MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — 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.

Thompson said a significant amount of the fraudulently obtained funds have been sent abroad, and much of it has been used to purchase real estate in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, which has a large Somali diaspora.

While Thompson said money might have indirectly gotten into the hands of al-Shabab, he emphasized that there was no evidence that defendants were sending money to or otherwise supporting terrorist organizations.

“There’s no indication that the defendants that we’ve charged were radicalized or seeking to fund al-Shabab or other terrorist groups,” Thompson said.

Instead, one Feeding Our Future defendant spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an aircraft in Nairobi. Another wired $1.5 million to China and Kenya, prosecutors said, and sent a text message claiming to have invested $6 million in Kenya. And one man bought Mediterranean coastal property in Alanya, Turkey.

Fraud has eroded statewide confidence

Thompson said the massive scale of fraud that seems to be unique to Minnesota has eroded a statewide sense of confidence, allowed to go on for “far too long,” he said.

“Our state has not done a good job of mining these programs," Thompson said, adding that leaders across the state have to grapple with accountability.

The governor has initiated a third-party audit, due for completion by late January, that he says should give a better picture on the extent of the fraud. Walz said in a Dec. 12 op-ed that the state has made significant progress in detecting fraud, but “we have much more to do."

Walz also appointed a director of program integrity, who is tasked with finding and preventing fraud statewide. It's not stopped his Republican counterparts from criticizing his administration for failure to protect Minnesota's taxpayer dollars.

A spokesperson for Walz did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Thursday.