The Justice Department put a number on its Minnesota fraud crackdown on Friday, October 30 — and the number is a month, not a case. Between September 30 and today, the department's National Fraud Enforcement Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota have charged, convicted or sentenced 13 defendants whose alleged or proven schemes caused nearly $83 million in intended losses to the federal government, including about $29.1 million in fraud uncovered in newly charged cases alone, the department announced. This year alone, the DOJ has issued more than 1,000 subpoenas and executed more than 40 premises warrants to uncover fraud in Minnesota. “Minnesota is the epicenter for fraud in America,” said Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. “Backed by more than a thousand subpoenas and 40 warrants, the message is simple: no one stealing from taxpayer-funded programs is safe.”

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

The biggest new case: $19.1 million in autism-therapy claims, and kickbacks to parents

The largest of the newly charged schemes is also the most disturbing in method. Habiba Mohamed, 58, of Coon Rapids, was charged by information on October 29 with conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with a $19.1 million scheme to defraud the Minnesota Medicaid EIDBI program — the state-federal programme that pays for therapy for children with autism. Prosecutors allege that Mohamed and her co-conspirators, previously charged by indictment, submitted fraudulent claims to the programme, and that she personally paid kickbacks to the parents of Medicaid recipients in exchange for being able to submit claims for services. In other words, the allegation is that the children whose therapy the money was meant to buy became the raw material of the fraud: their enrolment was worth money whether or not the therapy happened.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

Three more EIDBI and Medicaid cases, totalling over $26 million

Feisal Mohamed Elmi, 46, of New Brighton, was charged by indictment on October 22 with eleven counts of health care fraud in an $8.2 million scheme against the same EIDBI programme — prosecutors allege he billed for services that were not rendered and for services supposedly provided by employees while they were travelling outside the United States, and that almost every claim was billed at the same amount regardless of the service or hours involved. Faiza Osman Ahmed, 41, of Richfield, was charged on October 28 with six counts of health care fraud in an approximately $10 million scheme across several Minnesota Medicaid programmes — Individualized Home Supports, Personal Care Assistance and Night Supervision — allegedly billing for services not rendered, for recipients who were travelling, for hours when providers were actually working other jobs, and for recipients who never received the billed services at all. And Emily Marice Ravits, 74, of Tucson, Arizona, a licensed clinical social worker, was charged on October 22 in a $7.7 million scheme: prosecutors allege she agreed to serve as the required Qualified Supervising Professional for multiple autism-therapy providers without actually performing the duties, letting providers submit claims for services not performed and false certifications on treatment plans.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

Fake patient notes made with “Super Intelligence”

One indictment describes the fraud adapting to its paperwork problem with software. Jama Yusuf Mohamod, 68, of Maple Grove, was charged on October 28 with eight counts of health care fraud in a scheme to submit about $3.2 million in fraudulent claims to the Minnesota Medicaid Integrated Community Supports Program — billing for services not rendered and for recipients who were travelling, prosecutors allege, and using a tool the department names as “Super Intelligence” to create fake patient notes to justify his claims. Falsified notes are the load-bearing wall of benefits fraud: a claim is only a number until a note makes it look like care. Automating the notes automates the lie.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

The fugitive from Kenya, and the 6,000 meals a day that never happened

Shaakir Mohamud Ibrahim, 54, of Pelican Rapids, was arrested on September 30 after nearly ten months as a fugitive in Kenya, charged in a $1.1 million scheme against the Federal Child Nutrition Program through Feeding Our Future — the sponsor at the centre of Minnesota's defining fraud scandal. For four months, prosecutors allege, Ibrahim and his co-conspirators claimed to be serving more than 3,000 meals to children every day in the small town of Pelican Rapids, through Bilaal Mosque, and another 3,000 a day at the Multicultural Resource Center in Moorhead — 6,000 meals a day, in towns whose size makes the claim collapse on its face. After more than $1.1 million in reimbursements, Ibrahim allegedly laundered his share through large cheques to himself and his son, and bought a property in Kenya and a car.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

Operation Cold SNAP: food-stamp trafficking at a tobacco shop

The surge also reached the SNAP food-benefits programme at street level. Ahmed Abdul Razaq Al Obaidi, 49, of Blaine, and Muhammad Abdullah Kahn were charged on October 21 by complaint with unlawfully transferring SNAP benefits, in a case arising from the joint USDA-OIG and Homeland Security “Operation Cold SNAP,” which identified local businesses engaged in trafficking SNAP benefits for cash. Investigators identified AK Tobacco LLC in Minnesota as a location involved in cash trafficking of EBT benefits; business records name Al Obaidi as the store's manager and Kahn as a clerk associated with it, and Al Obaidi was arrested on October 21. SNAP trafficking converts food money into cash at a discount — the benefits meant to feed a family become the store's margin.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

