MINNESOTA, WHERE'S THE MISSING MONEY?

JUDGE OVERTURNS MEDICARE FRAUD CONVICTION, WHAT LIES UNDERNEATH?

WHAT'S A LITTLE MEDICARE FRAUD BETWEEN FAMILY? ESPECIALLY WHEN THE MONEY MAY SPONSOR TERRORISM.

Inside the $7 Million Minnesota Medicaid Fraud, the Vanishing Cash Trail, and the Federal Concerns Nobody Wants to Talk About**

When the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office presented the Promise Health Services fraud case, it looked straightforward: a husband and wife siphoned $7.2 million in Medicaid funds through a fake home-health agency operating out of a mailbox.

But once investigators froze the accounts, filed charges, and seized what they could, something didn’t add up.

The numbers were wrong.Not legally wrong — mathematically wrong.

Because even after the wife forfeited $1.2 million, and even after tracing the husband’s personal withdrawals, cars, and luxury items…

At least $4.5–5 million dollars is simply gone.

Not spent.Not seized.Not invested.Not found in any property, account, or asset.

It vanished.

And the state of Minnesota — either through incapacity, political caution, or design — never asked the most obvious question:

Where is the missing money?

To answer that, we have to look beyond this one case……into a pattern of financial investigations that federal prosecutors have been raising alarms about for years.

I. THE BASIC MATH: MILLIONS IN, MILLIONS OUT, AND A HOLE NO ONE CAN EXPLAIN

Promise Health took in:

• $7.2 million from Medicaid

• Nearly all of it pure profit, since they had no legitimate operation

Authorities recovered:

• $1.2 million in forfeiture from the wife

• Roughly $1 million in personal enrichment by the husband

• A handful of seized cars and electronics

That still leaves a massive gap.

Even under generous assumptions, at least $4.5 million is unaccounted for.

This isn’t speculation — this is arithmetic.

And because Promise Health had:

• No payroll

• No staff

• No office

• No medical equipment

• No overhead

• No legitimate expenses

…the missing money can’t be hidden behind business losses.

It went somewhere.

But where?

II. WHAT THE STATE DIDN’T DO — AND WHY IT MATTERS

Minnesota charged this as a state-only case.

That meant:

• No wire fraud charges

• No mail fraud charges

• No federal health-care fraud charges

• No money laundering charges

• No FinCEN involvement

• No IRS-CI forensic tracing

• No HHS-OIG participation

• No overseas tracing authority

In other words:

The one group that can actually find the money — the federal government — was never brought in.

And Minnesota officials know the state lacks the tools to trace multi-million-dollar international cash movements.

That is not a small oversight; it is the difference between:

• A forensic accounting investigationand

• A shrug.

This is precisely why the question “Where did the money go?” was never asked in court:

Because the state had neither the ability nor the appetite to find out.

III. HOW MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR FRAUDS IN MINNESOTA HAVE VANISHED FUNDS BEFORE

If this were the first case with missing millions, it would be baffling.

But it isn’t.

In the last decade, Minnesota has seen:

• Feeding Our Future fraud — $250M stolen, huge portions shipped overseas

• Childcare subsidy fraud — tens of millions moved to East Africa

• COVID-relief fraud — federal agents traced millions to Turkey, Somalia, Kenya, UAE

• Home health agency fraud — multiple rings exporting funds abroad through informal transfer channels

In those cases, federal prosecutors documented:

• Hawala-style transfers

• Cash couriers

• Debit-card withdrawals overseas

• Layered transfers through relatives

• Real estate purchases outside U.S. jurisdiction

The Promise Health fraud fits this pattern exactly:

• Large sum stolen

• No domestic assets reflecting the income

• Money gone by the time investigators arrived

• Defendants with extended family abroad

• Transfer channels available

• State reluctance to involve federal agencies

This doesn’t mean the money definitely left the country.

But from a federal prosecutor’s standpoint, it raises the same unmistakable red flags they’ve seen again and again.

