The Justice Department announced charges on Thursday against 15 people for attempting to defraud Minnesota Medicaid and other social service programs in the state of more than $90 million.

Top officials, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, and Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, appeared in Minneapolis to announce the charges. “The fraud here in Minnesota is shocking,” said Colin McDonald, an assistant attorney general overseeing the administration’s crackdown on fraud.

Among the defendants are an owner and an employee of autism clinics, who are charged with submitting $46.6 million in fraudulent claims to Medicaid, the public health plan that covers low-income people. Additional defendants were charged with filing bogus claims to Medicaid for other services, including those that assist disabled people with obtaining housing and living independently.

President Donald Trump focused attention on fraud in Minnesota after news reports and a social media video from a conservative content creator last year. Administration officials cited fraud among the reasons for sending hundreds of federal agents to Minnesota to crack down on illegal immigration.

That operation set off fierce protests and led to the killings of two American citizens early this year. It also prompted the resignation of several experienced fraud prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, hobbling investigations that had been underway for months.

In March, the White House started a broad initiative to combat fraud nationwide, an effort being led by Vice President JD Vance. Last week, Vance announced plans for the federal government to withhold $1.3 billion in federal payments to California because, he said, the state had failed to combat Medicaid fraud.

Fraud in Minnesota’s generous social safety net programs has been a concern for years. In 2022, it became a major scandal after federal prosecutors charged dozens of people accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a COVID-era program created to feed low-income children.

Since then, state and federal officials have uncovered significant fraud in several other programs run by state agencies. To date, the vast majority of people charged with wrongdoing are of Somali ancestry, a fact that Trump has noted with derision.

The new charges coincided with the sentencing on Thursday of Aimee Bock, whom prosecutors have described as the mastermind behind the fraud scheme related to the COVID-era meals program in Minnesota. Judge Nancy E. Brasel, who oversaw Bock’s trial last year, sentenced her to more than 41 years.

“This was a vortex of fraud and you were its epicenter,” Brasel said shortly after Bock expressed her remorse during tearful remarks.

Prosecutors sought a 50-year prison term for Bock, arguing in a court filing that “stealing funds intended to feed children is a profound breach of trust that demands accountability.”

Bock, 45, has long maintained that prosecutors overstated her role, and she urged the judge to impose a far more lenient sentence. She is among 66 people convicted in the sprawling case and among only a few defendants who are not of Somali ancestry.

The new Justice Department charges focus on two autism clinics, Smart Therapy in Minneapolis and Star Autism in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The court documents describe one defendant, Shamso Ahmed Hassan, as having an ownership stake in both companies. It says that the other, Hanaan Mursal Yusuf, was an employee of Smart Therapy.

The charges describe a scheme where the two defendants along with unnamed co-conspirators “paid illegal cash kickbacks of approximately $300 to $1,500 per child” to families that enrolled their children in autism therapy services. The companies then billed Medicaid millions to treat those children for autism, according to the prosecutors’ charges.

The government contends that the clinics also submitted Medicaid claims on behalf of therapists who were not working at the company at the time care was delivered. They are also charged with billing care for providers who took a training course at the clinics but never worked there, according to prosecutors.

The Justice Department estimates that the companies charged Medicaid $46.6 million for care that was either unnecessary or not provided, and that they were reimbursed $21.1 million. It claims that some of the proceeds from the fraudulent billing were used to purchase real estate and transferred overseas to Kenya.

Medicaid spending on autism therapy has grown rapidly across the country but especially quickly in Minnesota. The state spent $442 million on the service in 2025, up from about $38 million in 2020.

Another case that the Justice Department will charge on Thursday contends that the owner of a company called Ultimate Home Health submitted $1.4 million in false charges to a Medicaid program meant to help adults with brain injuries live independently.

Last September, Minnesota suspended payments to 11 other Medicaid providers that participate in the same program, Integrated Community Supports. Some Minnesota lawmakers have proposed ending the program because of the fraud concerns.

A third case charges a Medicaid provider with fraudulently billing Medicaid for $22.7 million for in-home support services that were either unnecessary or not provided.

The Justice Department’s complaint alleges that defendants used the funds they obtained from Medicaid to purchase “an Aston Martin, three Porsches and three Teslas, and expensive jewelry including five Rolex watches.”

The fraud scandal has upended politics in Minnesota in recent months. Gov. Tim Walz, whose administration was criticized for failing to root out fraud in programs the state administered, dropped out of a run for a third term as governor. Legislators also passed a bill creating an inspector general’s office, which will be tasked with investigating malfeasance in safety net programs.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Sarah Kliff and Ernesto Londoño/Eric Lee
c. 2026 The New York Times Company