The FBI just raided more than 20 Minnesota child care centers in one of the biggest fraud busts this country has ever seen.
Now a state trooper is explaining why it took this long.
What Democrats did to stop him from catching these people years ago will make your blood boil.
Minnesota CCAP Fraud Was Rampant Before DHS Shut Down the Investigation
Jay Swanson spent 30 years as a Minnesota state trooper before DHS hired him in 2014 to lead a unit built specifically to investigate fraud in the Child Care Assistance Program.
What he walked into was staggering.
Centers billing $700,000 to more than $1 million a year with no children present.
Fire inspectors showing up to facilities that were completely empty.
Fraud suspects vacationing in Dubai while collecting public assistance – and texting friends about buying homes in Nairobi, Kenya on the side.
"The friend had asked the owner 'how much longer are you going to do the daycare scam?'" Swanson testified. "The owner replied, 'another year or two, I want to buy some nice homes in Nairobi.'"
His team kept hearing the same answer when they asked fraud suspects where they first learned about the scheme.
A refugee camp in Kenya.
Word had spread through East Africa that Minnesota paid the most and pushed back the least.
"I wish I could tell you that these types of incidents were rare," Swanson told lawmakers. "But they weren't."
The DHS Official Who Ordered a Fraud Report Deleted
By 2017, Swanson's team was producing results.
His unit led the investigation that ended with the federal indictment of the owner of Salama Child Care Center in Minneapolis – who pled guilty in 2018 and was sentenced to two years in prison and $1.4 million in restitution.
That's when the interference started.
"Support from upper management dropped off a cliff," Swanson testified. "It seemed at that point their only goal was to destroy the unit and drive our people out of there."
In 2018, the Legislature directed the Office of the Legislative Auditor to review the Child Care Assistance Program.
Swanson was preparing written answers to the OLA's questions when a DHS official told him to run his responses through agency leadership before sending them.
He complied.
A senior DHS official then showed up in his office – angry, red-faced, and almost yelling – and demanded he delete specific paragraphs from the document he had already submitted.
Swanson refused.
He told the official that the demand was illegal and that Minnesota law requires state employees to cooperate fully with the OLA.
The same official returned days later with a message from the commissioner's office.
"You better be ready for the s*** storm that's coming your way."
How the Walz Administration Closed the Criminal Investigation Unit
DHS came back with a coordinated response – and none of it was aimed at the fraud.
The agency hired an outside consulting firm for $90,000 to audit Swanson's findings.
The firm had no experience in public benefit fraud investigations.
It declared his assessments unsubstantiated.
Derogatory information was quietly inserted into a supervisor's performance review.
Then came the "continuous improvement program" – which opened with a senior DHS official berating Swanson's entire unit for 30 minutes, telling them they were incompetent and terrible employees, while a DHS assistant commissioner sat in the room and said nothing.
"I had never heard of something like this happening to any group of state employees in my 40 years in state government," Swanson said.
Mandatory group meetings followed. Homework assignments. Six months of it, all led by the same official who ran the opening attack.
The unit was gone by mid-2019.
After Tim Walz took office, the DHS Office of Inspector General lost its criminal investigative authority entirely.
Fraud investigators were barred from meeting independently with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents assigned to their cases.
State Rep. Kristin Robbins said the outcome was predictable: "Rather than accelerating the criminal investigations, they closed the criminal investigation unit. That allowed the fraud to continue. There was no criminal deterrent anymore. The Walz administration enabled the fraud to flourish by stopping the criminal investigations."
Swanson told the committee that several senior DHS officials who ran the harassment campaign against his unit are still working in state government today.
He declined to name them publicly, citing an ongoing investigation, but confirmed he had given the names to the Office of the Legislative Auditor.
Federal authorities have charged 98 individuals since 2022, with 64 convictions secured.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson estimates total fraud exceeds $9 billion.
President Trump has put the figure at $19 billion.
Swanson's unit secured the first conviction in 2018 and was building more cases when the state shut them down.
The officials who ordered a trooper to delete his own fraud report never faced a single consequence.
Sources:
- "Former Minnesota Investigator: State Government Harassed Department in Alleged Coverup of Child Care Fraud Allegations," Breitbart, April 30, 2026.
- "Ex-Minnesota investigator alleges officials tried to shut down fraud probe," Fox News, April 30, 2026.
- "Former DHS fraud investigator delivers shocking testimony, says state agency harassed his team," Alpha News, April 28, 2026.
- "Former DHS investigator tells House panel senior officials tried to suppress CCAP fraud findings," Citizen Portal, April 28, 2026.
- "'Their only goal was to destroy the unit': Former Minnesota fraud investigator speaks out," KSTP, April 28, 2026.
