Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Feeding Our Future or Funding Our Fraud -Minnesota’s Somali Fraud Grows

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Feeding Our Future or Funding Our Fraud -Minnesota’s Somali Fraud Grows · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

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  Speaker 2: You're listening to the forty seven Morning Update with Ben ferguson.
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  Speaker 3: Good Saturday morning. It's nice to have you with us
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  Speaker 3: on the forty seven Morning Update, and we've got one
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  Speaker 3: big story for you. The Treasury Department is now ratching
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  Speaker 3: up its investigation targeting the Somali community for massive fraud
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  Speaker 3: in Minnesota, and the governor there, Waltz, is fighting back.
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  Speaker 3: What's his excuse now? He says, it's not his fault.
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  Speaker 3: They've been sending me to terrorists. It's somehow AI's fault.
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  Speaker 3: my Heart Media. It's the forty seven Morning Update and
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  Speaker 3: it starts right now.
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  Speaker 2: Story number one.
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  Speaker 3: We've been talking a lot about important store, and that
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  Speaker 3: is Somali refugees that are taking billions of dollars from you,
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  Speaker 3: the taxpayer. We know just how much money and how
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  Speaker 3: many of them are taking your dollars, especially in Minnesota.
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  Speaker 3: Well now the Treasury Department is ratcheting it up with
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  Speaker 3: investigations targeting the Somali community for fraud, specifically in Minnesota.
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  Speaker 3: The Treasury Department targeting businesses they say that people use
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  Speaker 3: to wire money to family members abroad. As the Trump
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  Speaker 3: administration is investigating the fraud within Minnesota Somali community. The
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  Speaker 3: Treasury Secretary of Scott Thes sent confirming on Friday now.
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  Speaker 3: These new actions have been prompted by a series of
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  Speaker 3: fraud cases, including a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future that
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  Speaker 3: is accused of stealing pandemic aid meant for school meals.
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  Speaker 3: Prosecutors have put the losses from the case at three
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  Speaker 3: hundred million dollars. The Center's point to report by conservative
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  Speaker 3: news outlet City Journal, which claims the taxpayer dollars from
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  Speaker 3: defrauded government programs flowed to Al Shabab, an al Qaeda
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  Speaker 3: linked militant group that controls parts of Somalia. The report
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  Speaker 3: sides unnamed sources, and the allegations have not been substantiated.
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  Speaker 3: Federal prosecutors have not charged any defendants with supporting terrorists.
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  Speaker 3: On Friday, set on social media that the Treasury Department
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  Speaker 3: will soon issue an order requiring money wire services that
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  Speaker 3: people use to send money to Somalia to submit additional
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  Speaker 3: verification to the Treasury. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a
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  Speaker 3: Treasury arm that combats financial crimes like money laundering and
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  Speaker 3: terrorism financing, will also deploy to assist in the efforts,
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  Speaker 3: the Treasury Secretary stated. He added also that the Internal
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  Speaker 3: Revenue Service would also be involved in looking to firms
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  Speaker 3: a Q of engaging in fraud. Additionally, Treasury personnel are
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  Speaker 3: on the ground working hard to uncover the facts, he said,
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  Speaker 3: about why so many American tax dollars have been going
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  Speaker 3: to fraud, including going to terrorist organizations and the money
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  Speaker 3: going literally back to Somalia. Now, Democrats were hoping that
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  Speaker 3: this entire scandal would disappear. It certainly doesn't look good
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  Speaker 3: for Democrats, including the governor in Minnesota, who knew that
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  Speaker 3: this was going on. CBS even putting out a report
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  Speaker 3: saying this way, as they're describing how bad the abuse is.
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  Speaker 4: A honeymoon in the Maldives, a fleet of luxury cars.
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  Speaker 4: Here's a box with more than two hundred and seventy
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  Speaker 4: thousand dollars in cash. This was all evidence from a
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  Speaker 4: Neutrova files obtained exclusively by CBS News showing how a
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  Speaker 4: group of convicted Minnesota fraudsters spent taxpayer dollars. One text
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  Speaker 4: message reads, you are going to be the richest twenty
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  Speaker 4: five year old were.
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  Speaker 5: Not even at the end of the beginning of our
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  Speaker 5: pursuit of the stolen money and of the people who
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  Speaker 5: stole it.
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  Speaker 4: US Attorney Daniel Rosen leads the office digging into the
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  Speaker 4: wave of COVID era fraud that hit Minnesota. So how
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  Speaker 4: much money are we talking about stolen from the American taxpayer?
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  Speaker 5: I can say with great comfort, well and excessive a
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  Speaker 5: billion dollars.
