The Highwire with Del Bigtree - THE REAL VICTIMS OF MINNESOTA’S FRAUD SCANDAL

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Autism provider and Holland Center founder Jennifer Larson joins Del Bigtree to expose how Minnesota’s sweeping response to a massive Medicaid fraud scandal is punishing the wrong people. Not just targeting criminal actors, the state has frozen payments and deployed AI-driven systems that delay reimbursements, pushing legitimate autism care providers to the brink of closure.As legitimate centers struggle to keep their doors open, vulnerable children and families are caught in the crossfire. Larson explains how a blunt, bureaucratic crackdown has created a second crisis, one that threatens access to essential care.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

There's news stories that we watch sometimes in the news and sometimes we cheer and sometimes we're upset, but a lot of times we never get the whole story. And a lot of times we may not be seeing all the repercussions that are taking place in that story. Well, this particular news story, you saw it, it's up in Minnesota. It's not the one that's really on flames right now. It's the other one. The other one about the fraud, like the biggest fraud that has ever been discovered, like billions of dollars being stolen for fake You remember this one.

Growing investigation into a fraud scheme involving taxpayer money that was supposed to be spent on social services. A viral video appears to expose that alleged fraud at several Somali-operated child care centers in Minneapolis. The business is licensed for 99 kids, but when independent reporter Nick Shirley went by this month, the place appeared completely empty. There's no one here right now. It's midday on a weekday. The video, which alleges the daycare is fake, says the facility had received $4 million in state funds. This comes as Wallace's administration faces allegations of widespread fraud connected to state social services. Hello, we'd like to ask where the money's going? Answer the question, are there children?

There's no children inside the building. FBI director Cash Patel claims that case is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Now, he says he's surging more resources to Minnesota to investigate. The Trump administration says it is freezing federal funding for child care in the state and will require justification and a receipt or photo evidence from all providers who receive the funding nationwide. I think a lot of us were like, good, geez. I mean, our taxpayer money going to criminals, billions? I mean, when they're starting to talk about the numbers across Minnesota billions, tens of billions, maybe hundreds of billions.

Look at this epicenter of fraud, Minnesota's empty stomachs, Autism Therapy and Scandal that could stop $2 billion. Wouldn't you love to have that money back in your pocket so you could spend it in the right place? But, you know, who would that hurt? You know, they shut it down? Good, shut it down. Well, what about all of those daycares and autism centers that were doing it right, that have real children inside of there?

It's affecting them too, and that has been brought to our attention by Jennifer Larson, who runs one of the biggest autism facilities up in Minnesota. This is her testifying on that issue. My name is Jennifer Larson. I'm the founder and CEO of Holland Center in Minnesota. I've been an autism provider for over 20 years and started the organization for my son. What started as a small program grew over two decades

into four locations that families rely on, not just for therapy, but for hope, routine, and survival. And this week, Holland and other programs all over Minnesota are collapsing. Not because we committed fraud, but because a crime ring was allowed to operate inside Minnesota's service system and the government's clumsy response is now destroying legitimate, long-standing providers and devastating families that we serve. When services disappear, families do not just simply adjust. They face a crisis. For more than two decades, Holland has served hundreds of children year after year, employed hundreds of clinicians and staff, operated under yearly on-site audits, inspections, and documentation oversight.

Delivered real services to real children every day. We've always complied with everything the system required. Yet within the last month, the state has withheld over $400,000 in Medicaid funds for my own program, and that number grows every single day. What happened in Minnesota had nothing to do with the ethical, long-standing autism providers. What did happen was organized criminal networks that exploited autism services, by opening fake centers, billing for children that did not exist, billing for services never delivered,

and stealing millions of taxpayer dollars in the process. These are not minor compliance issues. They are criminal enterprises. Families trusted that the government was protecting the integrity of the system. It failed. Now, instead of doing the obvious thing in targeting criminal actors, the response has been to freeze everyone's payments.

That decision does not punish the criminals. It punishes innocent children and families. Autism therapy cannot be paused without consequences. Loss of services can erase years of progress in weeks, and abrupt disruption of services can cause lifelong consequences in these children. This is not abstract harm. It is daily trauma for families already carrying an extraordinary burden. I built Holland for 20 years.

Families built their lives around the care that we provide. All of that is risk of destruction today, not by fraud, but by clumsy government response that failed to distinguish between criminals and caregivers. But families and children should never pay the price for government failure. Thank you. Well, there's repercussions to everything that happens in government, and this is one of those stories. It's my honor and pleasure to be joined now by one of the most powerful autism moms I've ever met, Jennifer Larson. Thank you.

