The Fraud Industrial Complex – OpEd
Somali daycare powerhouse Quality Learing Center has closed.
If you need to lear your kids you will need a new Somali daycare. Happily, you’ve got thousands of empty ones to choose from.
The nation is being seized by what Zerohedge calls the Nick Shirley effect as hundreds of citizen journalists fan out exposing what looks like tens of billions — perhaps trillions — of fraud.
What’s been found so far focuses on the Somali community, where despite nearly 90% of these model immigrants being on welfare they’ve managed to set up tens of thousands of apparently fraudulent daycares, autism therapy centers, food for kids programs, and home health companies.
To give a flavor, there’s apparently 50,000 Somali healthcare companies — one per 3 adult Somalis in the nation.
Somali-run autism grants in Minnesota now run $399 million — up from $3 million in 2018. Somali child nutrition scams were actually prosecuted for $300 million stolen. After which even more scams sprung up because the city and state turned a blind eye.
So far DOJ estimates $8 billion of Somali fraud in Minnesota alone — roughly a quarter million per Somali household. Meaning the roughly 65,000 Somali adults in Minnesota managed to steal more than the entire GDP of Somalia itself, population 20 million.
Saudi Arabia has oil. China has factories. Somalia has Quality Learing Centers.
The Tip of the Iceberg
Unfortunately, Somalis are just the tip of the iceberg.
A new study found half of New York City is on Medicaid — note average family income in New York City is $81,000. Given 40% of New Yorkers are foreign-born, this will be hundreds of thousands getting free care when the rest of us — who pay for it — shell out tens of thousands for insurance.
Meanwhile, a 2023 survey by New York City found foreigners — not foreign-born but actual foreigners — occupy fully 32% of public housing and over 40% of rent-controlled and stabilized units.
California is even worse; the state auditor recently tallied $70 billion in fraud, including $2.5 billion of SNAP fraud and $24 billion in fraud for homelessness.
And that’s just the fraud they found.
The Covid Fraud Boom
The Fraud Industrial Complex took off during Covid: The Small Business Administration estimates $64 billion in fraudulent PPP loans — other estimates run to $80 billion.
Given the median PPP loan was $20,000 so that implies 4 million people should be in prison right now.
Toss in the Covid-era Economic Injury loans, where up to $200 billion was stolen. These averaged $100,000, implying another 2 million felons.
So take Minnesota Somalis, multiply by 20 blue states, dozens of nationalities — eight Indian gas stations in Texas, for example, got 32 million in SBA loans. In case you wonder why Indians and not Americans own the 7/11’s.
What’s Next
Long-standing government estimates of fraud run north of $500 billion a year. Elon thinks it’s closer to a trillion and half, which seems right given what’s being exposed.
That would be roughly half of income taxes. In fact, it’s enough to exempt every American from income tax up to $200,000.
This is leading Americans people to suggest maybe we should stop paying tax until government gets control of the fraud.
The left is responding how you’d expect. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz calls Somali fraud probes “white supremacy.” While MSNBC says Trump’s making it up cos he’s racist.
But Shirley has set off a nationwide movement by citizen journalists to expose fraud. Incentivized by the fact whistleblowers get 15-30% of recoveries — in case you’re looking for a side gig.
A hundred million Americans are pissed off. Unless we see a lot of people in handcuffs, we’re this close to a taxpayer revolt the IRS couldn’t hope to keep up with.
- This article appeared at Brownstone Institue and is republished from the author’s Substack