Transcription
My journey into uncovering fraud in Minnesota began when I started to notice very unusual changes in the Minneapolis area. I would drive around the Twin Cities and it seemed these child care facilities were literally on every block. Minnesota sees a fair amount of snow in the winter and I began to notice driving by these child facilities. There were never any footprints. So I said, "Well, what's going on here with all these childcare facilities?" So I began to check the Minnesota Secretary of State's website to find out just who owned all these childcare facilities. And every single one of them was Somali owned. The learing misspelling was the final straw for me. That's the spark that ignited my fullon investigation.
Now we hear that the Minnesota Department of Human Service is forging documents and backdating paperwork. Uh my name is David Hul. I was born in Minneapolis. I'm a lifelong resident of Twin Cities area. And although sound of my testimony, I take exception to Mr. Weissman's questioning of my data as being inaccurate. I'll get back to that.
My journey into uncovering fraud in Minnesota and ultimately throughout the entire United States, as it turns out, began when I started to notice very unusual changes in the Minneapolis area. Remember, I grew up there, so I know Minneapolis very well. Most notably, the enormous number of child care facilities that had opened up. I would drive around the Twin Cities and it seemed these child care facilities were literally on every block. Some blocks had two or three childcare facilities on the same block. Minnesota sees a fair amount of snow in the winter. And I began to notice driving by these child facilities, there were never any footprints in the snow outside these childcare facilities. And I'd go by them three, four, five times a day, Monday through Friday because my office is in the heart of where a lot of these childcare facilities are. So I said, "Well, what's going on here with all these childcare facilities?" So I began to check the Minnesota Secretary of State's website to find out just who owned all these childcare facilities. And guess what? Every single one of them was Somali owned. Not every child care facility in Minnesota was, but the ones that I was looking at that were by my office, and there were a lot of them. What's even stranger is that every one of these facilities located in a commercial or industrial building. No play areas, bad neighborhoods, and several of the child care facilities had signage which stated they were open either 7 am to 10 pm, 2 pm to 10 pm, quality ling center, for example, or open 24 hours. Who the heck brings their kid to stay overnight at a child care facility in a rough neighborhood? None of it made any sense. The learing misspelling was the final straw for me. That's the spark that ignited my fullon investigation. >> [snorts] >>
So, Minnesota has two different child care licenses available. One covers 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and the other one covers 6 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. They're two very different licenses. So, for a child care facility to be open 24 hours a day or even from 2:00 p.m. to 10 p.m., they need both licenses. How many of these facilities that are open these extended hours have two licenses? None of them. Zero. They all have only one license.
Minnesota child care supervision requirements include the following. For infant care, that's 0 to 17 months of age, you have to have one adult supervising for every four children and max eight in a group. For toddlers, which is 18 and 23 months of age, it requires one adult for every five children to supervise. Max 10 children in that group. For two-year-olds, you need one adult for every seven children. So max and 14 in the group. So if a child care facility was building the state of Minnesota for 99 children, i.e. quality ling center, that child care facility would need to have at least eight employees supervising those children. These cannot be 1099 employees. They have to be W2 employees. That means we're going to have at least eight W2s and we're going to have at least eight I9's. So if the feds went in and checked that, what do you think they're going to find? You already know the answer.
One issue that is often brought up is that we are unfairly targeting the Somali community. This is a fair point to be made. As one Somali gentleman exclaimed in our second video, "We're not the only community that does fraud." Fraud certainly exists in every community. It was the sheer volume and the blatant nature of the Somali fraud that demanded my attention. When one facility, Makeo Childare, has another child care, mini child care registered at the same address, but the sign still says Mako Childare, it kind of stands out. And again, no children, no footprints in the snow ever. This is what I mean by being blatant. Misspelled signage, posted hours that require two licenses, no child footprints in the snow, not even once.
So, how did we arrive at this point? Why are we having this hearing? We got here because of politicians almost exclusively Democrats. A couple of names come to mind. Jodie Harpstead, the former commissioner of the Department of Human Services, and Shireen Gandhi, the current commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Harpstead put the whole fraud on steroids. She was steering the ship from 2019 to 2025 during the CO9 pandemic. This is when the whole fraud network exploded into what we see nationally today and to what we see in my numbers which are accurate. [clears throat and cough]
So now we hear that the Minnesota Department of Human Service is forging documents and backdating paperwork all in an effort to cover up their complicity in this fraud. This is just more criminal behavior from the gang at the Minnesota Department of Human Services. It's criminal behavior. Minneapolis was the incubator for this nationwide fraud which we're now seeing in Maine. We're seeing it in Washington State. We're seeing it in Columbus, Ohio. It was constructed here in Minneapolis. And the idea behind it was if you can get a population in here and fit them into this fraud framework, you have a guaranteed voting block for all eternity. The fraud was started and then it expanded out and now you see it all around the country.
So why is fraud bad? Why is it a bad thing? Why does anybody care? Fraud is bad because it steals from the blind. It steals from kids with cancer. It steals from disabled. It steals from the homeless. It steals from wounded veterans. It steals from everybody in this room.
So what is the answer? How do we fix this? The way we fix this is that the federal government has to go to the Minnesota Department of Human Services and every social service agency and say, "Look, if you issue a payment using federal money and it goes to a fraudulent company, you run the risk of us coming in, arresting you, handcuffing you, parading you out, bring you in front of a judge, and putting you in prison. So, if you're going to issue a payment, you better make sure that it's a legitimate company. Otherwise, don't issue the payment. Go on Google Earth. Look at it's a liquor store. It's a grocery store. Why are you issuing payment to a child care or a transportation company that doesn't even exist? Why are you issuing that payment? It's criminal behavior. The federal government has to has to use that cudel over these people and say, "Look, you better be sure if you issue that payment that it's legitimate payment or you could end up in prison." Thank you.
>> Representative Robbins, let's let's start with you. How broad was the fraud that was perpetrated in Minnesota?
>> We are still getting a handle on it. Um but it's all of the not all of but a huge segment of the child care programs, um autism services, sober homes, emergency transportation of 14 areas of Medicaid fraud, SNAP benefits. Um, we are still, I would say, getting whistleblower reports, uncovering new vectors of fraud. Um, we just discovered the adult day services and the assisted living. Those haven't been counted in the total so far. So, I I believe it's much broader than we currently know, and we will continue to to expose it.