Minnesota’s largest-ever food-aid scandal reveals how weak incentives, political pressure, and lax oversight enable public-sector fraud to flourish — costing taxpayers billions.

The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness,” The New York Times reported in a bombshell article on November 30.

“Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided,” The Times reports. “Federal prosecutors say that 59 people have been convicted in those schemes so far, and that more than $1 billion in taxpayers’ money has been stolen in three plots they are investigating.”

Most notably, officers of a tax-funded “nonprofit” called “Feeding Our Future” claimed to have fed tens of thousands of children, but really spent the money on fancy cars, houses, and foreign real estate investments for themselves, according to federal prosecutors.

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