The Justice Department on Thursday charged 15 people in Minnesota with defrauding Medicaid and other state-run social services programs out of more than $90 million, in what federal officials called the largest autism fraud scheme ever charged by the department and the highest loss amount ever charged in a Medicaid case in Minnesota.
Officials said the case reaches across programs meant to feed, house and care for the state’s most vulnerable people. Two defendants are accused of taking $46.6 million from a publicly funded program for children with autism, while 11 others were accused of siphoning more than $39.1 million from three disability programs that were supposed to help people live independently.
The announcement in Minneapolis brought together top officials including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz. Prosecutors said the autism scheme used kickbacks paid to parents who brought their children to autism centers, while children were diagnosed regardless of medical need and bills were submitted for services that were never provided.
Colin McDonald of the Justice Department said the fraud in Minnesota was “shocking” and added that the department’s work was not finished. The case landed as the administration in Washington has made a broader push on alleged fraud in Minnesota, with the White House in March launching a nationwide initiative chaired by Vice President JD Vance to combat fraud.
The timing also mattered in Minneapolis. Thursday’s charges were announced the same day Aimee Bock was sentenced in a separate $250 million fraud case that prosecutors had described as the nation’s single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme. The overlap has turned Minnesota into a central stage for a federal campaign that has also included halted Medicaid funding for the state and frozen Medicare enrollments for some hospice and home health care agencies.
That wider scrutiny has pulled in cases involving members of Minnesota’s Somali community, which the article says were cited by President Donald Trump and his administration to justify an immigration operation called Operation Metro Surge. Against that backdrop, the new criminal case is not just another fraud prosecution; it is now the largest Medicaid loss case Minnesota has seen and the Justice Department’s biggest autism fraud case yet.
McDonald said the department plans to expand its Health Care Fraud Strike Force in the Midwest with 15 additional prosecutors focused on Medicaid fraud in Minnesota and across the country. The charges announced Thursday show the crackdown is widening, not winding down, and the next phase will be whether those new prosecutors can match the scale of the schemes federal authorities say they have uncovered.
