Massive Somali Fraud in Minnesota with Nick Shirley, California Asset Seizure, $20B Groq-Nvidia Deal

All right, we have a massive show for you today, besties, but it's not gonna be our prediction show. We thought we were doing predictions end of the year, but we had so many amazing stories to cover in the news that we're gonna do predictions next week. The first story is we have investigative journalist Nick Shirley on. He has uncovered, uh, in a breaking 42-minute video that went viral, $110 million in potential fraud in Minnesota. It's part of $9 billion in overall fraud, and we've got him on the show here exclusively. This video apparently perhaps prompted responses from Kash Patel and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who have sent agents in to inspect these facilities. Here's some, uh, sort of important context. These, these entitlement frauds in Minnesota have been going on for over 10 years. It's a 13, 14-year-old story. It started by an investigative reporter named Jeff Baylon, launched his first investigation into this in February of 2013 at Fox 9 News, local investigative journalist. Uh, and after that expose, charges were brought in 2014 against a Somali woman and her husband. They skipped out, they never faced trial. Here's a 45-second clip from 2016 from Baylon.

Ali is facing numerous counts of theft by swindle and racketeering. She ran a daycare business and home healthcare company that catered to low-income families, but former employees told the Fox 9 investigators back in 2013 that it was really part of a scam to collect millions in public subsidies.

When I saw the bank account for the business, there were large cash withdrawals on a continuous basis.

Could I ask you a few questions?

A year after our investigation, Ali was arrested and charged with bilking the state out of about $4 million.

Okay, since 2018, Minnesota has seen 9 billion, around 9 billion in entitlement frauds according to federal prosecutors. Just to give you guys a, a concept of, uh, what that means, that's half of the total amount spent on 14 entitlement programs in the state. So, here's the direct quote from the federal prosecutor on the Minnesota fraud. "The magnitude cannot be overstated. It's staggering, industrial-scale fraud." There have been over 90 convictions for more than $800 million in fraud since 2022. In 2022, 47 defendants were charged in a $250 million fraud scheme called Feeding Our Future that was supposed to feed hungry kids. Then up to 220 million was stolen in funds for kids with autism. Then 300 million was stolen in Medicaid funds meant to help people with disabilities avoid homelessness. So, starting with that Feeding Our Futures fraud in 2022, 82 of 92 people charged have been Somalian. Joining us right now, 23-year-old investigative journalist Nick Shirley. Welcome to the program.

Thank you. It's been a crazy past few days out here in, uh, Minnesota.

So, I guess a good place to start is, uh, you could tell the audience a little bit about your background, uh, when you got into investigative journalism. Obviously, you've got a YouTube channel. I watched some of your early videos when you were 16, 17 years old. I would say along the MrBeast vibes, and then suddenly making a turn into politics, specifically around immigration and some Vox pop, uh, kind of man-on-the-street stuff. But maybe you could tell us a little bit of how you got into all this and how you got into this specific story.