Pretty enormous amount of money in aggregate.
Minnesota, fraud epicenter.
"The magnitude cannot be overstated," Thompson said. "What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It's staggering, industrial-scale fraud."
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The five charged include two Philadelphia residents who have been accused of "fraud tourism" after they registered as Minnesota providers, Thompson said, adding that for them the scheme was "easy money."
"Minnesota has become a magnet for fraud, so much so that we have developed a fraud tourism industry – people coming to our state purely to exploit and defraud its programs," Thompson said. "This is a deeply unsettling reality that all Minnesotans should understand."
The two men, Anthony Waddel Jefferson and Lester Brown, were accused of siphoning millions from federally funded programs administered by Minnesota officials that were meant to help the disabled and those suffering from addiction, according to court filings.
They allegedly fleeced the housing program in Minnesota despite "living on the other side of the country and having no network in or connections to Minnesota or its communities," the filings stated.