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  Speaker 4: In the past three years, eighty seven defendants have been charged,
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  Speaker 4: sixty one convicted. The majority of them are Somali American
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  Speaker 4: Minnesota has the nation's largest Somali population. The perpetrators are
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  Speaker 4: accused of ripping off state run programs intended to feed
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  Speaker 4: low income kids, house the disabled, and provide services to
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  Speaker 4: autistic children.
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  Speaker 5: This was a get rich scheme.
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  Speaker 4: Andy Luger was the US attorney who first examined this fraud.
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  Speaker 4: He left in January.
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  Speaker 5: One of the things we discovered is that a number
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  Speaker 5: of the people involved we're buying investment property resort property
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  Speaker 5: in Kenya.
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  Speaker 4: Wire transfers reviewed by CBS News also show more than
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  Speaker 4: one million dollars went to Chinese banks. The Trump administration
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  Speaker 4: has said it's investigating whether any of the money fell
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  Speaker 4: into the hands of terror groups like al Shabab and Somalia.
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  Speaker 3: You listen to that CBS report and you can see
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  Speaker 3: just how bad the corruption is. Not only how bad
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  Speaker 3: the corruption is, but also the fact that there's been
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  Speaker 3: a long history of it and the governor was looking
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  Speaker 3: the other way. Tim Waltz now on Defense saying this
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  Speaker 3: about the Somali community at a press conference today.
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  Speaker 1: Do you want to hear.
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  Speaker 6: More from members of leaders from a small community to say,
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  Speaker 6: we need to hold our we need to look at ourselves,
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  Speaker 6: we need to call our own neighbors acout is look
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  Speaker 6: at the damage that this is. Don tor he what
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  Speaker 6: do you want to hear more from it?
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  Speaker 4: Say?
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  Speaker 6: I just saying, don't lay us. Do you want to
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  Speaker 6: see more ownership and oversight from.
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  Speaker 5: Look, it's not law abiding citizens. If that were the case,
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  Speaker 5: there's a lot of white men. Should be holding a
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  Speaker 5: lot of white men accountable for the crimes that they
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  Speaker 5: have committed. I think for the community to maybe educate
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  Speaker 5: their population, because I think what you're seeing here is
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  Speaker 5: there are secondary victims in this that there's providers inside
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  Speaker 5: the community that are then victimizing the community himself by
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  Speaker 5: signing them up. Because when we're going to some of
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  Speaker 5: these people, they're like, I had no idea I was
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  Speaker 5: in this program. So I think it's asking us, then,
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  Speaker 5: you know, for every crime, which of course the majority
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  Speaker 5: being committed by white men, asking us to do more
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  Speaker 5: about that. I think it's crime in general. And I
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  Speaker 5: think the biggest thing on this is is just making
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  Speaker 5: sure that we're educating the population. And again, this is
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  Speaker 5: eighty people or so that have been convicted in this,
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  Speaker 5: maybe some more in that out of a.
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  Speaker 3: You listen to Waltz, there if some alli communities should
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  Speaker 3: hold their own accountable, quote, a lot of white men
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  Speaker 3: should be holding white men accountable. This is still a
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  Speaker 3: governor that is trying to turn this into some racial
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  Speaker 3: issue instead of a massive fraud issue. There is fraud
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  Speaker 3: in the small community. They figured out how defraud the
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  Speaker 3: federal government. The people that are coming into Minnesota are
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  Speaker 3: understanding how to grab American dollars and send them back
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  Speaker 3: home to not only family members, but to literal terrorist organizations.
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  Speaker 3: Al Shabab. Tim Waltz saying this as well.
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  Speaker 6: Connor, is the welch and spoiled or can you count
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  Speaker 6: on flaw issue with the US Security's.
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  Speaker 5: Office here and one hundred percent that well is not spoiled.
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  Speaker 5: I would let Drew talk to that, and I'm going
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  Speaker 5: to say that in the midst of what's very clearly
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  Speaker 5: a vindictive attack on Minnesota from this administration, I will
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  Speaker 5: say this, the bright point on this has been the
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  Speaker 5: US Attorney's office, and you saw that when Andy Lueger left,
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  Speaker 5: we never missed a beat to Joe Thompson and they
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  Speaker 5: have been good point. I'll let Drew talk by that
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  Speaker 5: he worked with them and we have talked about this,
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  Speaker 5: and look, I have to assess this too. I understand
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  Speaker 5: when I speak up it brings is Donald Trump's petty
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  Speaker 5: vindictiveness to Minnesota, and this is all about coming and
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  Speaker 5: attacking us. He didn't know anything about this. He doesn't
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  Speaker 5: know how Medicaid program works. The only thing he knows
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  Speaker 5: about is he going to double the cost over the
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  Speaker 5: next week. But he doesn't know how these programs work
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  Speaker 5: or anything about it. So he heard and somebody told
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  Speaker 5: him the Somalis are stealing money and they're not doing
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  Speaker 5: anything about throw it up there. That's not how the
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  Speaker 5: US Attorney's office works.