Convictions in the same month: 337,000 phantom meals, and the estates of the dead

The month's tally is not only charges. Muna Wais Fidhin, 45, of Savage, was convicted on October 21 after a three-week jury trial of wire fraud, federal-programmes bribery and money laundering: prosecutors proved she claimed, through a small hallway café at a Burnsville clinic, to have served 500 meals seven days a week, paid a $26,000 bribe to a Feeding Our Future employee, and then, through a second site, claimed more than 337,000 meals in nine months — nearly $1 million in reimbursements, spent on her mortgage, money sent overseas and a Lexus. And in a case with a different kind of victim, Nicole Lee Slegers, 48, and Shaun Hubert Slegers, 37, pleaded guilty on October 28 to conspiring to defraud the estates of recently deceased Minnesota Medicaid recipients: Nicole Slegers, who worked at Southwest HHS, allegedly used her position to obtain the dead recipients' vehicles on false pretences, and the pair intimidated grieving family members into quick transfers — about $144,524 across at least 14 vehicles, with forged signatures on titles.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

The sentences inside the tally, and the juror who was offered $200,000

Two of the 13 were sentenced in the same window. Salim Ahmed Said, 37, of Plymouth, received 360 months — 30 years — on October 28 for his role in the $250 million Feeding Our Future scheme, after a trial that proved his Safari Restaurant claimed 3.9 million meals and he facilitated more than $44 million in fraud proceeds; this site reported that sentence as its own story earlier this week. And SaidFarah, 44, of Minneapolis, was sentenced on October 30 itself — 78 months in prison and a $40,000 fine — not for the underlying fraud but for bribing a juror: the day after closing arguments in his fraud trial, prosecutors proved, he helped gather $200,000 in cash that a co-conspirator delivered to a juror's home with a promise of more for an acquittal. The juror reported it immediately. Separately, on October 19 the government moved against three Minneapolis properties valued at about $519,000, named as bought with Feeding Our Future proceeds in a civil forfeiture action.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

Friday's wider drumbeat: 81 charged in Feeding Our Future, a $25 million whistleblower fund

The DOJ announcement landed inside a broader federal show of force in Minnesota on Friday. FBI Director Kash Patel presented the cumulative Feeding Our Future figures — 81 people charged and 70 convicted, in a fraud put at more than $500 million — as officials described a widened phase: search warrants executed across the state this week, fresh Medicaid-fraud arrests, more subpoenas and cash rewards for whistleblowers. In St. Cloud, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a centralised reporting portal and a $25 million Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program, under which people whose information leads to a conviction or enforcement action may be eligible for rewards of up to $30,000; Treasury said its data have supported Minnesota activity resulting in 115 arrests or charges and 75 convictions since the start of the administration. Those cumulative tallies are broader than the DOJ's one-month, 13-defendant count and should not be merged with it — but together they describe a state that has become the federal government's fraud-enforcement front line.

Source: WLT Report, Oct. 30, 2026, summarising FBI and Treasury announcements and Associated Press reporting

Why Minnesota, and why it matters far beyond Minnesota

“The alarming concentration of fraud targeting taxpayer-funded programs in Minnesota demands a coordinated and sustained response,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division — the new DOJ division running this surge jointly with U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen's office in Minnesota. The programmes being looted here are not abstractions: EIDBI pays for therapy for autistic children, SNAP feeds families, the child-nutrition programme feeds schoolchildren, and Medicaid home supports let disabled and elderly people live at home. Every phantom claim is taken from a budget with real children, real patients and real families at the other end of it — including the many immigrant and diaspora families, in Minnesota and in states watching this crackdown, who depend on these programmes lawfully and now live under the suspicion the fraudsters created. That is the cost that never appears in the loss figures.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026

What happens next

The newly charged defendants now move toward arraignments and trial in the District of Minnesota, prosecuted jointly by the Fraud Division's Health Care Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney's Office, on investigations by the FBI, HHS-OIG, IRS-CI and, in the SNAP case, USDA-OIG and HSI. Fidhin awaits sentencing; the forfeiture action over the three Minneapolis properties proceeds on its own track; and the department's own framing — more than a thousand subpoenas already issued this year, warrants still being executed this week — says plainly that the 13-defendant month is a progress report, not a finale. “We will continue these efforts until these schemes are dismantled,” McDonald said. On Friday's evidence, that is a schedule, not a slogan.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Oct. 30, 2026