US announces charges against 15 people in Minnesota over alleged $90m healthcare scheme

The Trump administration broke new ground in its offensive against alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social services on Thursday as the US Department of Justice announced charges against 15 people accused of cheating a government healthcare program to the tune of $90m.

At a news conference in Minneapolis that underscored Donald Trump’s fierce focus on the state and Tim Walz, its Democratic governor, Colin McDonald, assistant US attorney general, told journalists that services had been subject to “shocking” levels of fraud, which he labelled a “crisis”.

Instances included an autism program where costs to taxpayers had ballooned from just $600,000 to more than $400m in six years, he claimed. Another scheme meant to help unhoused people find and maintain housing had risen 50-fold in cost, from $2.5m annually in 2020 to more than $104m in 2024, leading to its closure the following year – meaning that services no longer exist for a vulnerable segment of the population, McDonald said.

Flanked by the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and Mehmet Oz, head of the Medicare and Medicaid government health insurance programs, McDonald declared: “It is a crisis in Minnesota.”

The charges brought, he said, “include the highest loss amount ever charged in a Medicaid case in Minnesota, and the largest autism fraud scheme ever charged by the Department of Justice”.

“The common theme throughout these cases is fraudsters exploiting vulnerable programs and vulnerable people to enrich themselves, no matter the consequences, to the programs or to the people,” McDonald said.

Thursday’s announcement followed months of complaints from Trump about alleged rampant mass fraud in Minnesota, much of it tinged with racist vitriol against the state’s Somali community.

The fraud accusations were initially partly driven by a video from a rightwing social media influencer, Nick Shirley, focused on a children’s daycare centre, which had its name misspelled, and which received large sums in state and federal assistance.

The administration cited fraud as a major factor behind the decision to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into the state last winter. The decision led to mass protests on the streets of Minneapolis, and the shooting deaths of two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, at the hands of federal agents.

McDonald said the justice department had also deployed 11 “strike force prosecutors” from across the country into Minnesota, resulting in Thursday’s prosecutions.

JD Vance has since been put in charge of a White House initiative to root out fraud nationwide.

At the news conference, Kennedy called the prosecutions “the largest autism fraud bust in American history”, and said charges had been brought in record time. More would be seen in the near future, he added.

“I want to be clear: this is an extraordinary bust today, because these kind of operations usually take many years, sometimes a decade,” said Kennedy. “This was executed with a precision and speed that is unprecedented in the history of law enforcement.

“But under Vice-President Vance’s leadership and President Trump’s direction, we are going to normalize this speed.”