The empathy exploit comes to Minnesota
Minnesota turned compassion into a slush fund, lost billions to fake “services,” all made visible by a kid with an iPhone
I previously wrote about the empathy exploit of the West, how our collective instinct to help can be manipulated into a vulnerability. The unfolding scandal in Minnesota is one of the clearest examples yet.
A YouTuber recently exposed what appears to be industrial-scale fraud within the state’s social services system, and it reveals a disturbing truth: our systems of kindness are being leveraged against us.
CBS News had been reporting on large-scale fraud in Minnesota since 2020. But when then-Governor Tim Walz became Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick, that reporting largely quieted. Stories paused. Questions went unanswered until after the election. To anyone paying attention, it felt like politics had gagged journalism, a complete inversion of its watchdog role.
It’s been years since then, and now the scandal can no longer be buried. The details are staggering and the frauds continue to this day.
Federal prosecutors have now charged more than 90 people across various Minnesota assistance programs from housing stabilization to autism services and pandemic food aid [CBS News].
Officials describe it as “industrial-scale fraud,” with estimated losses climbing into the billions. The root of it all traces back to the now-infamous Feeding Our Future case, a $250 million scheme that siphoned COVID-era aid meant to feed hungry children.
How brazen was it? Participants billed the government for millions of “meals” that never existed. Some of the claimed meal sites didn’t even have kitchens. Prosecutors found shell companies, sham invoices, and fake rosters of children. CBS obtained thousands of pages of evidence showing the fraudsters spending taxpayer funds on luxury cars, real estate, overseas wire transfers, even an overwater villa in the Maldives.
When one defendant was sentenced, the judge put it plainly:
“Where others saw a crisis and rushed to help, you saw money and rushed to steal.”
Federal officials say they’ve surged personnel into Minnesota to target large-scale exploitation of federal programs. The FBI dismantled the Feeding Our Future operation in 2022 but has since tracked similar scams using Medicaid and housing grants.
This scandal shows how blind trust in government systems coupled with a culture terrified of being perceived as discriminatory can result in massive public losses.
An auditor’s report last year found that Minnesota’s Education Department “created opportunities for fraud” by missing obvious warning signs. When state officials raised concerns, the organization accused them of racial discrimination, effectively freezing oversight in its tracks. Bureaucrats folded, terrified of backlash.
The founder of Feeding Our Future built a network of shell vendors, many led by members of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora. Federal prosecutors also confirmed that most individuals indicted were of Somali descent.
The other scandal here is how quietly the mainstream press handled it. For years, this story simmered in documents, indictments, and federal filings while Minnesota’s local media looked away. You’d think that when billions of taxpayer dollars vanish (some estimates now topping $18 billion) journalists would be camped outside the governor’s mansion. Instead, silence. Until citizen journalists stepped in.
A single YouTuber digging through public records and shell company data uncovered $110 million in one day. The story was public before, but one person with an iPhone accomplished more than hundreds of credentialed reporters combined: they made it visible. That story, embedded below, is now one of the most viewed Tweets in history.
This is very good on the ground citizen journalism and reminiscent of the quote from the movie The Big Short: “they did what no one else would do, they looked.”
You should be outraged, given the federal government tracks $600 Venmo transfers between private citizens with a magnifying glass but somehow can’t account for billions it hands to fraudulent “community” organizations. It’s an outrageous double standard.
While the FBI and IRS are laser-focused on everyday Americans, massive sums dispensed through block grants to states often go unmonitored. In theory, this money is supposed to flow efficiently to those in need. In practice, it becomes a slush fund, a trough for the well-connected and the unscrupulous.
Minnesota’s experiment in hyper-generous welfare administration, built on progressive ideals of “equity” and “access”, has instead demonstrated the collapse of accountability. Every stolen dollar is a dollar not feeding children, not housing struggling families, not serving those with real needs.
This is not just a Minnesota problem. It’s a Western problem: the empathy exploit (or suicidal empathy as professor Gad Saad has talked about). Our goodwill, weaponized. Our institutions, asleep or corrupt.
In their zeal to “right historic wrongs,” liberal policymakers and compliant journalists have stripped away safeguards in the name of equity. The result? Corruption thriving inside systems that virtue signal but do not safeguard. And it’s ordinary citizens — overwhelmed by taxes and inflation — who pay the price.
Western civilization’s future hangs by a thread of public trust. That trust dies when compassion becomes cover for corruption.
"Where are sheep there will be wolves."
Ive watched his videos on this subject, the scale of the fraud is unbelievable. It seems like noone ever checked on where this money was going , all it would taken was a drop by unscheduled visit. The scale is truly incomprehensible.