A huge case of COVID fraud in Minnesota

The New Neo Posted on by

The COVID lockdowns were a disaster in so many ways that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. But one problem was that the situation represented an absolutely golden opportunity for corrupt grifters.

Here’s a huge case in Minnesota, Tim Walz’s state:

The founder of a Minnesota-based charity was convicted Wednesday of hatching a brazen ruse that pilfered close to $250 million in pandemic relief funds from a federal program meant to feed hungry children in need – in what prosecutors said was the nation’s largest COVID-19 fraud scheme.

Aimee Bock, the 44-year-old founder of Feeding our Future, was found guilty on federal charges of wire fraud, bribery and conspiracy for recruiting a network of people and organizations to operate as many as 250 fraudulent meal assistance sites throughout the state, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Minnesota.

Prosecutors said her non-profit took advantage of a COVID rule change that allowed for student meal-assistance programs to operate off school grounds, as well as for the involvement of for-profit restaurants – blowing federal funding meant to feed underserved children during the pandemic on her “lavish” lifestyle.

Her co-defendant, Salim Ahmed Said, who oversaw one of the phony kitchens in Minneapolis, was also convicted after the six-week trial on a mountain of charges for his role in the scheme.

Approximately 250 million dollars isn’t chump change, and 250 fake sites is an impressive number as well. These people thought big.

And it takes quite a degree of “lavishness” in one’s “lifestyle” to go through that money so quickly. But where there’s a will there’s a way:

Prosecutors said the fraudsters blew more than $240 million meant for kids on fancy cars, international travel and luxury real estate in Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky, Kenya and Turkey.

Living way beyond one’s obvious means sometimes catches the attention of the authorities. And yet you can’t say the perps didn’t do at least some work for all that money:

Prosecutors said Bock and her 36-year-old accomplice, who owned the now-defunct Safari Restaurant, created fake meal counts, fraudulent invoices, and attendance sheets with bogus names of thousands of children supposedly served daily to secure additional funding from the US Department of Agriculture.

That’s got to take some time and effort, right?

There are about 70 people who have been charged as part of this fraud, “and more than 40 others have either pleaded guilty or been convicted.”

What’s not discussed in the article is that fact that Said is of Somalian ethnicity, as are most (or all) of the many other defendants except Aimee Bock. For example, here’s part of an article about some other defendants who took part in the scheme [my emphasis]:

Abdulkadir also agreed to pay $44,061,053 in restitution in conjunction with his co-defendants and must forfeit cash in several bank accounts as well as real estate that he purchased with stolen money in Minnesota and Ohio.

In a separate hearing Tuesday afternoon, Abdi Salah, 37, also pleaded guilty to a count of wire fraud in exchange for the dismissal of other charges. As a “minor participant” in the crime, he faces a recommended sentence of 21 to 27 months.

The men also face possible deportation. Like most of the defendants in the broader case, the Salah brothers are from Somalia. But unlike many of the others, they’re not U.S. citizens.

Abdi is a legal permanent resident, but Abdulkadir is in the U.S. illegally.

In December of 2021 — around the time he sent that email with the phony food invoices — Abdulkadir was fighting deportation. Prosecutors wrote in court filings that Abdulkadir failed to disclose millions in stolen money as income on his immigration paperwork. The defense countered that immigration evidence should be excluded because it could prejudice the jury.

Please read the whole thing. It’s quite something.

And let me add that I very much doubt that this Minnesota case is the sole instance of COVID fraud. There probably was a ton of it.

The political gender divide

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s profound, it’s growing, and it’s not just in the US:

This sort of gap was not traditionally the case, but it certainly is now and especially among younger voters. According to that chart, South Korea is a particularly extreme example.

The question is why? I may revisit this question in greater depth in the future, but the things that immediately come to mind to explain the US gap are the following:

(1) Leftism appeals more to emotions of trying to be “fair” and “nice.”
(2) Leftism champions women at the expense of men and traditional male virtues.
(3) Young men tend to be somewhat more rebellious than young women, and this generation has been force-fed leftism in their schooling. Therefore one would expect women to conform more to what they’ve been taught, and for men to defy it.

According to this article, the political gender gap started appearing in the 1980s, which means it predated the widespread use of the internet.

Also:

Glocalities found young women are most concerned about issues like “sexual harassment, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, and mental health problems.” Men were generally more focused on “competition, bravery, and honor.” The study found young men have become more patriarchal in their orientations overall when compared with women and even older men.