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  Speaker 3: You listen to Tim Waltz and he's saying it yet again,
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  Speaker 3: this is vindictive. So all the waste, all the fraud,
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  Speaker 3: all the abuse, sitting many to terrorists. Tim Waltz is
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  Speaker 3: telling you, he's telling the American people, no, no, no, this
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  Speaker 3: is really about vindictive Donald Trump. So then if that's
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  Speaker 3: the case, why did moments later he say this.
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  Speaker 5: So if you try and commit fraud Minnesota, and there's
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  Speaker 5: folks out there listening right now, you are going to
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  Speaker 5: prison eventually. I think the biggest thing on this is
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  Speaker 5: is you'll hear from some of the experts here. Many
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  Speaker 5: of these programs, especially federal medicaid and medicare plagues every state,
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  Speaker 5: and when you set down and dig into this, it
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  Speaker 5: takes weeks and weeks and weeks, and actually it takes
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  Speaker 5: years to become experts in this. These are programs that
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  Speaker 5: have been layered up in a spider web over the years.
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  Speaker 5: That makes it incredibly difficult, and I think unwinding those
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  Speaker 5: are bringing about the integrity. It's the reason why we're
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  Speaker 5: seeing federal agencies under the Trump administration acknowledge the work
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  Speaker 5: that's being done, acknowledge that these things are better, and
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  Speaker 5: actually suggesting in other states when I talk to them
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  Speaker 5: about implementing that, because they're going to deal with it.
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  Speaker 5: COVID moved a lot of money very very quickly, and
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  Speaker 5: our goal was to make sure we were moving that
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  Speaker 5: money so that people ate that they were housed, that
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  Speaker 5: they had vaccines. But it also opened up the door
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  Speaker 5: to relax the guardrails and to have fraud be committed.
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  Speaker 3: So there it is the governor yet again blaming everybody
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  Speaker 3: else but himself, and that is why this has become
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  Speaker 3: such a massive problem yet again, when there's very clear
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  Speaker 3: fraud at a level that is a scan that is broken,
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  Speaker 3: that is putting his governorship in real peril. He's saying
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  Speaker 3: this is somehow just Donald Trump's fault. It's vindictiveness. But eventually,
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  Speaker 3: as he describes, if you're breaking a law, yeah, okay,
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  Speaker 3: you'll go to jail, and then immediately goes back to
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  Speaker 3: playing politics. I look at this governor and he goes
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  Speaker 3: back to say one final thing, giving another excuse for
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  Speaker 3: why this happened. This time, he's not blaming the fact
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  Speaker 3: that he and the people around him refuse to look
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  Speaker 3: at the Somali community for what they are doing in
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  Speaker 3: the crimes of committing No, no, you want to know
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  Speaker 3: what he says. The real problem is, you know, he's
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  Speaker 3: actually blaming for the waste, fraud and abuse and the
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  Speaker 3: money going to terrorist organizations. He says, it's a I's fault.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not joking. This is his final excuse.
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  Speaker 5: Any amount of fraud is too much. That's where over
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  Speaker 5: the last several years, we've made many systematic changes to
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  Speaker 5: state government to both detect fraud and hold those accountable
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  Speaker 5: after it happened. Year after year, we brought new ideas
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  Speaker 5: to the legislature to stay ahead of the evolving tactics,
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  Speaker 5: and they are evolving. AI poses immense challenges in the
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  Speaker 5: fraud space. We sought top to bottom change in state
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  Speaker 5: government to create stronger oversite. We leveraged outside experts, We
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  Speaker 5: modernize technology, and hold criminals accountable.
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  Speaker 3: So there it is a governor seeing billions of dollars
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  Speaker 3: stowing from the American people and he says it's a
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  Speaker 3: conspiracy and Trump is the problem by trying to crack
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  Speaker 3: down on it. He then says it's not actually happening,
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  Speaker 3: But if it is happening, eventually you will get put
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  Speaker 3: in jail eventually, and then he says it's really AI's
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  Speaker 3: problem that this is happening, not the government for allowing
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  Speaker 3: it to happen in Minnesota. If you want to know
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  Speaker 3: how broken Minnesota is, this is a perfect example of
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  Speaker 3: it and exactly why the Treasury Department, the IRS, and
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  Speaker 3: the federal government is involved under Trump's leadership, to stop
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  Speaker 3: your tax dollars from going to this abuse and going
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  Speaker 3: to Harris as well.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the forty seven Morning Update
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: with Ben Ferguson. Please make sure you hit subscribe wherever
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