Episode 9: Immigration, Somalia, and the Great Autism Scam

Episode 9 of the Reagan Faulkner Show dives into mounting concerns about foreign influence and welfare fraud in America, specifically highlighting the Somali community in Minnesota. Faulkner sets the stage by discussing how politicians like Ilhan Omar and Zoran Mamdani, along with changing immigration patterns, are allegedly shifting American culture and policy. Minnesota is noted for its large Somali refugee population, with claims that state leaders are not only welcoming but actively reshaping local identity in ways that alarm some taxpayers.

The episode centers on the exposure of a large-scale welfare scam orchestrated through a state-funded autism therapy program. According to Faulkner, Somali-led organizations, spearheaded by Asha Hassan’s Smart Therapy LLC, encouraged families to falsely diagnose children with autism to access funding. Millions of dollars from Minnesota’s Department of Human Services—rising from $3 million in 2019 to $399 million in 2023—were allegedly diverted, with significant portions funneled overseas, including to terrorist groups such as al-Shabab. The scheme expanded to federal programs, notably the Feeding Our Future fraud, resulting in hundreds of millions in losses and dozens of criminal charges.

Faulkner concludes by stressing the urgent need for immigration reform, welfare audits, and government transparency. He connects the scandals to broader issues of trust in government, calling on listeners to demand accountability and vigilance against further abuse. The episode ends with reflections on how America’s immigration story has changed and warns against letting taxpayer resources finance hostile foreign actors, urging policy shifts that prioritize American interests and tradition.

