FTA -
In the meeting with Ellison were Salim Said, co-owner of the Safari Restaurant in south Minneapolis, and Ikram Mohamed, a consultant for Feeding Our Future. Both eventually faced federal indictments for their alleged role in the scam. (Said has been convicted on 21 counts of fraud, while Ikram is awaiting trial.) Ellison assured his guests that the money would continue flowing through FOF. It was the state government, which Ellison in theory represented, that would soon be on the defensive, the attorney general told them. "[Governor Tim] Walz agrees with me that this piddly, stupid stuff running small people out of business is terrible," said Ellison. "Let's go fight these people," he declared, "these people" being rightfully cautious state officials. Ellison suggested that Salim "send the names of all these people who are hanging on by a thread" " the Somali businesses and nonprofits that existed at the public's expense, many of them through fraud " so that he could personally needle senior bureaucrats into restoring their funding.

Pardon the Gaslighter type post, but I found this passage of the article incredibly insightful on how the "patronage" works in MN, possibly more States.

The RW focuses on the Somali's but IMO this type of "system" probably permeates the US governments (local,city, county, state, fed). The Somalis are just doing what everyone else is doing.

Its not an indictment of Somali's but of the system itself. The purpose of these NGO type units was to avoid governmental fraud that existed in the 1930-40s. You can read all about this transition in the book "WhyNothingWorks". But now its appears its been subverted into a patronage system of spoils.

Now you can defend the fraud with narrative inducing arguments but this only leads to the corrosive mindset that "taxpayers" are suckers.
America needs to face this fraud epidemic or your system is over in a very short period.