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The Department of Justice announced Thursday that 15 people have been charged in connection with schemes that defrauded Minnesota’s public health care and social services programs of more than $90 million.

Getting into it: Federal officials unveiled the charges at a Minneapolis news conference, framing the “Minnesota Health Care Fraud Takedown” as a sweeping crackdown across seven state-run Medicaid programs. It includes two cases described as the largest Medicaid fraud cases ever filed in the district, along with what officials called the largest autism fraud scheme ever charged by the Justice Department. The defendants are accused of targeting programs meant for the state’s most vulnerable residents, with allegations including false autism diagnoses, inflated housing-support reimbursements, fraudulent child care billing, money laundering, and wire fraud.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the charges were only the start. “Today, we are holding scammers accountable who ripped off the American taxpayer and harmed those deserving legitimate assistance from these programs. These alleged con artists stole taxpayer dollars while providing substandard care for children and abandoning at least one Medicaid recipient as they passed away… This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The centerpiece of the announcement is a $46.6 million scheme to defraud Minnesota’s autism services program, in which two defendants, Shamso Ahmed Hassan and Hanaan Mursal Yusuf, allegedly bribed parents to bring their kids in, gave autism diagnoses to children who didn’t medically need them, and charged the state for therapy that never happened (the autism program statewide ballooned from roughly $600,000 in 2018 to over $400 million by 2025). HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called it “the largest autism fraud bust in American history” and “organized theft that exploited the most vulnerable children in America.”

In a separate $22.7 million scheme tied to a program meant to help disabled adults live independently, two defendants allegedly bought over 20 homes and hid their ownership from Medicaid, then funneled the money into more property, plus luxury cars and pricey jewelry. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said, “These prosecutions put Medicaid fraudsters on notice — the gravy train is over. We will cut you off, shut you down, and lock you up.”

The takedown coincided with a major milestone in a related case, as Aimee Bock, the founder of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future and the convicted ringleader of what the DOJ calls the “single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country,” was sentenced Thursday to roughly 42 years in prison over the $250 million fraud. One of the 15 newly charged defendants, Fahima Mahamud, is also tied to that case.

This all comes as Minnesota officials pushed back on accusations that the state had been “asleep at the wheel,” with the Department of Human Services noting it has referred 300 potential fraud cases to law enforcement and stopped payments to 636 providers since the start of 2025.