Well, duh! The article also cites polls that say that nearly half of young men in the US say there is discrimination against men. I’m surprised it’s not more than half, actually, because I believe such discrimination is obvious and has been for years.

Will Rahm Emanuel run in 2028?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, Rahm Emanuel – remember him? I do, and when I first heard that he might be thinking of running for president in 2028 it occurred to me that he might be the Democrats’ best hope, for the simple reason that compared to the other Democrat possibilities he’s not so far to the left. That was, after all, the stance that led Bill Clinton to victory in 1992 after the Reagan-Bush the First years, although of course because the party itself has moved a great deal to the left since then, positioning oneself as being more moderate would ordinarily place a candidate to the left of the Bill Clinton of 1992.

However, Emanuel has one enormous drawback that may make it impossible for him to win the Democratic primary – he’s Jewish, and also tied to Israel. Anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment is rife in the Democratic Party. That’s probably why Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate rather than Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who almost certainly would otherwise have been a great deal more helpful to her chances of victory.

On Emanuel:

Emanuel was born to Israeli parents who had moved to Chicago. His father fought in the Irgun, an Israeli paramilitary organization in pre-state Israel that helped fight the British to gain independence. …

Israel has not been a focal point of Emanuel’s early messaging, but his diplomatic tenure in Japan – where he broadened his role to encompass all of Asia – underscores his global perspective, a trait that could appeal to Democrats seeking a seasoned leader, notes Politico Magazine. High-level Democrats who know Emanuel view his candidacy as almost inevitable. “20 years ago it would have been an article in The Onion,” said Doug Sosnik, a former Clinton White House colleague, who now sees Emanuel as uniquely qualified. David Axelrod, a longtime friend, agreed, asking, “Who has more relevant experience?” and highlighting Emanuel’s blunt style and winning instincts.

I bet Israel “has not been a focal point” for Emanuel. He’s no dummy, and he knows that sympathy for Israel is a drawback in his own party.

And there’s one more drawback. It’s a superficial one, but I think it also matters: Emanuel is 5’7″, and that seems to be a drawback in presidential elections.

However, I confess that I have a soft spot in my heart for Emanuel, because he studied ballet in his youth. And not just a little bit, but a lot, and apparently was quite good at it:

Emanuel studied dance in Evanston, later majored in dance at Sarah Lawrence College, turned down a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet, and there he was, talking of his days in tights.

NOTE: I’m not ready to start an “Election 2028” category yet, so I won’t.

Will Egypt take some Gazans? (plus some news on Turkey)

The New Neo Posted on by

I hope it’s true, but I don’t have much confidence in the possibility

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has informed other Arab leaders that he is willing to temporarily relocate half a million residents from Gaza to northern Sinai in a designated city as part of the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, according to a Friday report.

According to the report in the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper, Sissi made his willingness known during meetings held by Arab leaders in recent weeks in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. There was no confirmation of the report from any other source.

The Egyptian State Information Service denied the report, saying, “Egypt’s position is firm in its absolute and final rejection of any attempt to displace Palestinians, and the Cairo Arab Summit’s emergency plan for reconstruction is based on it.”

Of course, you can hardly blame Egypt if it sticks to its “no.” Gazans are trouble wherever they go. Egypt and Arab nations only pretend to champion them, but in reality they want nothing to do with them and only use them as foils to Israel.

The next bit of news isn’t about Egypt or Arab nations or even about Israel, but I’m putting it here because it’s about an Islamic regime that’s seeing some disruption right now – Turkey:

The arrest of the mayor of Turkey’s largest city in a dawn raid last week was a watershed moment in the country’s prolonged shift away from democracy. Opponents of president Recep Tayyip Erdo?an fear it is a move to ­sideline the sole challenger capable of defeating him in upcoming elections, expected before 2028.

On Saturday, protests in support of ?mamo?lu erupted in Istanbul – where flares and stones where thrown at police, who responded with pepper spray – while in Ankara, the capital, police used water cannon and tear gas on demonstrators.

The interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, said 323 people had been detained in connection with an investigation into the Istanbul municipality on Saturday night, following protests. …

Within days, what began as protests in response to ?mamo?lu’s detention has grown into something more. “This is bigger than ?mamo?lu. It’s about a fight for democracy, law and equal rights,” said Azra as demonstrators massed around her. …

Supporters of the mayor said 300,000 people joined the demonstration in Istanbul on Friday night, while video showed protesters taking to the streets and clashing with the police in major towns and cities across the country.

