BREAKING: FBI Raids 22 Locations in Massive Fraud Crackdown

Federal law enforcement agents executed 22 search warrants across Minneapolis and the surrounding Twin Cities metropolitan area on the morning of Tuesday, April 28, 2026, in a sweeping operation targeting businesses, daycares, and homes connected to an ongoing investigation into the fraudulent misuse of federal and state funds.

The operation, involving the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and multiple state and local law enforcement agencies, marked the most visible federal law enforcement action in Minnesota since the administration’s immigration enforcement surge earlier in the year, and represented a significant escalation in the long-running investigation into what authorities have described as rampant fraud of American taxpayer dollars in the state.

The Department of Justice confirmed the operation in a formal statement: “Today the FBI with federal, state and local law enforcement is involved in court-authorized law enforcement activity as part of an ongoing fraud investigation.” Homeland Security Investigations posted separately on social media that it had executed criminal search warrants in Minneapolis relating to the rampant fraud of U.S. taxpayer dollars, and stated that “the American people deserve answers in how their taxpayer money was abused.”

The 22 warrants targeted a range of locations including daycare and childcare centers, other businesses, and private residences across the Twin Cities area. Five of the sites, connected to four businesses served with warrants, are related to a state program designed to assist children with autism spectrum disorder. The Minnesota Attorney General’s office confirmed that its Medicaid fraud control unit assisted in the operation for those specific businesses.

Among the locations raided was Quality Learning Center, a daycare that had become the focal point of national attention following a viral video posted in December 2025 by conservative YouTube content creator Nick Shirley. In that video, Shirley visited approximately a dozen Somali-owned daycares and health clinics in the Minneapolis area, documented what he characterized as businesses collecting federal and state funding without actually providing the services they were billing for, and posted his findings to YouTube. The video drew tens of millions of views and was amplified publicly by Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance, and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, pushing the Minnesota fraud story into the center of the national political conversation almost overnight.

Also raided Tuesday was Mini Childcare Center in South Minneapolis, another location featured in Shirley’s December video. A CBS News Minnesota crew observed approximately a dozen federal agents operating at that location just after 6 a.m. local time, with one agent taking photographs while another was seen walking a large portable file case inside. FBI evidence photographers and agents carrying evidence bags were seen exiting Quality Learning Center, with agents removing a box and plastic evidence bags from the premises.

No arrests were made during Tuesday’s raids. The absence of immediate arrests indicates that Tuesday’s operation was focused on evidence collection rather than the execution of pre-existing criminal charges. The evidence gathered from the 22 locations will be reviewed by federal prosecutors as they build out the cases against the individuals and organizations under investigation.

The FBI’s Minneapolis office confirmed on social media that it had conducted “court-authorized law enforcement activity as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation” with the assistance of other federal, state, and local law enforcement. Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension also confirmed its participation, stating that its agents “partnered with federal law enforcement to execute multiple warrants across the Twin Cities Metro Area” and that they “remain committed to identifying criminal activity and holding those responsible accountable.”

Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth praised the federal raids in a formal statement and drew the contrast with years of what she characterized as Democratic inaction. “I’m thankful that federal law enforcement has stepped in to do what Minnesota Democrats wouldn’t, hold fraudsters accountable and ensure Minnesota’s tax dollars are going to those who actually need them, instead of enriching fraudsters,” she said.

House Republican Floor Leader Harry Niska was equally pointed. He stated that Tuesday’s federal raids did not happen in a vacuum and that for years, House Republicans had warned that Minnesota’s Democratic leaders were failing to provide the basic oversight needed to stop fraud. He said that after repeated red flags, whistleblower warnings, and explosive growth in program spending, Governor Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison had every chance to step in and fix the problem and did not.

The Minnesota fraud investigation is not a new development, though Tuesday’s raids represented its most sweeping visible phase. Since 2021, 92 people have been charged in fraud schemes connected to federally funded programs in Minnesota, with 67 convicted, including five guilty pleas in the Feeding Our Future scandal. Feeding Our Future, a now-defunct Minneapolis nonprofit, became the centerpiece of one of the largest pandemic-era fraud cases in American history, with federal prosecutors alleging that the organization and its associates diverted more than $40 million in federal child nutrition funding through fictitious claims. Multiple defendants in that case have already been convicted and sentenced.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel N. Rosen stated on March 20 that he is “proud of our team of prosecutors, federal agents, and law enforcement partners who continue to expose the rampant fraud in Minnesota.” Rosen declined to comment specifically on Tuesday’s operation, consistent with standard Department of Justice practice during active investigations.

Governor Tim Walz, who is not seeking re-election following the political fallout from the immigration enforcement surge and the fraud scandal earlier this year, issued a statement on Tuesday that accepted the legitimacy of the raids while attempting to take partial credit for them. “Today’s raids by state and federal law enforcement happened because our state agencies caught and referred suspected fraud,” Walz said. “If you commit fraud in Minnesota, you’re going to get caught, and that’s exactly what we saw today.” He added that joint investigations work and that securing justice depends on information sharing between state and federal agencies.

