MINNEAPOLIS — About half or more of the roughly $18 billion in claims paid out by Medicaid to 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been fraudulent, a federal prosecutor said Thursday.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said the scale of fraud in Minnesota outpaces that of other states and puts services at risk for people who really need them.

While prosecutors typically see fraud manifest as providers overbilling, Thompson said during a news conference in Minneapolis that companies have been created to provide zero services while pocketing federal funds for international travel, luxury vehicles and lavish lifestyles.

“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.”

The investigators’ new findings may bolster President Donald Trump in his claims that Minnesota is a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” under Gov. Tim Walz, who was the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in last year’s election.

Trump has capitalized on the fraud cases to target the Somalian diaspora in Minnesota, which has the largest Somali population in the U.S. The majority of the defendants in the child nutrition, housing services and autism program schemes are Somali Americans, and most are U.S. citizens.

New charges, a guilty plea and more programs under investigation

Five new defendants were charged Thursday in connection with a Minnesota housing services fraud, in which they pocketed the money instead of helping Medicaid recipients find stable housing, Thompson said. One defendant fled the country after his company received a federal grand jury subpoena, the prosecutor said.

The five charged include two Philadelphia residents who have been accused of “fraud tourism,” Thompson said, because they saw the Minnesota Housing Stability Services Program as a source of “easy money.” They submitted $3.5 million in fraudulent claims.

They join eight others who were charged in September for their alleged roles in the scheme to defraud the Minnesota Housing Stability Services Program.

Prosecutors also named a new defendant accused of defrauding another state-run, federally funded program that provides services for children with autism, alleging he submitted $6 million worth of claims for Medicaid reimbursement. One woman previously charged for exploiting that program pleaded guilty Thursday morning, officials said.

Authorities also served a search warrant Thursday in an investigation of a third state-run program, Integrated Community Supports, which was intended to support adults with disabilities who want to live independently. Payments to providers are on track to reach $180 million this year — exponentially more than when the state program was introduced in 2021 — leading prosecutors to believe it’s another program that has been abused.

“Every day, we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,” Thompson said.

The announcements Thursday follow years of investigation that began with the $300 million Feeding Our Future scheme, for which 57 defendants have been convicted. Prosecutors said the Feeding Our Future nonprofit was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.

Money sent abroad but no evidence it has purposefully funded terrorism

Trump’s rhetoric against Somalis in Minnesota has intensified since a conservative news outlet, City Journal, claimed last month that taxpayer dollars from defrauded government programs have flowed to the Somali militant group al-Shabab, an affiliate of al-Qaida.

Trump has referred to the Somali community as “garbage” and said he doesn’t want immigrants from the East African country in the U.S.