The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) has confirmed that 85 autism treatment centers—which is about one in five of the state’s more than 450 registered providers—are now under active investigation.
DHS was informed last year – during the Biden administration – of suspicious patterns of high billing and unqualified providers.
However, the reports – regarding centers in a predominately Somali community – were not acted on so the situation quickly got out of control.
The investigations were launched after unannounced compliance visits were made to centers, to address complaints that the centers were billing for services never provided, employed unqualified staff, and were receiving kickbacks in the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) program.
The state decided to have the EIDBI program covered through Medicaid in 2017 – but after the move, the number of Autism treatment centers in the state exploded from a handful in 2017, to more than 400 in 2025.
This surge led to skyrocketing billing to Medicaid from $1.2 million in 2017 to $228 million in 2024.
DHS Commissioner Shireen Gandhi said that the system has paid out nearly $700 million in claims since its launch.
DHS has already suspended payments to at least 29 providers and referred cases to federal authorities, with some centers facing permanent bans from Medicaid.
This is not the first time Minnesota is facing a major fraud scandal; in fact many are now drawing parallels to the Feeding Our Future meal fraud scandal that also happened in a Somali migrant community – in Ilhan Omar’s district.
In that scandal, the fraud happened during the pandemic, by dozens of people exploiting child nutrition programs.
The organization sued the state claiming racism- to force taxpayers to continue paying for meals for ‘hungry kids’ with disbursements skyrocketing from $3.4 million in 2019 to nearly $200 million in 2021.
The company claimed they were feeding 120,000 kids a day – but FBI raids in 2022 found ghost operations, over inflated meal counts and fabricated rosters.
70 people have been charged and so far 47 have been convicted.
It also comes on the heels of a massive Medicaid fraud scheme that involved housing service providers that were defrauding Medicaid and vulnerable clients.
The taxpayer funded program for the housing services was supposed to help people in need find homes, however the service providers allegedly forged signatures, billed people in need of help that didn’t receive services and over billed Medicaid to the tune of $60 million.
Again, happening in a predominantly Somali community.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson commented at one raid site that “fraud is a huge problem in Minnesota” indicating that massive fraud is happening across multiple programs in the state.