**IV. FEDERAL PROSECUTORS’ QUIET CONCERN:

THE “OPACITY RISK” OF CERTAIN MONEY-MOVEMENT CHANNELS**

Here is the part that’s critical — and delicate.

Federal financial-crimes investigators (DOJ, IRS-CI, FBI, HSI) have repeatedly testified, in unrelated cases, that:

Large amounts of stolen money from Minnesota fraud schemes are being moved offshore through opaque, informal financial channels.

These channels:

• Aren’t illegal by themselves

• Are widely used in East African diaspora communities

• Operate outside conventional banking

• Are extremely difficult to trace

• Move money faster than law enforcement can freeze it

Federal agents call this:

Opacity Risk — not a community problem, but a system problem.

It is the structure of the transfer networks that raises concern, not the group using them.

But the risk is real — and documented.

V. THE NATIONAL SECURITY LAYER (AND HOW TO DISCUSS IT ACCURATELY)

Somalia, as a region, contains:

• al-Shabaab, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

• Piracy networks

• Cash-based illicit economies

• Regions where extremist financing is active

This does not mean Somali-Americans are involved in any such activity.

But U.S. intelligence agencies must monitor:

• Large unexplained transfers

• Informal remittance networks

• Cash exports to high-risk regions

• Opaque financial routes

It is mandatory under federal law.

Thus:

A $5 million unexplained disappearance from a Minnesota Medicaid fraud case is a national security concern — even if the defendants never sent a penny to extremists.

It is the risk environment that triggers scrutiny.

Not guilt.Not ethnicity.Not religion.Not nationality.

Risk.

That’s how law enforcement sees it.

VI. WHY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD HAVE BEEN INVOLVED — AND STILL COULD BE

Under the dual sovereignty doctrine, federal prosecutors can still bring charges, including:

• Wire fraud

• Mail fraud

• Health-care fraud

• Conspiracy

• Money laundering

• Theft of federal funds

• Aggravated identity theft

These charges all remain available.

And with them comes:

• Forensic tracing mandating foreign cooperation

• Bank-subpoena power

• FinCEN map tracing

• IRS-CI international asset tracing

• FBI counterterrorism financial analysis

Minnesota cannot do any of that.

Only Washington can.

And with $5 million missing, the case begs for federal review.

VII. DOES MINNESOTA’S POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT DISCOURAGE FEDERAL REFERRALS?

Many federal investigators privately express the same frustration:

State officials avoid federal escalation in cases involving politically sensitive communities because they fear accusations of bias and potential electoral fallout.

This is not corruption.This is political self-preservation.

In Minneapolis politics:

• Somali-American turnout is extremely high

• The bloc is heavily aligned with the DFL

• Local DFL leadership depends on that bloc

• Large-scale fraud cases involving Somali defendants generate backlash

• After Feeding Our Future, the political temperature is even hotter

Thus:

There are structural incentives to keep these cases small, local, and quiet — even when millions go missing.

What gets lost is accountability.

What gets preserved is political stability.

VIII. THE REAL QUESTION MINNESOTA NEVER ASKED

At the end of all this — a $7 million fraud, a wife who walked, a husband acquitted despite the jury’s verdict, and a judge willing to override all twelve jurors — the core question remains untouched:

Where is the missing money?

If the system will not ask that question, then the public must.

Because millions of taxpayer dollars did not evaporate.They moved.Somewhere.

And until someone follows that money — across accounts, across borders, or into the shadows — Minnesota will remain a jurisdiction where:

• Big fraud pays,

• Political sensitivities override oversight,

• Millions disappear without consequence, and

• Federal concerns about opaque money flows continue to grow.

The Promise Health case isn’t just about theft.It’s about the trails we refuse to follow,the questions we refuse to ask,and the institutions that look away when politics and money intersect.

Until those trails are traced,one question will haunt Minnesota:

Where’s the missing money?