Minnesota fraudsters fined millions of dollars — but report finds many don't pay and get released anyway
A man who was fined nearly $2 million for scamming the Medicare system was released from probation despite paying nearly none of the fine, and he's not the only one.
An investigative report found that many Minnesota fraudsters who are fined millions of dollars fail to pay back any significant amount but are allowed to get off probation.
'For the person who just doesn't care and is trying to get away with wrongdoing, I think we need stronger medicine.'
In 2023, a man named Tommie Johnson Sr. pleaded guilty to stealing health care funds through a personal care assistance scheme.
Prosecutors wanted to put Johnson in prison for 45 months, but a judge put him on probation instead so he could work to pay off the $1.7 million restitution.
For three years, Johnson paid the bare minimum of monthly payments, often $25 to $50 a month. Despite paying a tiny fraction of what he owed, Johnson was allowed to get off probation by Hennepin County District Court Judge Emily Froehle.
"The record at the time of sentencing reflects that it was unrealistic and not anticipated that [Johnson] would pay the full amount of the joint and some restitution," Froehle wrote in the order.
The case is not unusual, according to investigators with KMSP-TV.
The investigation found that convicted fraudsters paid only about $2.4 million out of $13.3 million in combined restitution ordered through the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit at the office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (DFL). That comes to only about 18.8%.
Many of the fraudsters had their probation discharged despite paying little or nothing toward their restitution.
A spokesperson for the attorney general's office said the office is seeking to strengthen laws to make the fines stick.
RELATED: Top scammer of 'Feeding Our Future' fraud in Minnesota NAILED with painful sentence
"We will continue to urge courts to use all the tools at their disposal to ensure the fraudsters we convict pay back as much of the money they stole as possible," the spokesperson claimed.
"For the person who just doesn't care and is trying to get away with wrongdoing, I think we need stronger medicine for people like that," Ellison said.
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Walz goes silent amid accusations that Democrats sent goons to disrupt fraud investigations
Minnesota House Republicans are locked in a fierce partisan clash with Democrats as GOP lawmakers call for accountability from Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) and his administration for their years of failure to stop widespread welfare fraud that robbed hardworking taxpayers.
It is estimated that the fraud in Minnesota connected to 14 “high-risk” Medicaid services could top $9 billion.
Swanson further claimed senior-level Minnesota DHS officials 'harassed and abused our unit for committing the sin of trying to expose a huge amount of fraud.'
The Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee, led by Rep. Kristin Robbins (R), has held dozens of hearings, aiming to address these issues.
Robbins has slammed Walz for declining the committee’s invitation to testify before House lawmakers, despite being in the Capitol building for his State of the State address the same evening as the committee’s Apr. 28 hearing.
Robbins stated that his “decision-making over the last seven years … should be addressed,” pointing to a 2019 report from the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor, published early in Walz’s administration, that revealed issues in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program.
While Robbins’ committee has not heard testimony from Walz, it has questioned members of his administration. However, Robbins stated lawmakers “did not get satisfactory answers.”
Republicans have introduced a wave of legislation to address the core issues at the heart of the state’s fraud crisis. However, Democrat lawmakers have put up resistance.
Last year, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill to establish an independent Office of Inspector General to investigate. Currently, the OIG is under the Minnesota DHS, an executive branch agency. After weeks of party-line disagreements, a bipartisan OIG compromise advanced in late Apr. 2026.
The “Fraud Isn’t Free Act,” introduced in Feb. 2026, would have required state agencies to implement a corrective action plan in response to fraud in any program they administer. However, the proposal failed to pass a House committee.
GOP lawmakers are also pushing the “Take It Back Act,” introduced in April, which is still in play. If passed, it would impose a 100% tax on an individual or organization convicted of fraud in a state or federal court.
RELATED: Walz tries to take credit for raids on day cares in Minnesota — and Kash Patel humiliates him
As the state remains in the national spotlight for ignoring years of red flags, lawmakers are facing a tied House and are up against the clock, with the legislative session set to conclude in mid-May.
On Apr. 28, FBI Minneapolis and its federal partners raided 22 child-care and autism centers. The criminal search warrants included the infamous “Quality Learing Center,” which misspelled “learning” on the business sign posted outside its establishment, as featured in journalist Nick Shirley’s reporting that uncovered rampant fraud tied to the state’s Somali community.
That same day, Robbins’ fraud committee gathered for a hearing to discuss the state’s Child Care Assistance Program, during which Jay Swanson, a former Minnesota state trooper and a former manager of the Minnesota Department of Human Services child care provider investigation unit from 2014 to 2019, provided damning testimony.
Swanson explained that he was involved in an investigation that led to a federal indictment of the owner of the Salama Child Care Center in 2017. The owner ultimately pled guilty, was sentenced to two years in prison, and was ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution, Swanson said.
“The Salama Child Care Center was located at 1411 Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis. That address might ring a bell for some of you because of a YouTube video taken last December at the Quality Learing Center, which was being operated at the same address,” Swanson told lawmakers, referring to Shirley’s reporting.
Swanson further claimed senior-level Minnesota DHS officials “harassed and abused our unit for committing the sin of trying to expose a huge amount of fraud in the CCAP program.” He noted that some of those individuals are still working at the state DHS.
He told lawmakers that by mid-2017, the leadership at the Minnesota DHS was not focused on stopping CCAP fraud, but “the focus was on stopping the people that are investigating CCAP fraud.”
Swanson stated that the state DHS unit he led was closed shortly after the special Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor report that flagged major weaknesses in the DHS’ fraud controls.
