Assistant AG McDonald: ‘Today, We Are Announcing Criminal Charges Against 15 Defendants in Minnesota for Fraud Schemes that Targeted Over $90 Million in Taxpayer Dollars’

EXCERPT:

MCDONALD: “Today, we are announcing criminal charges against 15 defendants in Minnesota for fraud schemes that targeted over $90 million in taxpayer dollars. Let me be clear up front about something. This is not the end of our work in Minnesota. This is not the end of the beginning of our work in Minnesota. This is the beginning of our work in Minnesota. The fraud here in Minnesota is shocking. Our cases today involve seven different state-managed Medicaid programs that have been systematically pilfered by fraudsters who treated Minnesota-run programs as their personal piggy bank. One of the programs has been completely shut down because there's no money left. It's all gone. That was Minnesota's state-run Housing Stabilization Services Program designed to help the homeless find and maintain housing. It was estimated in 2020 that it would cost only about $2.5 million a year to fund this program, but it ended up costing almost 50 times that much, over $104 million by 2024 due to fraud. And because of all the fraud, Minnesota had to shut the program down in 2025, and now these services no longer exist for these vulnerable homeless populations.”