Op-ed links Minnesota welfare fraud to New York, cites Medicaid and CDPAP concerns

An op-ed in the New York Post argues that Minnesota’s multibillion-dollar welfare fraud problem has counterparts in New York, where Medicaid outlays total about $116 billion a year and thus present an even larger target for fraudsters. The piece centers on the Feeding Our Future scheme, which federal authorities say hijacked about $250 million in pandemic-relief funds, describing it as the leading edge of what the author calls a broader pattern of abuse across state programs.

Citing statements from federal prosecutors, the column portrays Minnesota as a case study in a "systematic and wholesale" attack on state welfare programs. It notes that indictments in Minnesota charge Philadelphia-based Anthony Waddell Jefferson and Lester Brown with siphoning millions from state Medicaid programs intended to help addicts and the disabled. Fraudsters allegedly established bogus “community-based” outfits that billed for “housing stabilization services” they never provided; as fake invoices piled up, the state kept cutting checks, and costs ballooned to multiples of the anticipated amounts. The piece says scammers often had little to no connection to Minnesota yet targeted programs for autistic children, the disabled, addiction treatment, child care and more. It links these schemes to a 2014 push by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to champion the Money Remittances Improvement Act, which the column says encouraged the U.S. Treasury to rely on weaker state-level compliance rules for international transfers by “nonbank” financial institutions, enabling some of the stolen funds to flow to Mogadishu. The author contends Minnesota became a magnet for fraud, a place people traveled to exploit its programs, with Thompson describing the pattern as a “fraud-tourism” industry.

The op-ed then turns to New York, arguing that the Empire State’s Medicaid program—one of the largest in the nation, with annual outlays near $116 billion—offers an even more tempting target for dishonest actors. It highlights New York’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, which pays relatives or aides to assist Medicaid-eligible individuals in their homes and has grown to about $11 billion a year in outlays. The column faults Gov. Kathy Hochul’s management of CDPAP, arguing that appointing a single private firm to oversee the program has failed to curb fraud or identify scammers. Instead, it contends that the arrangement has empowered the powerful nonprofit workforce and enabled the 1199 labor union to organize roughly 300,000 personal assistants, a development the piece predicts will push costs higher. The piece describes New York’s nonprofit sector as part of a broader “nonprofit-industrial complex” that benefits politically connected providers, implying that oversight is compromised by political ties as well as market dynamics.

The author asserts that liberal policymakers in both states, while eager to expand social programs, have often shown limited curiosity about where money goes or how well it helps the needy. It contends that in Minnesota, attention to fraud has sometimes intersected with concerns about Somali communities that are pivotal Democratic constituencies, a dynamic the column cautions can shape political responses. By contrast, it argues that New York politicians are frequently in bed with a broad nonprofit ecosystem, which the piece says can shield questionable practices from aggressive scrutiny. Taken together, the column argues that the scale of spending and the opacity of oversight create conditions in which fraud can flourish in both states, potentially more so in New York given the program size and political protection cited.

Progressives, according to the piece, tend to rely on taxpayer cash to address social problems but are chronically uncurious about whether the money actually reaches the intended recipients or yields measurable benefits. It calls for tighter controls on program administration, more robust compliance requirements for international transfers, and greater independence in overseeing private contractors and nonprofit groups involved in welfare work. The piece closes by framing the debate not as a Minnesota anomaly but as a shared challenge facing large-scale welfare programs in politically active states, with implications for how lawmakers balance social goals and accountability.