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The story out of Minnesota is as ugly as it is telling: federal prosecutors have charged Asha Farhan Hassan in what they describe as a $14 million scheme to defraud the state’s autism services program by enrolling children in sham therapy plans and billing Medicaid for services that never happened. This isn’t garden-variety bookkeeping errors — it’s alleged organized theft that preyed on vulnerable families and on the patience and pocketbooks of hardworking taxpayers.
According to court filings, Hassan registered Smart Therapy and used it as a front to recruit children—often from immigrant neighborhoods—into EIDBI autism services, paying parents monthly kickbacks of $300 to $1,500 per child and staffing sessions with unqualified relatives rather than trained therapists. Prosecutors say the operation produced inflated or fabricated claims, forged signatures, and even funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars overseas, including real estate purchases in Kenya. Those details come straight from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and government oversight agencies that worked the case.
Worse still, Hassan’s operation overlapped with the Feeding Our Future scandal that already rocked Minnesota—claims that Smart Therapy billed for nearly 200,000 meals and collected roughly $465,000 under that scheme. Federal prosecutors are blunt: this autism case is the first public charge in a wider probe into EIDBI fraud, and it connects to a broader web of schemes that has siphoned millions, if not billions, from programs meant to protect children. The layers of alleged deceit show a pattern, not an anomaly.
This scandal exposes two failures at once: criminal behavior by opportunists and feckless oversight by agencies that were supposed to prevent exactly this sort of abuse. Minnesota’s own Attorney General and federal investigators say they partnered on the probe, which should be a wake-up call to every official who thinks generous programs need not be policed. If left unchecked, these programs become magnets for fraudsters who treat taxpayer relief like an ATM.
Americans who believe in charity, family, and community should be furious—because real kids with real needs are being crowded out by schemes cooked up for profit. Conservative common sense is simple: protect the vulnerable by tightening eligibility, demanding rigorous audits, and prosecuting criminals to the fullest extent. We should expand oversight, end automatic trust in paper claims, and stop allowing ideological reflexes to block effective enforcement of the law.
As the DOJ reminds us, charges are allegations and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but that legal principle does not absolve the need for tough action now to stop the leak of taxpayer dollars and to prioritize care for genuine cases. Law enforcement must keep following the money, lawmakers must fix the loopholes, and voters must hold officials accountable for letting this rot fester. Justice for the victims and accountability for the perpetrators must be our demand.
