Federal Agents Raid 22 Minneapolis Businesses in Massive Fraud Investigation
Federal agents are currently raiding 22 businesses in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as part of a major federal fraud investigation. Brooke Taylor reports live that the raids are related to a viral YouTube video by Nick Shirley, which exposed alleged child care funding fraud in December. The Trump administration previously froze funding for child care and called for a full audit of certain daycares.
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Former Minnesota Vikings captain and Minnesota Golden Gophers football star Jack Brewer has witnessed an arc of crime and punishment involving his state’s Somali community.
After previously telling Pak Gazette Digital that he watched alleged Somali scammers buy luxury sports cars during his playing career with the Vikings, Brewer witnessed the FBI conduct raids on the alleged Somali scammers at the center of a years-long Minnesota welfare fraud scheme.
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Jack Brewer supports law enforcement officers in Minneapolis. (Pak Gazette, Getty Images)
“Americans should celebrate today. Finally, we have an FBI that is really standing up for the poor in this country and stopping this corruption that is going on in and around Minneapolis, where they are robbing, literally robbing, the orphans, the widows and the poor,” Brewer told Pak Gazette Digital later Tuesday.
“Thank God Kash Patel and the federal government are stepping in, because they’re the only ones who will even try to police this place. Minnesota won’t police itself.”
Federal authorities raided more than 20 locations, including day care centers, in Minneapolis on Tuesday as part of a extensive fraud investigation in majority Somali-owned companies, sources confirmed to Pak Gazette.
Authorities executed 22 federal search warrants in Minnesota on Tuesday morning as part of the operation, which is not related to immigration.
The raids focus on federal investigations of fraud at majority-Somali-owned businesses, including daycare centers that registered their childcare with the state but allegedly billed for care that was not provided.
“They prey on vulnerable people,” Brewer said of the alleged scammers.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT MINNESOTA’S ‘FEEDING OUR FUTURE’ FRAUD AT THE HEART OF TRUMP’S LATEST CRACKDOWN
Former Minnesota Vikings safety Jack Brewer speaks during a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, on February 27, 2021. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., speaks at a news conference at City Hall following a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on August 28, 2025. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg; Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
“I think they go into these networks and they broadcast it to each other: how to steal from the United States government and how to exploit the very people those programs were created for. Those people are disgusting. They are stealing from the people who need help the most and turning suffering into their own personal business model.”
Brewer was a standout special teams player and team captain for the Minnesota Vikings. Signed as a free agent, he played in 15 games in 2002, leading the team in special teams tackles and securing his first career interception against Green Bay. He was named captain of the team in 2003.
Before that, he was a standout safety and team captain at the University of Minnesota after transferring from SMU, earning First Team All-Big Ten honors and leading defensive backs in tackles in 2001.
“Minnesota is one of the places in the United States with the most fatherless children, particularly because 28% of its households are single-family homes, and the vast majority are single mothers. Minnesota is literally vulnerable to these schemes of all these people who have figured out how to manipulate the system and have created industries of corruption,” Brewer added.
“A lot of liberal cities, but especially Minneapolis, have become completely lawless. There’s no way they’re going to police themselves, not at the state level, not at the local level, not at the city level. All they do is let people get away with crime after crime, regardless of whether it’s a violent crime or a white-collar crime… What can you do to go to jail in Minnesota? If you look at it, they have some of the shortest prison sentences, they let people out of jail and “It becomes a pitched battle. It’s a complete pitched battle.”
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Minnesota has been in the spotlight for years for Medicaid fraud, including a massive $300 million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. It attracted renewed national attention in 2025, as convictions piled up and the state became a flashpoint in the crisis. The Trump administration broader “war on fraud.”
In 2022, during the administration of former President Joe Biden, 47 people were charged. As of December, 57 people have been convicted, either because they pleaded guilty or because they lost their case. Most of the defendants are of Somali descent.