“Rather than INCREASING criminal investigations of childcare fraud after an OLA report came out early in his Administration, @GovTimWalz and DHS closed the unit,” Robbins wrote in a post on X. “They knew and they intentionally stopped criminal investigations.”
Robbins questioned Randy Keys, the inspector general of the Minnesota Department of Child, Youth, and Families, during the Apr. 28 hearing about whether he would want to “reinstate a criminal investigation unit” in the DCYF. This agency was established in 2024 to take over responsibility for child care-related programs from the DHS.
“No,” Keys replied. “It’s very important in our system to ensure that administrative investigations are kept separate from criminal investigations. … What we’re doing is protecting the integrity of the investigations and our ability to use that information.”
RELATED: FBI RAIDS 'Quality Learing Center' and nearly 2 dozen more in Minnesota FRAUD investigation
Less than two years ago, Walz was the darling of the national Democratic Party after Kamala Harris nominated him to join her on the 2024 presidential ticket.
Minnesota’s benefit fraud crisis, however, has damaged Walz’s political career, leading him to drop out of the re-election race. Walz’s prolonged failure to address the fraud prompted House Republicans to propose resolutions H.R. 6 and H.R. 7 in March that would move to impeach the governor and Attorney General Keith Ellison.
H.R. 6, which called for Walz’s removal, accused the governor of engaging “in corrupt conduct in office by violating his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the laws of this state.” It claimed he knowingly concealed or permitted others to conceal “widespread fraud … despite repeated warnings, audits, reports, and public indicators of systematic abuse.”
H.R. 7, which aimed to impeach Ellison, claimed that the attorney general “failed to discharge faithfully the duties of his office to the best of his judgment and ability, by engaging in corrupt conduct in office and committing crimes and misdemeanors.”
The criticism against Ellison stemmed from his alleged ties to those involved in the Feeding Our Future scandal. In 2021, Ellison met with criminal defendants involved with Feeding Our Future, 10 months before any indictments were filed. Shortly after their meeting, Ellison accepted over $10,000 in campaign donations from individuals tied to the group.
Ellison returned some of the campaign donations in 2022, soon after federal indictments were filed. Other campaign funds were returned in May and Dec. of 2025.
House Republican Floor Leader Harry Niska insisted that the only power the House has for accountability in the “multibillion-dollar fraud scandal that’s embarrassing our state” is impeachment.
Democrat lawmakers rejected the impeachment efforts. Rep. Sydney Jordan (DFL) called the attempt a “simple, stupid distraction” and a “political circus.”
Jordan accused Republicans of targeting Walz and Ellison because they “don’t like them,” and claimed GOP lawmakers should be focused on the “absolute solutions” that could prevent “scamming businesses” in the future.
“We actually have a fraud committee that could be doing this, but they haven’t heard any bills to actually crack down on fraud, so I don’t know what they’re doing either. This is exactly the kind of political stunt that has taken over our politics,” Jordan said. “This is an insane waste of time. I can’t believe this is what the Republican caucus is choosing to spend their limited committee time on.”
Walz similarly called the GOP’s effort “a waste of time.” He told Republicans to “just get over it and move on” because his term is coming to an end.
Ellison has insisted that his 2021 meeting with individuals involved in the Feeding Our Future scandal was “routine,” he wrote in a Minnesota Star Tribune op-ed in Apr. 2025.
“I took a meeting in good faith with people I didn’t know, and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them,” Ellison wrote.
In Dec. 2025, a spokesperson for Ellison claimed that the AG did not receive donations from anyone who attended the 2021 meeting and that he had “returned every contribution from the handful of people associated with Feeding Our Future as soon as he was made aware of those connections.”
The procedural resolution to consider H.R. 6 and H.R. 7 was rejected along party lines on Apr. 15 in the Rules Committee.
Walz's office and Ellison's office did not respond to requests for comment from Blaze News.
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Was the Minnesota AG's entire career a long con to funnel money to Somalia?
BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is sounding the alarm on Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), claiming his political career has been a decades-long scheme to facilitate financial transfers to Somalia.
“It feels a whole lot like Keith Ellison may have been pulling off a long con. I mean, decades long, just to facilitate Somalian fraud. Like it seems like this has been his goal for a very long time,” Gonzales says, pointing out that before he was AG, he served in Congress from 2007 to 2019.
“You would expect that in 12 years serving in Congress, there would be a lot to show for it, right? Like he will have had a bunch of bills that he sponsored that passed ... I mean he did turn into the Minnesota AG so like obviously he was successful,” she continues.
“Except, it turns out, there’s only one single solitary bill that he sponsored that ended up becoming law. Just this one,” she says.
The bill is titled Money Remittances Improvement Act of 2014.
“It made it easier for nonbank financial institutions like money-service businesses to provide remittance payments internationally, which of course, you know, is sending American money to foreigners across the world,” Gonzales explains.
And in an interview with the Mogadishu Times, Ellison explained that the primary goal is to keep “the discussion focused on how we can keep money flowing to Somalia.”
“Quite simply, one of the banks that helps to facilitate remittances from the United States to Somalia has now become worried about the degree of risk ... they’re worried that they could end up being prosecuted on a criminal basis,” Ellison continued.
“It’s actually so incredible that all of this was out there. All the breadcrumbs were there this entire time. This has actually been in operation for a very long time for Keith Ellison,” Gonzales comments, shocked.
Ellison has also publicly claimed that sending money to Somalia is mutually beneficial for U.S. taxpayers.
“Please give me receipts on how it’s mutually beneficial. This is a third-world country with people who are inbred ... so I don’t understand,” Gonzales says.
“On a serious note, lock him up. We need accountability for all of this corruption that has been happening for decades completely unchecked,” she adds.
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