Investigative journalist Nick Shirley just dropped another major bombshell as Minnesota continues to unravel with Somali fraud and scandal.
Shirley has returned to what he calls the “belly of the beast” to expose a growing web of corruption he says is draining millions—if not billions—of taxpayer dollars through daycare centers, adult daycares, healthcare services and a massive non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) scheme.
“So, here in Minnesota, you have daycare fraud, you have adult daycare fraud, you have healthcare fraud, and you even have more fraud,” explains local investigator David Hoch, who has been tracking this scandal for years. For him, the real nerve center is transportation. “What I think might be sort of the heart of the beast here is this transportation fraud.”
In Minnesota, Hoch says there are hundreds of NEMT companies, “more than 90% of them…Somali-owned.” These companies bill the state for taking people to appointments, waiting and driving them home. “The average is going to be $50 per trip,” Hoch notes. “So it’s a $100 per round trip.”
But here’s the bombshell: “How many of these trips are being provided? Zero.”
According to Hoch, all these companies have to do is go online, fill out a form—“How many trips? How many miles?”—and the state sends the money. “Nobody bothers to check,” he says. No one calls the doctor, the dentist or the clinic to see if anyone actually showed up.
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Nick and David hit the streets to see what’s really there.
At Safari Transportation, which is officially registered with the state at 607 Cedar Avenue, they find no vans—just a money wiring business. Staff tell them Safari is “the money wiring” shop, not transportation. “So Safari gets the money, and then they wire it out,” Nick concludes on camera.
Next door, Dreamline Transportation is supposed to operate from a liquor store address and a suite filled with mailboxes. “607 Safari Transportation doesn’t exist. It’s actually a money wiring business,” Nick summarizes. “617 Dreamline…is actually a liquor store…617A is a place where there’s a bunch of mailboxes.”
They keep going: Silver Mountain, RayZ, Crescent Transportation, Advanced Mobility. Again and again, they find no signs, no offices, no fleet—just ghost companies on paper. At one apartment complex where Crescent is registered, a resident says flatly, “Have you ever seen Crescent Transportation out here?… Nope. I’m a taxpayer. I don’t like it.”
The same pattern surfaces in high-dollar daycare centers. At Hopkins Child Care Center, which is licensed for 118 children and received over $2.25 million this year, Nick points to blacked-out windows, locked doors, and no children’s footprints in the snow. “For a place that’s supposed to have over a 100 children, there’s no footprints anywhere,” he says.
In Eden Prairie, Proud Child Care Center has taken in over a million dollars. When Nick simply asks for enrollment paperwork for a fictional child—just to show they’re functioning as a real daycare—staff refuse. “It would debunk all claims if you could just give me a piece of paper saying where to enroll a child,” Nick says.
“I’m sorry. We can’t do that,” they answer.
The money trail doesn’t stop at Minnesota’s borders.
A former airport narcotics officer testifies that, between about 2015 and 2021, he repeatedly saw Somali men flying out of Minneapolis–St. Paul with $1–6 million in cash per suitcase, sometimes twice a week. “You’re talking, I don’t know, five to six million a week,” he recalls.
The route, he says, was MSP to Atlanta to Dubai, and then “they’d wire the money to Somalia.”
All the while, when Nick shines a camera on addresses and asks simple questions—“Where is the transportation company? Where are the children?”—he’s met with rage, accusations of Islamophobia and threats. He answers the same way every time: “This isn’t about race. This isn’t against religion. This is about fraud. We’re fighting fraud here. We’re not fighting a race.”
In case you weren’t paying attention, this isn’t just a political scandal; it’s a spiritual one. Scripture tells us that light exposes the works of darkness. As Nick declares, “Fraud is fraud,” the question now is whether leaders in Minnesota—and across America—will allow the light to do its work, hold the guilty accountable and protect the innocent whose money is being stolen in their name.
To watch the full video, you can click here. (Editor’s note: Foul language contained in video).
Abby Trivett is a writer and editor for Charisma Media and has a passion for sharing the gospel through the written word. She holds two degrees from Regent University, a B.A. in Communication with a concentration in Journalism and a Master of Arts in Journalism. She is the author of the upcoming book, The Power of Suddenly: Discover How God Can Change Everything in a Moment.
