Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a plan to crack this fraud case wide open, and it involves turning the fraudsters against each other. His strategy relies on the simple reality that criminals who steal millions have no problem betraying one another when the right incentive is dangled in front of them.
Bessent laid out his approach on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle. He explained to host Laura Ingraham that the department plans to offer cash payments to anyone willing to spill the details on Minnesota’s sprawling social services fraud scheme. The information he wants includes the usual suspects: who participated, how the money moved, and when key decisions got made. The Treasury Department aims to recover stolen funds, prosecute those responsible, prevent future crimes, and expand investigations into similar schemes in other states.
“We know that these rats will turn on each other,” he said. “We heard today that one of the people who has been convicted of fraud, she was given $200,000 to bribe a juror, and she was so corrupt, she skimmed $80,000 of it and only tried to give a $120,000 bribe.”
He continued, “So we are going to offer whistleblower payments to anyone who wants to tell us who, what, when, where, and how this fraud has been done. And I think that that will give us a great report on how to get it done.”
The juror bribery incident Bessent referenced occurred during a high-profile 2024 trial in which defendants were accused of stealing more than $40 million from a pandemic food program.
According to an FBI agent’s affidavit, a woman rang the doorbell at the home of “Juror #52” in the Minneapolis suburb of Spring Lake Park late Sunday, the night before the case went to the jury. The juror wasn’t home, but a relative answered the door. The woman handed the relative a gift bag with a curly ribbon and images of flowers and butterflies and said it was a “present” for the juror.
“The woman told the relative to tell Juror #52 to say not guilty tomorrow and there would be more of that present tomorrow,” the agent wrote. “After the woman left, the relative looked in the gift bag and saw it contained a substantial amount of cash.”
The juror called police right after she got home and gave them the bag of cash. It held $100, $50 and $20 bills totaling around $120,000.
The concerning aspect of the incident was that the woman knew the juror’s name and address, even though the information had not been made public. However, “the list of people who had access to it included prosecutors and defense lawyers — and the seven defendants themselves.”
Will this plan work? Will there be snitches who expose the corruption?
As PJ Media previously reported, state employees said in November that Gov. Tim Walz bore direct responsibility for allowing the misconduct to continue and that his administration sidelined internal warnings and ignored whistleblowers. House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer revealed this week how Walz retaliated against whistleblowers who repeatedly warned state leadership about widespread fraud. “Apparently, they were catching the fraud in Minnesota, but every time they would report it, Tim Walz would bite their head off and threaten their jobs, threaten their tenure, and it would just go away until this video went viral, and here we are,” Comer said.
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Bessent made clear he sees negligence at the top. “It’s clear that Governor Walz has been negligent in his fiduciary duties as a chief executive of the state of Minnesota, that this would happen on his watch,” Bessent said. “And we are actively pursuing all leads to see the level of involvement, whether it’s limited to just negligence and incompetence or is something more than that.” Walz announced Monday he would not seek re-election amid growing scrutiny over the state’s handling of the case.
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