: financial fraud investigations. I would be the third committee member,
27:18
Speaker 1: although clearly outvoted Next, the amount of SEACAP funding would
27:23
Speaker 1: not play a role in prioritizing cases. We would spend
27:27
Speaker 1: as much time investigating centers receiving a relatively small amount
27:32
Speaker 1: of SEACAP money as those receiving much larger amounts. The
27:36
Speaker 1: result of this meant that roughly fifty percent of our
27:39
Speaker 1: limited investigative capacity would be spent on centers likely billing
27:44
Speaker 1: SEACAP for less than one hundred thousand dollars a year.
27:48
Speaker 1: It would also result in our team spending fifty percent
27:50
Speaker 1: less investigative hours on cases involving centers billing SEACAP over
27:55
Speaker 1: a million dollars a year.
27:57
Speaker 4: Next, let me just stop there and go back to
28:00
Speaker 4: what you're hearing. There was so much fraud a decade
28:05
Speaker 4: ago that this guy's saying, we just couldn't go after
28:08
Speaker 4: anybody that's doing a half million or two hundred thousand
28:10
Speaker 4: or three thousand, one hundred three thousand dollars a.
28:12
Speaker 3: Year in fraud. We just didn't have the manpower.
28:14
Speaker 4: We had to go after the big fish, the ones
28:16
Speaker 4: that are doing millions and millions of dollars in fraud.
28:18
Speaker 4: We couldn't do it otherwise, and they just didn't have
28:20
Speaker 4: what it needed. Now do the ROI on this. If
28:24
Speaker 4: you can hire one hundred people to go after waste, fraud, abuse,
28:27
Speaker 4: and every one of them cost you, it's just around
28:28
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand hours is ten million. That is nothing
28:32
Speaker 4: compared to what you're spending in in corruption and fraud
28:37
Speaker 4: payments going out the way that they're describing it right now, there's.
28:42
Speaker 3: Nothing that comes close.
28:46
Speaker 4: And why would a state not do it because the
28:48
Speaker 4: politicians were getting their kickback. The politicians knew exactly what
28:54
Speaker 4: was happening, and they were getting their kickbacks in the
28:57
Speaker 4: form of government I say medical donations. Here's some more money,
29:02
Speaker 4: mister Waltz. The smalling communities behind you, Governor Waltz, we
29:06
Speaker 4: love to support you. Here's a check. Just leave our
29:09
Speaker 4: corruption and our business alone. That's what it was. As
29:13
Speaker 4: he wraps us up listening to the last few things, he.
29:15
Speaker 1: Says, investigators could only contact BCA agents after receiving permission
29:21
Speaker 1: from a DHS official. Lastly, DHS officials advised the BC
29:25
Speaker 1: agents to vacate our building. They would no longer have
29:29
Speaker 1: an office at DHS at this point. In June of
29:32
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, I submitted my resignation slash retirement notice effective
29:38
Speaker 1: July of twenty nineteen. I advised the members of the
29:41
Speaker 1: fraud Investigation Unit that I was not going to be
29:44
Speaker 1: a party to this. In closing, I would like to
29:46
Speaker 1: make the committee aware that the SEACAP fraud Supervisor and
29:50
Speaker 1: I had each worked for the state for twenty five
29:52
Speaker 1: and thirty four years, respectfully, each of us in the
29:55
Speaker 1: Department of Public Safety, at the BCA and the State Patrol.
30:00
Speaker 1: A theft or loss of even fifty dollars would not have
30:02
Speaker 1: been tolerated. I can't tell you how shocked we were
30:05
Speaker 1: to come to the Department of Human Services and learn
30:08
Speaker 1: after a few years that not only was the theft
30:11
Speaker 1: of untold millions of dollars tolerated, but those who tried
30:15
Speaker 1: to stop it would be subjected to the wrath of
30:18
Speaker 1: high ranking department officials.
30:20
Speaker 4: Now what you just heard was only the opening statement.
30:22
Speaker 4: You didn't get to hear unfortunately we don't have time.
30:25
Speaker 4: You can look it up on the internet and you
30:26
Speaker 4: can hear the Q and A and other things that
30:29
Speaker 4: he discussed. But what he laid out was two things. One,
30:32
Speaker 4: the waste fraud abuse was so good that Minnesota was
30:35
Speaker 4: ground zero and the best place to make a lot of.
30:38
Speaker 3: Money doing this.
30:39
Speaker 4: It's international scheme, and it's being told and taught and
30:44
Speaker 4: preached in the refugee camps all the way in Kenya.
30:49
Speaker 3: That is insane.
30:50
Speaker 4: And they did this, by the way, all over the country,
30:53
Speaker 4: as you could hear from much of those communications, like
30:55
Speaker 4: the best place to this was Minnesota, but you could
30:58
Speaker 4: go set this up anywhere in America, which means it
31:00
Speaker 4: is set up I'm sure in every single state in America.
31:03
Speaker 4: I have no doubt that this is happening right now,
31:06
Speaker 4: that there is massive and extensive waste fraud and abuse.
31:12
Speaker 4: Which is why I will say it again. Please share
31:15
Speaker 4: this wherever you can, all right, share wherever you get
31:19
Speaker 4: your wherever you can on social media. Help other people
31:22
Speaker 4: hear this, We're going to keep exposing it. Even when
31:26
Speaker 4: the media refuses to play things like this, we will
31:28
Speaker 4: play it.
31:29
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the forty seven Morning Update
31:31
Speaker 2: with Ben Ferguson. Please make sure you hit subscribe wherever
31:36
Speaker 2: you're listening to this podcast right now and for more
31:39
Speaker 2: in depth news, also subscribe to the Ben Ferguson podcast
31:43
Speaker 2: and we will see you back here tomorrow