Article By David Lindfield
Whistleblowers who come forward with information tied to Minnesota’s expanding fraud scandal will be eligible for cash payments, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced.
It comes as the Trump administration intensifies its crackdown on misuse of taxpayer funds.
Appearing on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” on Friday, Bessent said the administration is prepared to financially incentivize insiders who help expose what federal officials describe as a sprawling network of fraud involving childcare, food distribution, and social services programs.
“We know that these rats will turn on each other,” Bessent said.
“We are going to offer whistleblower payments to anyone who wants to tell us the who, what, when, where, and how this fraud has been done.
“I think that will give us a great leap forward on how to get it done.”
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The comments come amid a wide-ranging federal investigation into Somali-led money-laundering schemes and systemic abuse of public funds in Minnesota.
Multiple childcare centers and food-distribution facilities have been accused of receiving large sums of federal money without providing the services they were paid to deliver, instead allegedly diverting the funds for personal enrichment and illicit financial activity.
A recent state audit also flagged serious oversight failures within the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Behavioral Health Administration, which has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for mental health and addiction services.
Auditors found limited monitoring and weak controls over grant programs, raising concerns about how taxpayer dollars were tracked and safeguarded.
In response, the Trump administration moved to freeze several federal funding streams to Minnesota, including funds from the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
That effort hit a temporary legal roadblock Friday, when a federal judge issued an order halting the administration from freezing roughly $10 billion in federal funding to five Democrat-led states, including Minnesota.
Despite the ruling, Bessent said the underlying fraud problem remains severe and ongoing.
He pointed to a recent development involving a convicted fraudster who allegedly attempted to bribe a juror.
“One of the people who has been convicted of fraud — she was given $200,000 to bribe a juror,” Bessent said.
“And she was so corrupt, she skimmed $80,000 of it and only tried to give a $120,000 bribe.”
Administration officials say the whistleblower program is designed to accelerate prosecutions, recover stolen funds, and dismantle what they describe as entrenched fraud networks that have flourished due to lax oversight and political protection.
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