Exclusive: Bessent tells Rufo — ‘When the bear trap snaps,’ Minnesota fraudsters and complicit officials will face justice

While fraud rings in Minnesota’s Somali community have been under federal investigation for years, it was investigative journalist and BlazeTV host Christopher Rufo’s reporting that brought the billion-dollar scandals to national attention. Back in November 2025, Rufo published a report titled “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer,” in which he and co-author Ryan Thorpe alleged that billions of taxpayer funds were being stolen through schemes in Minneapolis’ Somali community and that millions of those funds were being funneled to the Al-Shabaab terror group in Somalia.

Rufo’s reporting sparked massive federal action, including revoking Temporary Protected Status for Somalis, surging Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, freezing child-care funds, and ramping up prosecutions. Most notably, it led Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to visit Minnesota in January 2026 and launch major FinCEN probes into hawala businesses, IRS audits, and enhanced transfer reporting.

In this exclusive BlazeTV interview with Rufo, Bessent shares what his team’s investigations have revealed about Minnesota’s Somali fraud operations and what steps the Treasury is taking to ensure it stops.

Bessent says his team’s investigations confirmed that the fraud schemes were “bigger than anyone thought” and that money — either excess government-issued funds or stolen funds — are indeed being sent illegally out of the country.

One positive result of the investigations into Minnesota’s fraud rings, however, is that they will provide a “model” for future investigations in the other 49 states.

“Just because of the population sizes — California, Illinois, New York — that what’s going on [in Minnesota] is a microcosm of what’s going on there. And it’s like someone on the panel said today: Benefits have been turned into businesses. It is a cottage industry of teaching people how to form multiple LLCs, how to game the system, how to move money around,” says Bessent, pledging to “follow the money” and explore “recoveries” for cheated Americans.

Rufo calls these predominantly Somali-orchestrated fraud rings Minnesota’s “open secret.” Fraudsters were successful largely because they knew that the cultural standard of “Minnesota nice” and politicians’ “fear of being called racist” would result in the turning of blind eyes everywhere.

“What do you think the right attitude should be as you look at these frauds moving forward?” he asks.

“Clearly the governor’s office does not want to do investigations. So we just want the facts. We want to see where they lead, and we want to put the bad guys in jail,” says Bessent.

Further Minnesota’s soft-on-crime policies that “incentivize” criminality need to be addressed. “You could steal hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars, and under the Minnesota laws, you might not even get jail time. You might get a series of paroles,” Bessent adds.

“We have the ability to bring in IRS enforcement, and they don’t monkey around. So the incentive is going to be to stop this.”

Rufo then posed the question that conservatives nationwide are eagerly awaiting an answer to: Will we finally see any big names face justice?

“From [Gov. Tim Walz] on down appears to be at a minimum to have turned a blind eye. There are rumors circulating around this building right now that in fact some have been complicit in these schemes. Is that something your office is looking into?” he asks.

“That’s part of following the money. There are evidently some disturbing tapes of AG Ellison in meetings with people who donated to him calling for political favors to stop the investigations. So we’ll see,” says Bessent.

“And Chris, I can guarantee you when the bear trap snaps, we’re going to get these folks.”

To hear the rest of Rufo’s exclusive interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, watch the video above.

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