Walz’s attempt to claim a share of the credit drew skepticism from Republican lawmakers who have spent years arguing that Democratic leadership in Minnesota enabled the fraud environment that made Tuesday’s operation necessary in the first place. They noted that Walz had announced his fraud czar appointment only after the Shirley video went viral and the Trump administration began using Minnesota’s fraud problem as justification for its broader immigration enforcement surge in the state.

The Trump administration had explicitly cited the fraud allegations documented in Shirley’s video as part of its justification for deploying thousands of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis and St. Paul earlier in 2026 during Operation Metro Surge. That operation deployed more than 2,000 agents from Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the Twin Cities, resulting in approximately 3,700 immigration arrests, the large majority of whom were not Somali and not connected to the fraud investigation. The surge ignited fierce clashes with protesters and ultimately resulted in the shooting deaths of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, which intensified criticism of the administration’s approach and led to a reduction in the number of agents deployed in the region.

Tuesday’s fraud raids were confirmed by all relevant parties to have no connection to immigration enforcement. Homeland Security Investigations, though a unit within Immigration and Customs Enforcement, participated in the operation in its fraud investigation capacity rather than its immigration enforcement capacity. The Minneapolis Police Department was not involved and confirmed in a statement that it had not been asked to assist.

Minnesota Department of Human Services Commissioner Shireen Gandhi released a statement calling Tuesday’s raids an important action for families who rely on autism services. She said that Minnesotans are fed up with people taking advantage of the system and that the state’s primary goal remains making Minnesota’s Medicaid program the best in the nation for program integrity. That statement represented a notable shift in tone from earlier in the year when state officials were primarily defending Minnesota’s social services programs against what they characterized as politically motivated federal scrutiny.

The fraud being investigated in Minnesota spans multiple federally funded programs. The childcare and daycare fraud involves billing state and federal child care assistance programs for services that were never provided or were dramatically overbilled. The autism services fraud involves similar schemes targeting the state’s Medicaid-funded autism assistance program. The earlier Feeding Our Future scandal targeted federal child nutrition programs funded under the USDA. The common thread is the exploitation of government reimbursement programs that were designed to serve vulnerable populations and were instead looted by individuals and organizations that submitted fraudulent claims for services they never delivered.

The role of Nick Shirley’s December 2025 YouTube video in precipitating the escalation of federal attention on Minneapolis cannot be overstated. Shirley, operating independently as a content creator, drove to addresses listed as receiving government childcare funding and documented what he found, or did not find. In numerous cases, he described finding businesses that appeared to have no children present, no operational facilities consistent with a functioning daycare, and in some cases addresses that appeared to be empty storefronts or private residences collecting public funds under the guise of providing childcare services. The video drew tens of millions of views before it was amplified by the Vice President and the then-Attorney General, fundamentally reshaping the political and law enforcement response to a fraud investigation that had already been underway for years but had not achieved the same visibility.

The Minneapolis fraud story is also significant in the context of the broader COVID-era fraud examination that has been a hallmark of the Trump administration’s second term. The original Feeding Our Future fraud was a direct product of the pandemic-era expansion of federal child nutrition programs, which dramatically increased reimbursement rates and relaxed oversight requirements in the name of emergency flexibility. Those relaxed oversight conditions created the opening that fraudsters exploited. The lesson, consistently cited by Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration, is that the emergency expansion of federal benefit programs without corresponding expansion of fraud prevention created conditions for abuse on a scale that investigators are still working to fully document.

The evidence gathered from Tuesday’s 22 search warrants will now be analyzed by federal investigators and prosecutors. The individuals and entities targeted by the warrants have not been publicly named in connection with Tuesday’s specific operation, though many are connected to locations and businesses that have been subjects of ongoing investigation and prior reporting. The Department of Justice has not announced a timeline for charging decisions connected to Tuesday’s evidence collection.

Minnesota House Republicans called on both Walz and Attorney General Ellison to explain why the state’s own fraud prevention apparatus failed to identify and refer the cases that ultimately required 22 federal search warrants to address, and why it took a viral YouTube video, national media attention, and federal intervention to produce the law enforcement action that state leadership should have been pursuing on its own. Those questions remain formally unanswered.

The scale of the fraud problem in Minnesota, as it has emerged through congressional investigations, the Feeding Our Future prosecution, the Shirley video, and now Tuesday’s raids, represents one of the most documented cases of large-scale exploitation of federal social services programs in the country. Federal prosecutors, state investigators, and congressional oversight bodies are all now engaged simultaneously on different dimensions of the same underlying problem. The 22 search warrants executed on Tuesday morning represent one chapter in a story that is far from over.