Much of the rest of the article, which is in The Guardian, blames Erdogan’s actions on Trump. I kid you not.

By the way, Erdogan is the guy who famously said, back when he was mayor of Istanbul:

Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.

Street demonstrations are all very well and good, but they lead to nothing expect arrests and violence against the demonstrators unless and until the police or the army decide not to fight them but to join them in toppling the government.

Report from a NYC budget hotel

The New Neo Posted on by

A budget hotel in New York is one that has a pricetag that someone other than Saudi royalty can afford. I’m staying in one of them right now, and you know what? It’s not bad.

It has some drawbacks, of course. One is the lack of a lobby; maybe four chairs and that’s it. No food except one vending machine – and another similar hotel I stayed in recently didn’t even have that. But it does have a little fridge, which helps – although no microwave, which doesn’t help. No ice bucket. No ice machine. No drawers, although two tiny square open cubbies.

No closet, but a foot-wide opening with a bar across the top and a few hangers. Woe to you if two people occupy the space and have enough clothes for a week and a couple of parties. No place to put more than one suitcase. No carpet, which must make it easier to clean and more allergy-free, but isn’t very comfy. A very small bathroom with almost no counter space.

But good beds. A good shower and lots of hot water. A decent although not overwhelming number of outlets. Speedy-enough wifi. Fairly quiet although not soundproofed.

But what’s up with this – a new pet peeve of mine, and not limited to New York hotels at all – nothing to hold onto in the shower. Now, fortunately, I don’t really need something of that sort. But it’s a nice thing to have, even for young people. And I would assume that it would protect the hotels from lawsuits as well.

Also, I’ve noticed there’s a sort of euro-styling in these places. Things look very spiffy but are small and tight, as though in a boat. But since “regular” hotels in New York and Boston are now going for between six hundred and eight hundred dollars a night for a regular room, the budget hotel is very much in my future.

The epitome of government waste

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip Ace.]

This is extraordinary, and I don’t mean that in a good way:

One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be “in the shower” when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.

FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an “independent agency,” its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all — and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.

This reporter spent a year investigating the agency a decade ago, and I found egregious and self-serving violations of hiring, pay, contracting, and purchase card rules. One thing I could not discover is why the agency actually existed, other than to provide luxurious lifestyles for its employees. Endless junkets to resort destinations, which employees openly used to facilitate personal vacations, were justified as building awareness of the agency in the hopes that someone would actually want to use its voluntary services.

Please read the whole thing, if you can stomach it. As bad as you may have thought the grift and corruption in government has been, this is probably worse. Note that this agency has been that way a long time – the reporter says he investigated it a decade ago, but … crickets:

What surprised me most about my FMCS investigation was what happened afterward: nothing. An inspector general made a referral to the FBI, but there were no prosecutions. Instead, President Barack Obama nominated a chief subject of the investigation to the top job.

It took DOGE and Trump to shut it down. It was a good ride – a great ride – while it lasted, and we paid for it.

But the Democrats would love for this sort of agency to continue.

Hamas “Health Ministry” casualties continue to be published by the MSM as though they’re true

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s preposterous that the MSM continues to report like this:

For a second night in a row, Israel’s military launched airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 13 more people by early Wednesday after more than 400 were killed the previous day, according to health officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

According to “health officials in the “Hamas-run Palestinian territory” – according to the terrorists who started the whole thing and whose death statistics have been proven false and/or misleading time and again. Who are these 400?:

Israel’s military said it had targeted a Hamas military site in the enclave’s southern al-Mawasi humanitarian zone, near the border with Egypt. At least two civilians were among those killed Wednesday, according to the Red Crescent.

The Red Crescent seems to be the Moslem version of the International Red Cross; the latter organization has been biased against Israel for quite some time.

More:

The mounting deaths come after Israel definitively ended a two-month ceasefire with Hamas before dawn Tuesday, resuming full-scale military operations in Gaza and threatening to ramp up its assault further. …

Even before Israel resumed military operations it had halted all humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, drawing warnings from aid agencies and the United Nations that civilians would suffer unduly for the impasse in talks aimed at extending the ceasefire.

Why, those warmongering Israelis, breaking that ceasefire and stopping “humanitarian aid” as well, for no discernible reason at all! And that “impasse” in the talks – who might be responsible for that? CBS’s lips are sealed.

More:

Dr. Marc Perlmutter, an American surgeon who has been volunteering at the al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, northern Gaza, told CBS News on Tuesday that the facility was struggling to cope with the influx of new patients wounded by Israel’s attacks, and that young Palestinians were among those with the worst injuries.