Transcript

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What's up guys. And welcome back to the Reagan Faulkner Show. For weeks we've been looking at Zorin, Mamdani, immigration and some of the issues that are facing America culturally from the Great Migration into the United States. But today, we're going to look at a very specific example of how this is coming to a head and what it means for us taxpayers. America is being invaded by foreign forces with foreign interests, to be quite frank. Look at Minnesota, Michigan and New York. Look at politicians like Ilhan Omar, Zoran Mamdani, Saikat Chakrabarti and Omar Fattah. Um, and he's a legislative representative in Minnesota, and they're all seeking to change the culture of the US. They're all seeking to change our policies, change our laws, and change what it means to be an American. To be completely honest, Minnesota has the largest group of Somalians taking refuge from their homeland. They have over 80,000 Somalians living in Minnesota, compared to, I believe it was 14,000 in Washington state, maybe 24,000 in Ohio or something. So astronomically, they have about one half of the entire US Somalian population. And then we've got Governor Tim Walz literally advocating to change the Minnesota flag into a flag that resembles that of Somalia. It's absolutely insane. We've got Ilhan Omar going into the US House of Representatives and going on interviews saying, um, that the white man is dangerous. The American white man is a danger that the American white man commits most of US crimes and most of US violence. I mean, it is an attack on what it means to be an American and what American values and traditions and culture really is. And in the wake of all these clashes, in the wake of all of this happening in the wake of Zorn Mamdani, in the wake of all of the Muslim individuals that were elected during the municipal elections a few weeks ago, there's one group that's really coming out as the head of all these debates and all these arguments and all these discussion points. And that is the Somalians in Minnesota. They have been privy to an a scandal of just astronomical size. So the Somali community, they've had temporary protected status, or what I'll refer to as TPS in the United States since September 16th, 1991, because of political unrest that's been going on in their country, political turmoil. I think there was some civil war going on there. They've had a lot of unrest in Somalia. So in September 16th, 1991, they got temporary protected status to come to the US as refuge. And it has just been renewed every single two years since then. But they just got caught in a scam that cost the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars, with reports going as high as over $1 billion in state and federal funds that got completely conned from taxpayers. So the following information comes from the US Attorney's Office, District of Minnesota. And it's basically just a full evaluation of what this group has done in Minnesota and how much money it costs us taxpayers. And then we'll dive into the consequences of what it really means for Americans as a whole, as we people are literally vying that we need to reopen our borders and why we shouldn't. Why, quite frankly, we shouldn't. Why, quite frankly, we need to close off the United States. We need to be isolationist and nationalist until we can sort out our things at home. Like I said in the last episode. But the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention Benefit is a program funded by the state of Minnesota to provide resources help therapies to individuals under the age of 21 with autism spectrum disorder. And Asha Hassan founded an organization, an LLC called Smart Therapy LLC, in 2019, and she enrolled it in this program that provides resources for young individuals, young adults with autism. And then after that, she went to parents within the Somali community in Minnesota and asked them to enroll their children in the Smart Therapy, LLC. So these parents went and they had their children who did not have autism. They had them diagnosed with autism so that they could enroll them in Smart Therapy LLC, as Asha Hassan had asked them to do. And then Hassan would pay these parents what's called a kickback, basically a bribe to buy their participation, their silence in her scheme. So Hassan pulled in. Other young adults, 17 to 19, were kind of the approximate ages, and then some of their relatives and family members to act as quote unquote, providers. And what they were doing were saying that they were providing therapy and treatment to the individuals with autism. When they weren't, they were not in any way, shape or form. They were not qualified to do so. They they weren't. And there's not another way to put that. They just were not. It was a complete lie. So the Minnesota Department of Human Services reimburses every single child within this program, anywhere from 50 to $100,000 per year. And in 2019, the state program dished out about $3 million. This was before, um, Asha Hassan had founded her group and before other Somalian individuals founded similar, quote unquote, autism therapy, autism treatment groups to children under 21. Well, by 2023, this number had grown to $399 million that the Minnesota Department of Human Services was dishing out within this program. That is an insane jump. That is a $396 million jump in four years. And I don't think a single person watching or listening to this Believes that the need for these resources went up that much, that the amount of Somalians under the age of 21 with autism went up that much. Now, to be clear, this this program goes to everybody in Minnesota. It is not for Somalians specifically. But if you look at the data and you look at the information, it was Somali groups and Somali, uh, quote unquote, autism treatment centers that were breaking in the majority of this cash. It was a full scheme by this individual group of people. So out of this $399 million, Smart Therapy LLC received 14 million of these dollars, um, for their alleged services. But many of the other like I said, Somali organizations were engaging in this as well. It was a complete scheme that Hassan had helped put on and helped encourage other people to engage in. And many, if not all of these organizations. This is the crazy part. These organizations were sending this money that they were getting from the state of Minnesota because they were alleging to help autistic children. They were taking this money from lying and they were offshoring it to other countries. They were sending it to Dubai. They were sending it to Kenya, and they were sending it back to Somalia. And after they traced where this money was going, the really major chunk, it's still under investigation. So I'm not going to say the majority, but an incredible amount of this money was being sent to al-Shabab, which is the Somali division of al Qaeda, the terrorist organization. Yeah. So the Somalians in Minnesota created all these fake autism treatment centers, raked in $399 million in 2023. And then they offshored this money to pro Muslim terrorist organizations that want to see Western culture fall. That want to destroy America. The organization that did nine over 11. They sent this money to them. