The FBI has deployed additional personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs”, director Kash Patel said on social media on Sunday.
The FBI director said the agency had already dismantled a $250m fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during the Covid pandemic in a case that led to 78 indictments and 57 convictions.
Patel said the FBI believes “this is just the tip of a very large iceberg”. Some of those involved in the alleged scheme are being “referred to immigrations officials for possible further denaturalization and deportation proceedings where eligible”.
Patel’s comments comes after federal prosecutors estimate as much as $9bn has been stolen across schemes linked to the state’s Somalia population, a figure nearly equivalent to Somalia’s entire GDP.
The FBI director also said he was aware of recent social media reports in Minnesota, which appears to refer to an online report by independent journalist Nick Shirley about a daycare center in Minneapolis that received $4m despite reportedly having no enrolled kids. The 42-minute video has been viewed 84m times since it was posted on 26 December.
Israel is working to gain as much independence as possible in its weapons production, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday, in a development he said was the result of the lessons learned during the past two years of war on multiple fronts.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would be willing to withdraw troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end Russia’s war, if Moscow also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal homeland security funding, including for disasters, for states that do not comply with immigration enforcement policies.
The EU could “respond swiftly and decisively” against the “unjustified” US visa bans on five Europeans involved in combating online hate and disinformation, a European Commission spokesperson has said.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to block New York’s so-called Green Light Law, which allows the state to issue driver’s licenses to people without requiring proof that they’re in the country legally.
The United States and Ukraine have reached a consensus on several critical issues aimed at bringing an end to the nearly four-year conflict, but sensitive issues around territorial control in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, along with the management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, remain unresolved, Ukraine's president said.
Republicans are attempting to exempt some major polluters from paying for Pfas “forever chemical” cleanup. If successful, it could mark a major setback in US effort to rein in Pfas pollution.