“The level of bodily damage that these children get in particular is insane.”

I have little doubt that there are some injured children with terrible injuries as collateral damage in this war. Israelis have no desire to hurt children, and Gazans purposely put children in harm’s way, as we know. And who is Dr Perlmutter? Not too many American surgeons are working in Gaza hospitals these days, so I looked him up and found pretty much what I expected to find:

Mark Perlmutter is an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina. He is Jewish but believes that Zionism is “sadism” and “the moral equivalent of Nazism.”

Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon from California. He alleges that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Yet in an essay for Politico, Perlmutter and Sidhwa present themselves as physicians lacking “any political interest in the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—other than wanting it to end.” From this perch of supposed neutrality, they accuse Israel of “murdering children” yet do not have a bad word to say about Hamas, even though their article goes on for nearly 5,000 words.

The essay by Perlmutter and Sidhwa is an illustration of how the media can launder Israel’s virulent critics to render their views palatable, or even compelling to a mainstream audience.

That article on Perlmutter is from last August.

As for the CBS article, it fails to acknowledge that Hamas can’t count bodies that fast or that many or most of the dead might indeed be Hamas fighters hiding among some civilians. Plus of course, after the MSM’s horrendous reporting on the Gaza hospital strike that wasn’t, shortly after the war’s beginning, the MSM should never make this error again of publishing Hamas reports uncritically. There is no excuse. The only rational explanation is that it’s purposeful on the MSM’s part.

Oh, and speaking of hospital strikes – here’s the French MSM:

Israeli forces advanced deeper into the Gaza Strip on Friday and blew up the only specialised cancer hospital in the war-torn territory, as Israeli leaders vowed to capture more land until Hamas releases its remaining hostages.

Nasty, nasty, nasty Israelis. You have to get to paragraph number three to read this:

The Israeli military said it struck the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, which was inaccessible to doctors and patients during the war, because Hamas militants were operating in the site. Turkey, which helped build and fund the hospital, said Israeli troops at one point used it as a base.

Note that weasel word “militants” from France24.

And then later:

Dr. Zaki Al-Zaqzouq, head of the hospital’s oncology department, said …

“I cannot fathom what could be gained from bombing a hospital that served as a lifeline for so many patients,” he said in a statement issued by the aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians.

He can’t fathom wanting to obliterate “Hamas militants” hiding there.

Further down we have this:

Hospitals can lose their protected status under international law if they are used for military purposes, but any operations against them must be proportional. Human rights groups and UN-backed experts have accused Israel of systematically destroying Gaza’s health care system.

Human rights groups and UN-backed “experts” say Israel is evil, and France24 dutifully reports it.

“Cornhead” announces a victory …

The New Neo Posted on by

… of the legal variety. Here’s the link, and here’s an excerpt:

I’m a solo practitioner in Omaha. I was hired as the Special Knox County Attorney to represent it in a federal court lawsuit. …

The Knox County industrial wind farm is the flagship project for National Grid Renewables. The projected cost is $1.3 billion. North Fork Wind intends to build 150 plus wind turbines over 600 feet in height. North Fork Wind spent – exclusive of attorneys’ fees – $19.3 million developing this project. Local landowners are projected to be paid $5.8 million per year. Knox County political subdivisions are to receive $2.8 million per year. These are big numbers.

On March 14, 2025, Senior United States District Court Judge John M. Gerrard mostly granted my motion. After his ruling, I doubt that the industrial wind project will be built. The full 40-page memorandum and order can be found at PACER, docket 4:24-cv-3150.

The Department of Education changes size and focus

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the story from Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

That political change includes plans to scale-down the U.S. Department of Education. Not truly to “eliminate” it, which would require an act of Congress, but to eliminate the leftist-NGO funding and woke education mandates, and to send most of its functions back to the states. I wondered aloud in recent posts what would become of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) through which we [Legal Insurrection’s Equal Protection Project] have filed so many complaints.

Although Trump’s executive order regarding the Department of Education does refer to closing it, it actually – according to Professor Jacobson – is “more like putting the [DoEd] on a crash diet.”

So DoEd will retain some spending and assistance program funding, as much of its current burden cannot be fully eliminated or offloaded Significantly, the remaining spending must be monitored to make sure that “any program or activity receiving Federal assistance” elimiates DEI discrimination and simlar agendas.

Will this hold up? Once again, time will tell.