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And this wasn't the only scam that they ran. Y'all, this was not the only scam, all right? So they also stole federal money. This is state money. This is all funded by by people who reside in Minnesota. So then they went federal with it. So again, Hassan, same woman doing this scam as well. And others that were tied to the autism scam. They were involved in the Feeding our future fraud of 2020. So they got busted for a 2020 scam. Now they're getting busted for a 2023 scam. So Amy Bach, the founder of Feeding Our Future, utilized what's called the Federal Child Nutrition program, and I'm not sure the full extent of this program I know they were providing money for those who were feeding hungry children during Covid, and she stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government through this program. So Feeding Our Futures established 200 sites that they claimed were feeding young people. And this they were saying that these organizations could range from a couple hundred kids to over a thousand kids, and they were feeding them every single day, seven days a week, which they weren't doing. So Hassan from before enrolled Smart Therapy LLC in the federal Child Nutrition Program under the Feeding Our Future group that Amy Bock had created. And all in all, Hassan claimed $465,000. So not quite the cash pool that she got from the last one, but still $465,000. I mean, that's about half $1 million. It's still a pretty extravagant amount of money, and claimed that she had dished out over 200,000 meals, which her organization never did From my reading, I don't believe that they provided a single meal, to be quite honest. And this was again only one of the organizations I know. Another guy was running a convenience mart. He has been charged. I don't think he's been convicted yet, but he was running like a convenience store and he was claiming he was feeding kids. When he wasn't feeding kids at all. He bought a building in Minnesota. He like bought a bunch of cars. He also offshored a ton of money to foreign entities and foreign groups. I mean, it's absolutely insane. So they're all in all, the scam took about $300 million from federal taxes, and 56 people have pled guilty and 77 have been charged. And if you go through some of the various articles, I know MSN has a really good one. There's a good Substack on it. But if you go through these articles, the Somalians have been involved in this are saying, yeah, it's unfortunate that these are all people that live in my community. These are all Somalians, for the most part, that are perpetuating these crimes and these scams and these scandals. And there have been others too. There was a housing and rent stabilization fraud that occurred in Minnesota with the Somali population. And all of these scandals really culminated recently with Donald Trump coming in last week and saying that he was going to revoke the TPS of Somalis living in Minnesota. And we had some federal judges come out and say, no, you can't do that for only one state. You have to revoke them all at once. So if he's going to revoke the TPS status of Somalis in Minnesota, then he has to revoke the TPS status for all Somalis in the United States. Well, the kicker is there TPS is up for renewal in March of 2026. So if they do deem that this is illegal and Trump is unable to do this, they likely won't renew their status come 2026. And all of the Somalis that have not perpetuated these crimes and that are legitimately fleeing their country, are going to be sent home because the ones in Minnesota have done such atrocious crimes against United States taxpayers. So it'll be really interesting to see what that legal fight looks like and what Trump ultimately decides to do, whether he revokes the TPS for all of them, or if he can get away with only doing it for the ones in Minnesota, or if he just decides not to renew their status. It'll be really interesting to see how that plays out. But really, Americans need to to look at this. We need to look at all the people that crossed our borders in the Biden administration. We need to look at all these people that are running in politics, that are running on the left, that are running on socialist platforms. We need to look at Dearborn, Michigan, and the policies that they're implementing. And we need to wonder if these foreign migrants that are coming into our country, are they really coming for the American dream? Because yes, we all know the liberal, you know, retort to this. Well, immigrants built our country. Yeah they did. But now we have technology. Now we have globalization now. We have ways for people to come into our country when they have varying loyalties, when they have varying intents, when they have varying interests, when they might be, you know, working for other national groups, other terrorist groups. There's a lot at hand that wasn't at stake in the 1920s, the 19 tens, the late 1800s, when immigrants were flooding into the United States and building us up. Now, what we're seeing is a lot of immigrants that are tearing us down, that are seeking to destroy our culture and that are seeking to destroy our country with socialist agendas and with literally some of the largest welfare scandals in United States history. I mean, we really need to wonder who we're letting into our country. And these are some of the things that we need to tell our leftist counterparts, like, these are the things that are happening. This cost the United States government billions of dollars that could have gone to Americans with needs that could have gone to help people that could have been there during the government shutdown, but they were wasted being funneled into literal terrorist organizations that want to see the United States be destroyed. And the US government has a duty to investigate all of this. They have a duty to investigate the just every single group, every single person that comes into the US. I am a huge proponent of Ice. I am a huge proponent of immigration enforcement, and I think that it's incredibly important to make sure that these groups aren't coming in and stealing our taxpayer money and sending it to foreign interests that they are still loyal to. And with the shutdown, the realization of all of the EBT fraud and the Snap fraud. The US has a duty to audit every single welfare program, to be quite frank and look for abuse, fraud and waste. I mean to look for all of it because where is this money going and who are the people that are on it? Are they legal? Are they US citizens? Is it going to people who are alive? Even I know some of the EBT money was going to people who literally aren't alive. So this is really bringing to light some of the issues that the United States has in terms of our welfare programs, and in terms of some of the ways that we've been handling immigration. But Americans have low trust in government right now. And it's these stories and the way that they've been covered up. I didn't hear about this until extremely recently. The way that they're being covered up by left wing politicians, the way that they're being covered up by media outlets, the way that people are coming out and saying, oh, Trump is terrible for revoking their TPS. Well, is he though they took billions of dollars from the US government, from innocent taxpayers? I mean, is that such a bad thing because they're not telling you that part? And as Americans, we need to demand transparency from our representatives. We as individuals need to work to expose this corruption, expose this fraud, expose the sheer amount of waste and scandal and abuse within our welfare programs because this is our money and we again, we fought for no taxation without representation. And if our taxation is going to entities that literally want to kill us, then we need to know about that. And we need to have a say, because if we don't, more foreign entities that hate Americans, that hate Christians, that hate Western culture will keep profiting from your taxpayer money in order to prepare to destroy the country that you hold dear and that you love. Thank you all so much for joining me today. I can't wait to see y'all. We're gonna start doing this show 2 to 4 times a week, so that's going to be really exciting. But if you want more content, remember to check us out on Facebook, Instagram, Instagram, TikTok and X. That's going to be at the Wilmington Standard and at the Regan Faulkner Show. And be sure to look us up at the WilmingtonStandard.com. Thank you all so much. Can't wait to see you on the next one.