The fraud ran so deep that even Somali parents who might not have even entertained aspirations of scammed wealth were enticed to offer their children up for autism care in exchange for getting paid. A woman named Asha Farha Hassan has been charged with defrauding the Minnesota’s autism program for $14 million.
There is a temptation to call the $14 million a personal record, the 56-game hitting streak of fraud. She probably got a fist bump when she walked down the street. But Hassan is only the first person charged in the autism fraud. Her record could be broken. The U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, said there will be others, not yet charged.
If you don’t feel betrayed yet, consider that Thompson said that fraud cases are a wholesale attack on Minnesota programs to the point where fraud has overtaken legitimate services.
Hassan, 28, whipped up a business called Smart Therapy, according to the charges. More than 300 of these businesses sprang up, most of them fake, we’re told. Hassan and her untrained young relatives recruited parents. No autism. Not a problem. According to the charges, Hassan paid parents a kickback of $300 to $1,200 if they agreed to participate. Hassan then billed the state and the cash rolled in. Some parents, catching the drift, threatened to take their kids to other “treatment” centers if they didn’t get a bigger kickback.
Autism fraud, food fraud, day care fraud, housing stabilization fraud. Billions of dollars in fraud – Thompson’s words, billions – and basically, he has just begun.
By the way, Hassan is allegedly a double-dipper fraudster. In 2021, Hassan claimed to be feeding 1,200 kids a day seven days a week and allegedly received $465,000 from the state. That might not have been enough to fatten her real estate portfolio in Kenya. She apparently didn’t even spend our stolen money in our state.
We have been more profoundly betrayed than at any time since the founding of the state. We work, we pay our bills and our taxes, we follow the law, maybe go to church on Sunday. And Minnesota government has betrayed us. There is no reason to have trust in the state or in any of the state agencies that we presumed were acting on our behalf. It’s crushing to lose that trust, and according to Thompson and his team, we are in line for more betrayal, maybe even a stolen amount that will break the 56-game fraud record.
Which brings us to our governor, Tim Walz. He is running for a third term. Why? Anybody with a sense of shame or embarrassment could not possibly look Minnesotans in the eye and claim he cares about what he calls working families. Why, it’s preposterous. These are his agencies that have broken the trust, his agency heads, his watch on deck. This is all on Walz and yet, absurdly, he wants a third term. His dereliction of duty could be considered malfeasance and disqualification from running.
Perhaps it isn’t that hard to figure out. He has been written off by the king makers who realize he doesn’t stand a chance on the national stage. He is a career politician. He’s too young to retire and live off his multiple pensions.
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What to do? I know. I’ll run against the president! He is cleverly taking advantage of how polarizing Donald Trump has been for the nation. In Minnesota, particularly, the Walz voter could not possibly turn against him for his incompetence that led to fraud and a broken trust. That would be tantamount to endorsing Trump.
Trump is a poorly matured fellow and wanders about with steamer trunks full of problems, but he has had absolutely nothing to do with fraud in Minnesota. If Walz fools you with his stump talk of Mar-a-Lago and Trump’s billionaire golfing pals, ask yourself what that has do with the financial ruin of this state.
Walz owns the betrayal and the broken trust. It’s ridiculous that he’s running for another term.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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