Authorities in Hennepin County, Minnesota, have filed criminal charges against a grocery store owner accused of running more than $1.1 million through other people's food stamp cards and reselling the goods out of his own shop, the latest in a string of fraud cases that Republicans say expose a systemic failure of oversight under Gov. Tim Walz.
Abdidwahid Mohamed, the owner of Minnesota Food Grocery LLC, allegedly used EBT cards registered to other individuals to buy merchandise at Sam's Club and Costco throughout 2021, then hauled the products back to his store for resale, Fox News Digital reported. Hennepin County authorities said they observed Mohamed making purchases, followed him back to his store, and cited surveillance footage and GPS data to support the case.
The complaint states that "Mohamed received $1,141,082 in EBT payments" and that the scheme "involved a high degree of sophistication or planning or occurred over a lengthy period of time." If found guilty, Mohamed faces up to 20 years in prison or a $100,000 fine.
What makes this case sting for Minnesota taxpayers is who flagged it. It wasn't a state agency. Minnesota state Sen. Mark Koran, a Republican, told Fox News Digital that it was Walmart's Global Investigation Team that initially identified the suspect, not the sprawling bureaucracy charged with safeguarding billions in public benefit dollars.
Koran called the case "yet another example of why Minnesota is target number one for fraudsters." He did not mince words about the state's capacity to police its own programs:
"The sheer volume of welfare programs, combined with the inability of state agencies to detect obvious fraud is alarming. Once again, it was a private retailer, not the state, that uncovered this fraud scheme."
Koran demanded full prosecution, not just of Mohamed, but of anyone who sold their EBT cards to him. "All individuals involved, including the people that sold their EBT cards to Abdi Mohamed, have to be fully prosecuted," he said. "People who come here to steal from hardworking Minnesota taxpayers deserve serious consequences."
The case lands in the middle of a broader fraud firestorm that has engulfed Minnesota's social services apparatus. Federal prosecutors have estimated that fraud against 14 Medicaid programs in the state could total $9 billion, a figure that dwarfs the Mohamed case but illustrates the environment in which it allegedly flourished. Republican lawmakers have pushed to investigate Walz's role in the crisis, only to face resistance from Democrats in the state legislature.
Minnesota state Sen. Michael Holmstrom, also a Republican, offered a blunter assessment of the alleged scheme's brazenness. "This may be the laziest one yet," Holmstrom told Fox News Digital.
"We had this guy, Abdi Mohamed, and he named his scam company 'Minnesota Food Grocery LLC.' They aren't even trying, because they have been conditioned to believe there are no consequences."
That line, "conditioned to believe there are no consequences", captures the frustration running through Republican criticism of the Walz administration's record on fraud prevention. When the people allegedly looting taxpayer-funded programs don't bother to disguise what they're doing, it says something about the enforcement environment they operate in.
Walz himself testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2026. Fox News Digital reached out to his office for comment on the Mohamed charges. No response was reported. That silence fits a pattern: critics have noted that Walz has previously avoided fraud-related hearings even when he was inside the same building where they were being held.
Dalia al-Aqidi, a Republican running for Congress in Minnesota's 5th Congressional District against Rep. Ilhan Omar, seized on the case to draw a direct line between the state's fraud epidemic and its political leadership. She told Fox News Digital that the problem is not accidental.
"Minneapolis didn't become America's fraud capital by accident. It was earned. This week, it's a grocer charged with running up $1.1 million in charges on other people's EBT cards. Next week, it will be something else, but the bill always lands on the Minnesotans who actually pay taxes."
Al-Aqidi argued that families struggling with affordability, the very issue she said "keeps them up night", are being cheated twice: once by the fraudsters and once by the officials who fail to stop them. She called the situation a "cruel joke," saying the money exists to help people who genuinely need it.
"It is just lining the wrong pockets and paying for luxury cars and houses on the other side of the world. The fraudsters are only half the story. The other half are the people administering these programs, from the front lines all the way up to Ilhan Omar, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Governor Tim Walz. There has been talk about ending fraud in Minnesota for years. I am going to Washington to actually do it."
Her remarks name the three most prominent Democratic officials in the state's governance chain. Whether those officials bear direct responsibility for the Mohamed case is a separate question. But the political argument is clear: years of talk about cracking down on fraud have produced more fraud, not less.
The pressure on Walz's administration has mounted from multiple directions in recent months. He ousted his own human services chief amid the broader scandal, and some Republican officials have gone further, calling for criminal accountability for the governor and Attorney General Ellison over what they describe as a failure to protect public funds.
The mechanics of the alleged fraud were straightforward. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, provides food assistance to low-income households through EBT cards that function like debit cards. Mohamed allegedly obtained EBT cards belonging to other people and used them to make bulk purchases at Sam's Club and Costco in 2021. He then transported those goods to his own store and resold them, pocketing the proceeds while taxpayers footed the bill.
Breitbart noted that investigators tied the case to criticism of Minnesota's leadership, arguing the state has repeatedly failed to prevent recurring fraud in taxpayer-funded programs. The complaint's language about "a high degree of sophistication or planning" suggests this was not a one-off impulse but a sustained operation running over a lengthy stretch of time.
Hennepin County authorities backed up the charges with surveillance footage and GPS tracking data, both of which reportedly placed Mohamed at the retail locations and then at his store with the purchased goods. The evidentiary trail, in other words, was not hard to follow. The question is why state agencies weren't following it first.
The Mohamed case is not happening in a vacuum. At the federal level, officials have signaled that SNAP fraud is a priority. In a Fox News op-ed published in March, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brooke Rollins wrote that the program has drifted far from its original purpose:
"Since its inception, SNAP has helped our most vulnerable citizens afford the essential and nutritious food they need. At least, that is what the program is supposed to do. Over time, however, SNAP has been taken advantage of, allowing many to game the system and leaving millions of vulnerable Americans without healthy, nutrient-dense food options."
That framing, a program designed for the vulnerable being hijacked by those gaming the system, is exactly what critics say is playing out in Minnesota on a massive scale. The $1.1 million attributed to Mohamed is a fraction of the estimated $9 billion in potential Medicaid fraud that federal prosecutors have flagged across 14 programs in the state. But each individual case reinforces the same pattern: public money flowing out the door with inadequate checks.
Fox News reported the case comes amid wider scrutiny of fraud in Minnesota social-service programs, with critics arguing state agencies failed to detect obvious abuse. The political fallout shows no sign of slowing. Republicans in the state legislature and on the campaign trail are making fraud a defining issue, and each new case hands them fresh material.
Several open questions remain. The exact date the charges were filed has not been disclosed. It is unclear whether Mohamed has been arrested or arraigned, or whether he has legal representation. The specific statutes cited in the complaint have not been publicly detailed. And Walz's office has not publicly addressed this particular case.
What is not in question is the dollar amount, $1,141,082 in EBT payments, laid out in a complaint, backed by surveillance footage and GPS data, and uncovered not by the state of Minnesota but by a private retailer's investigation team.
When the people paid to catch fraud keep missing it, and the people committing fraud stop bothering to hide it, the system isn't broken. It's been abandoned.
