Minnesota DHS Whistleblowers Accuse Walz of Enabling Widespread Fraud

Minnesota DHS Whistleblowers Accuse Walz of Enabling Widespread Fraud

Minnesota’s own human services workers just blew the whistle on their boss, and they did it in public, in writing, and on the record.

The X account for Minnesota Department of Human Service Employees posted a remarkable statement squarely blaming Gov. Tim Walz for “massive fraud” in the state’s welfare system and accusing his administration of retaliating against whistleblowers instead of stopping the theft. 

Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression,… https://t.co/cEtbnuKmgn

— Minnesota Department of Human Service Employees (@Minnesota_DHS) November 30, 2025

“Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation by Tim Walz, certain DFL members and an indifferent mainstream media. It’s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to.

In addition to retaliating against whistleblower, Tim Walz disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance. Media and politicians supporting Tim Walz or the DFL-agenda attacked whistleblowers who were trying to raise red flags on fraudulent activities.

This is a cascade of systemic failures leading up to Tim Walz. Agency leaders appointed by Tim Walz willfully disregarded rules and laws to keep fraud reports quiet – even to the extent of threatening families of whistleblowers. These same leaders are not qualified for their jobs, instead getting leadership jobs via Tim Walz’s friendship so state government were left floundering. DFL lawmakers refused to acknowledge fraud and deflected any serious conversation to stop fraud. Biased mainstream media such as WCCO and MPR showed absolutely no interest in covering fraud happening in our own state. Programs, especially in behavioral health and disability services were built without any guardrails against fraud, all in an attempt to extract more funding from legislature and the federal government.

As staff, we firsthand witnessed and observed fraud happening yet we were shutdown, reassigned and told to keep quiet. Sometimes more. Leadership did not want to appear to discriminate against certain communities and were unwilling to take action, such as stopping fraud, that would have an adverse impact on their image. To date, no single agency leader has been held responsible for their role in fraud whether it’s Shireen Gandhi, Jess Geil, Jodi Harpstead, Natasha Merz, Eric Grumdahl or others.

It is a structure created and maintained by Tim Walz who has created an environment of inter-related agencies and institutions including the media – that help foster fraud through retaliation and turning a blind eye in exchange for political gain in the form of high power agency leadership jobs or other perks.

Fundamentally, Tim Walz is dishonest, lacks ethics and integrity, has poor leadership abilities, and has never taken any accountability for his role in fraud. Instead, Tim Walz deflects by blaming national politics for his own failings and distracts the public with inveterate lying. These lies include his reference of a budget surplus under his tenure. Fact is, Minnesota never had a surplus, we had been given federal ARPA funds that were conflated as surplus money otherwise, we’d be in a deficit. And those ARPA funds, which were meant to be temporary funds were used to create more leadership positions for Tim Walz “buddies.”

As such, we can’t fight fraud in Minnesota alone hence why we’re appealing to the federal levels of government. We need all the help we can get as Tim Walz’s agency leaders have upped their brazen approach in covering up their knowledge of fraud.

We are grateful to numerous solid politicians (esp the Fraud Committee) and media outlets who are trying to halt fraud. We are also grateful to other whistleblowers who are bravely stepping up.

Thank You NY Times for bringing the plight of Minnesota to the national stage.”

These are not right-wing activists on X. They are self-described Minnesota DHS employees accusing their own agency leadership of threatening whistleblowers’ families and weaponizing internal power to keep fraud “quiet” for political reasons. 

Their statement lands in a very specific context. As City Journal reported in a lengthy investigation, Minnesota’s welfare apparatus under Walz has become a global punchline for fraud, with a special focus on how easily certain programs were looted:

“Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots.”

In many cases, the fraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota’s sizeable Somali community. Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. As one confidential source put it: “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”

City Journal detailed how Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services program exploded from a projected 2.6 million dollars a year to tens of millions annually, before DHS finally moved to scrap it while federal prosecutors said the “vast majority” of claims were fraudulent and involved purely fictitious companies. The same network of players, often tied into the Somali community and its political patrons, shows up in case after case, from housing scams to autism services and the gigantic Feeding Our Future scandal.

Legal Insurrection has already walked through how the “Somalia diaspora” fraud machine intersected with Minnesota’s political class, noting that the problem is not isolated clerical error but a deeply embedded system:

“Minneapolis Somalians turned out to be creative and prolific fraudsters. Their exploits are so massive that they incriminate nearly the entire diaspora in America… In a press release, [U.S. Attorney Joe] Thompson spoke of theft of ‘billions’ in a ‘web’ of conspiracies. Thorpe and Rufo counted 28 schemes busted since 2019, most of them involving Somalians.”

The DHS employees’ statement plugs directly into that picture. They claim Walz appointees “willfully disregarded rules and laws,” neutralized the Legislative Auditor, and refused to act because enforcing the rules against obviously fraudulent actors from “certain communities” would look politically incorrect. Meanwhile, according to federal investigators, welfare money was being converted into remittances that flowed through hawala networks where Al Shabaab “takes a cut.”

Put bluntly, the people inside Minnesota’s own human services agency are now saying out loud what outside investigators and reporters have been documenting for years: the fraud raging through Minnesota’s welfare state is not a surprise; it is the inevitable result of a political and bureaucratic culture Walz built and protected.

And if DHS staff are right, the governor who likes to boast about “investing in Minnesotans” has instead presided over an era in which Minnesotans were forced to “invest” in fraudsters at home and, through them, terrorists abroad.

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