Kickbacks to parents a feature of daycare, autism programs at center of Somali fraud allegations in Minnesota

Kickbacks to parents involved in alleged daycare and autism center fraud schemes have been a feature in the wave of scandal that has been taking place in the Somali community of Minnesota. Both allegations as well as criminal charges have highlighted the tactic being used by the alleged fraudsters.

Unearthed videos from a 2018 fraud case in Minnesota show parents as well as daycare providers taking part in a daycare fraud scheme going back to 2015. In the video, a man is shown handing an envelope to parents with alleged kickback cash for their participation in the fraud at a daycare.

The parents arrive with the children for a space of a few minutes, take the cash, and then leave, according to the report from local news. Sometimes, they did not bring the children at all.

Additionally, charges earlier this year brought by the Trump Department of Justice in an autism fraud scheme against Asha Farhan Hassan, 28, implicated that she would pay "monthly cash kickback payments to the parents of children who enrolled their children in Smart Therapy to receive autism services."

The kickbacks in the case ranged from $300 to $1,500 a month per child that was supposedly "enrolled" in the services.

"The amount of these payments was contingent on the services DHS authorized a child to receive—the higher the authorization amount, the higher the kickback. Often, parents threatened to leave Smart Therapy and take their children to other autism centers if they did not get paid higher kickbacks. Several larger families left Smart Therapy after being offered larger kickbacks by other autism centers. Hassan and her partners covered the cost of the kickback payments that Smart Therapy paid to parents through the fraudulent billings to Medicaid," a press release from the DOJ on the case stated.

In another case, Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf, 27, was federally charged for fraudulent autism services in Minnesota and had also "approached parents in the Somali community to recruit their children into Star Autism."

Several other defendants have been charged in the scheme that took place between 2020 to 2024, according to a DOJ press release published earlier in December.

The revelations come after a viral report from Nick Shirley, who went around Minnesota searching for daycare centers which did not appear to be in operation but were taking millions of dollars in government subsidies. The video report has since been seen over 125 million times on X, with many people calling for accountability and prosecution of the rampant fraud in the state.