A former legislative auditor with decades of experience was highly critical of Gov. Tim Walz in an op-ed published by the Minnesota Star Tribune. In particular, the ex-auditor strongly criticized Walz’s handling of fraud and the governor’s posture toward federal prosecutors.
From 1983 to 2021, Jim Nobles served as Minnesota’s legislative auditor. While many may not be familiar with the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA), the office is among the most important in all of state government. Primarily, the OLA performs financial audits of state programs and agencies to determine their integrity.
As a result of his nearly-four decades of service leading the OLA, Nobles knows more about the intricacies of Minnesota’s state government than perhaps anyone else — and fraud within Minnesota’s state government has rapidly become a major national story.
Earlier this month, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said he suspects more than $9 billion spent on 14 state-run, Medicaid-funded programs could be fraudulent. Thompson has begun prosecuting this fraud and is also leading the federal government’s many cases against fraudsters in the $250 million Feeding Our Future scheme.
Between the Feeding Our Future fraud and the Medicaid fraud, dozens have been charged and convicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. To date, 90% of those who have been charged in connection to Minnesota’s ongoing fraud saga are from the Somali community.
However, Walz recently took issue with Thompson’s $9 billion estimate. At a recent press conference, Walz said the U.S. Attorney’s Office was “speculating” when it came to the $9 billion figure. He also said the U.S. Attorney’s Office was “not interested in [fixing the fraud] so they throw about these numbers.”
In his Monday op-ed, Nobles spoke about his own experience assessing fraud and issued a strong rebuke of the governor.
Specifically, Nobles wrote about a 2018 claim which alleged $100 million of annual fraud in the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) that was perpetrated by Somali daycare centers. When assessing the actual fraud total, Nobles said his office took a conservative approach by only reporting fraud numbers that came from convictions — between $5 and $6 million.
“However, when we saw how the child care program was being administered, we said the level of fraud was likely higher,” Nobles wrote in his op-ed.
“For example, we saw documents — paper attendance sheets filled out by child care staff and used to claim payments from the state — that were suspect on their face,” he said. “Yet the state paid claims without any independent verification of how many children had been served. This permissive approach made it easy for fraudsters to steal.”
Nobles, who wrote about the hurdles prosecutors faced in getting convictions, also said the type of scheme used in the child care program is the same kind of scheme being used now. As such, Nobles expressed confusion as to why the state did not act to stop this fraud.
“All the state needed was to implement standard financial controls and oversight,” Nobles wrote. “Why the Walz administration did not do that is still a mystery, and it is disturbing.”
Nobles continued, saying, “It is also a mystery and disturbing why Walz is debating the number used to discuss the fraud problem in Minnesota when it is clear the number has grown into a large number and is likely a really large number.
“Rather than debate and criticize the U.S. Attorney, the governor should give the people of Minnesota an honest explanation of why fraud was allowed to grow under his administration, and he should apologize for his administration’s negligence.
“Finally, it must also be said that the governor’s criticism of the U.S. Attorney’s Office lacks credibility since it is that office — not any state office — that has brought accountability to those who stole money from Minnesota taxpayers and robbed Somali children and families of the services they need,” added Nobles.
Alpha News reached out to the governor’s office for this story but did not immediately hear back. Since the widespread fraud in Minnesota has become a national story, Walz has taken some steps to address the situation.
Earlier this year, the Walz administration shut down a housing assistance program called Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) after it determined the program had been pillaged by fraudsters. HSS is one of the 14 Medicaid-funded programs under scrutiny.
Two months ago, the governor issued a 90-day payment pause and third-party audit of those 14 programs. Earlier this month, Walz hired a “Director of Program Integrity” who will partner with an outside firm “to implement a statewide fraud prevention program.”
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
