Dealing with fraud in Minnesota is like playing "whack-a-mole" at Chuck E Cheese with your kids. Only instead of little moles, we're playing with schemes to bilk the taxpayer of billions of dollars in tax money.
Unlike the classic coin-operated game:
- The game only goes so long before you have to put in another quarter, and
- at least you get some tickets to take up to the front desk to trade with the harried-yet-bored high school kid for an "Elmo" sticker or a candy bracelet or something.
With government fraud, it just looks for its next grift. And you don't even get paper tickets.
Let's walk through this past year in Minnesota.
It's been almost five years since conservative media discovered the first of the COVID-era food fraud in Minnesota, but it started blowing up about a year ago when the Feds started digging into the issue and finding just how bad it had gotten, with the local US Attorney citing a figure of nine billion dollars, and a tape turned up of sitting Attorney General Keith Ellison promising soon-to-be federal fraud defendants that he'd help them out in litigation the state's Department of Education had filed against them. Not long after, Nick Shirley - likely with the help of Republicans in the state legislature, blew up one apparent scandal and made "Quality Learing Center" a national punch line. Around that time, ICE started "Metro Surge", a crackdown on the abuses of Minneapolis's self-proclaimed "sanctuary city" status, under which the city had turned into a sex-trafficking and drug-wholesaling hub.
#Unexpectedly, Big Left's professional noise and rage machine moved to Minneapolis, dropping in the machinery to organize the Twin Cities' boundless stockpile of superannuated hippies and nose-ringed theater kids into a roving protest that followed the Feds wherever they went (and exploited a couple shootings and some politically-clubfooted overreach by some of the feds, up to and including Kristi Noem).
Also #unexpectedly, the weeks of "protests", sometimes swerving close to riots, with "protesters" closing off neighborhoods and patrolling the streets with whistles and vuvuzelas and making a city where winter is already hard tough for business into an even less desirable destination than COVID and the 2020 riots left it. Some businesses closed, others cried "uncle", and the Theater Kids and the Democrat Farmer Labor (DFL) party they belong to blame the whole thing on "ICE", not the roaming mobs that turned the city into a cold migraine headache for six weeks.
Hennepin County created a $2 million fund to help small businesses "harmed by ICE" during operation Metro Surge.
How do you supposed that worked?
According to Hennepin County officials, the program received 300 applications seeking a portion of the $2 million commissioners approved for the program in March 2026.
However, officials ended up distributing only an estimated $500,000 to help cover two months of rent or commercial mortgage payments for eligible businesses, benefiting around 80 applicants.
A statement to FOX 9 from Hennepin County Chief Public Relations Officer Carolyn Marinan says that the county collaborated with a community-based lender to review the 300 small business recovery fund applications, ultimately approving only a fraction of them.
The county says that after a "rigorous review," the county has since ended the recovery fund program, the statement says.
To their credit, they actually found the fraud first this time. But we see the appetite is still there. I've added emphasis:
"The fact that people, after all this fraud, felt that they could apply and get away with it, I think it's a problem because clearly there's no fear out there," Lunde said.
Lunde says NextStage, the nonprofit reviewing applications for the county, found applications obviously fabricated using AI and applications copied and pasted across multiple businesses.
When staff made site visits, they found many of the businesses did not exist.
But the narrative must be served. Ilhan Omar has introduced a bill to send federal money to Minnesota to reimburse it for the trouble "protesters" caused trying to keep the feds busting the Theater Kids excellent adventure that was ginned up to distract from the fraud. Soon to be former Congresswoman Angie Craig — who lost her primary against Lieutenant Governer Flanagan to run for Senate — apparently trying to burnish her extreme progressive credentials to support her bid to run the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), is joining in:
Today, I’m introducing my bill with @Ilhan to reimburse states for the financial damages caused by Trump’s ICE.
— Angie Craig (@RepAngieCraig) September 17, 2026
As Minnesotans begin the long process of healing from Operation Metro Surge, it’s important we commit to holding this lawless administration accountable. That starts…
Any bets on where that money winds up?
Minnesota gets all the attention — but if you live in a place run by a government, you should be on the alert for the signs of fraud. In the interest of strict intellectual honesty, I'd say "Red or Blue" government, but my heart's really not in it.
