Minnesota Duo Busted in $21M Autism Medicaid Scam, Billing the State for Therapy That Never Happened

Two Minnesota women ripped off taxpayers for $21 million by billing the state to treat autistic kids who were never treated, the feds charged this week.

Shamso Ahmed Hassan, 55, and Hanaan Mursal Yusuf, 25, were arrested May 21 and hit with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, eight counts of health care fraud, and two counts of money laundering. Prosecutors say the pair tried to drain $46.6 million from Minnesota's Medicaid autism program, in what the Justice Department calls the largest autism fraud case it has ever charged.

The cash came out of EIDBI, the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program, which pays for one-on-one therapy for children under 21 with autism.

Hassan ran the billing for Smart Therapy Center LLC and secretly owned pieces of both Smart Therapy and Star Autism Center LLC, ownership she never disclosed to the state as required, prosecutors say. From May 2020 to December 2024, the two allegedly fired off phony Medicaid claims for therapy that was never delivered.

The kicker: they paid parents to bring their kids in. Cash kickbacks bought the names. The centers diagnosed children whether they needed it or not, then billed Minnesota for the imaginary treatment, according to the indictment. The two money laundering counts cover where the money went next, into private accounts and real estate.

"Organized theft that exploited the most vulnerable children in America," is how Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described the conduct, announcing the charges in Minneapolis alongside Medicaid chief Mehmet Oz.

Both women are U.S. citizens. Hassan is naturalized. The FBI is leading the case with Homeland Security Investigations in St. Paul. Both remain in federal custody.

"ICE continues to zero in on the rampant fraud in Minnesota," said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. "We will end the defrauding of the American people."

. As one confidential source put it: “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”

Minnesota’s Somali community has been caught funneling taxpayer dollars to the terrorist group Al-Shabaab overseas by falsely diagnosing children with autism through Medicaid. Look at the insane spike in claims: 2018: $3 million 2023: $399 million

The Unredacted | Truth Without PermissionGene Goodwin

One arrest in a $9 billion wave

The autism bust was not a one-off. It was part of a coordinated May 21 takedown that charged 15 Minnesota defendants and alleged more than $90 million in attempted fraud, including the two largest Medicaid fraud cases ever brought in the state.

And it lands inside a fraud epidemic that prosecutors now estimate could top $9 billion. Former Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said Minnesota has flagged 14 separate Medicaid programs for serious fraud. EIDBI is just one of them.

The pattern is always the same: low barriers to sign up, shell companies, kickbacks to recruit warm bodies, then a flood of fake invoices to the state.

Federal prosecutors and Attorney General Pam Bondi have been blunt about who is running the schemes. In the Feeding Our Future case, Bondi said 72 of the 78 people charged are of Somali descent, with five fugitives believed to be hiding in Africa. The U.S. Attorney's Office disclosed that roughly 89% of those charged in that case are Somali Americans, according to the Associated Press. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the country.

The cases that built the scandal

Feeding Our Future, $250 million. The largest pandemic relief fraud in U.S. history. Founder Aimee Bock and Safari Restaurant owner Salim Said were convicted of looting a child nutrition program by claiming to serve 91 million meals that were never served. Bock was sentenced this month to 41.5 years and ordered to repay $243 million. More than 70 people have been charged and at least 63 convicted. The money bought mansions, luxury cars, and property in Kenya and Turkey. Bock fought a state attempt to shut the scheme down by accusing regulators of discriminating against a Somali-serving nonprofit. She won that round. Then she went to prison.

The autism program, EIDBI. Asha Farhan Hassan was the first defendant charged in the autism probe, pleading guilty to a $14 million scheme. She had also pocketed $465,000 from Feeding Our Future. State records showed her company billed Minnesota programs for $31.8 million, far above what was approved. This week's $46.6 million case against Shamso Hassan and Yusuf is now the biggest of the bunch.

Housing Stabilization Services. The same May 21 takedown swept in providers accused of fleecing a Medicaid housing program meant for the disabled and low-income, part of more than $39 million in losses across related schemes.

Nobody’s watching: how New York’s staged-crash industry stole $300 million in plain sight

In NYC you can stage an Uber crash with your family, use one shared iPhone, get $47k for a paint scrape. Arbitrator calls it staged? Still get paid. Trial lawyers and pols keep the scam alive while ATIC loses $700M in one quarter. Drivers and passengers foot the bill. This is legalized looting.

The Unredacted | Truth Without PermissionGene Goodwin

Walz under fire

The cases have put a hard light on Gov. Tim Walz. A House Oversight Committee report accuses Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison of knowing about the fraud, lying about it, and silencing whistleblowers. Investigators found the state Department of Education kept paying Feeding Our Future voluntarily after spotting red flags. Walz blamed an FBI request and a court order. The committee found the FBI gave no such order, and the judge publicly said he never told the state to keep paying.

The committee also cited reporting that some Minnesota program money was wired overseas to terror groups including al-Shabaab and ISIS, an allegation still under investigation.

The Trump administration has since stood up a President's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, with FBI and DHS pouring resources into the state. For Hassan and Yusuf, that surge arrived with handcuffs.

The $21 million is gone. The $9 billion is the open question. And the kids the program was built for are still waiting on a version that actually treats them.