Jennifer, hi. It's great to have you on. I wish it was under better circumstances. This is a really, really terrible story. So I guess my first question would be, as this fraud story started breaking loose all over Minnesota, people taking advantage making up autism centers or a center of it that had nobody in it

and things like that, did you foresee as that was happening, uh-oh, this could cause a problem? Did you imagine you could get pulled into this? You know, at first, when a lot of the centers started popping up, I thought great because I did the same thing for my son. I started a center because I wanted a program that was right for him, and there wasn't enough programs, and we've had a waiting list for five years.

So I was very supportive when I started to see some of these centers pop up out of the blue. And in fact, some of them reached out to me for support and advice and to consult. That was years ago. But then as it continued and we went from, you know, a few of them to 300 to 400 centers, it seemed there was a red flag there. There is a high prevalence of autism in the Somali community. And so it didn't raise a red flag right away. But after, and it's not just Somalis, but after 300 to 400 centers, it didn't make a lot of sense what was going on in our state. And so as this, you know, just a couple weeks ago, is this really started breaking loose, you then must have been caught by surprise that there was that level of fraud taking place

in and around you in the state of Minnesota. Everybody in Minnesota heard about the daycare fraud probably 10 years ago. And then it just kind of went away on the news. And I, you know, good for Nick Shirley. But, you know, I don't have the time or energy to go investigate every autism center. so I'm not going or read it. I'm not a citizen journalist. But I don't think most Minnesotans are surprised by the fraud.

I think they're surprised by the level and magnitude of the fraud. Because living here, it's kind of become one of those unfortunate issues in Minnesota that just exists where we live. So, it's any sense. Yeah, I get what you're saying. And we have to be careful. There's, you know, accusations of racial issues around this that get tagged on this, which aren't right. And I do want to point out, because you lightly mentioned it, early on in my investigation as I was traveling with Vax, one of the anomalies that really stood out was this massive autism spike in the Somali community up in Minnesota. I've said the CDC should have built one of the biggest centers in the world inside of Minnesota since that Somali, you know, group had the highest rates recorded.

moment anywhere in the world it didn't make sense they were my understanding is they were bringing in you know which doctors to try and do seances on their children because they had never seen it they didn't have a word for autism so that's a story that you and i have discussed prior to all of this that's also at the center of this discussion but unfortunately that problem was taken advantage of and then turned into this giant money laundering theft um in minnesota yes and it's it's it's It's nothing to do with their community. I think you know that many of our advocates, Andy Wakefield, Mark Blacksill, and myself, Patty Carroll, have tried our hardest to help that community as much as we can and serve that community. So it has nothing to do with that.

It's just that they started to pop up. I didn't think it was the problem that it was becoming because of the high prevalence is all I'm trying to say. It gave cover, right? It was like this is happening for a reason. And it should look, we need that many centers. This is the thing. And when we really talk about it, people have no idea how many autism centers we need in this country. We have no idea how big an issue this is because if it's not right inside of our household,

we don't know what it's like to take care of these kids. And that's the work that you're doing. So how many facilities do you have and how many children and people are you treating, you know, working with it, have autism? I have four locations and we have about 200 kids. and some of them come, you know, as their school replacement, basically. That's what my son did for many years. And then others are kind of inpatient or outpatient kind of going in and out for speech, out here, whatever they need, behavior services or consulting.

So, yeah, about 200 I serve right now. And then I have about 115 employees. Wow. I mean, so it's a, I mean, to me, that's a big operation, certainly bigger than the work that we do here with ICANN. you've been dedicated to it one of the, as I've said before, one of the most dedicated people in this movement

on this issue. So when this happened, when they suddenly just froze funds, did they essentially just blanket? I mean, it was, I guess when I saw the headline, I was like, they can't really just be freezing everything. That's just probably a headline. But they literally, the Trump administration,

it was a federal decision to just freeze or his HHS freezes all childhood payments to Minnesota after viral fraud. allegations. Did you get a call? Did you get a warning? How did you find out? So here's the confusion. I think that was for the daycares. Okay. That the Trump administration did that. What happened to us was actually a Wall's decision. Oh really? 14 yes 14 categories um of Medicaid funding 13 of which are disabled children and adults. It's transportation, it's adult housing. It's all 13 of the 14 like I said

are disabled. He picked 14 categories and said stop. We're going to put these through pre- payment review, it's called at Optum's AI. And Optum, an insurance company who, you know, their job is to deny claims, suddenly got all our claims. And I mean, until today, and I did get some money today, the last date of service that I got paid on was December 5th. They withheld all the claims for everybody, regardless of who they were, that I've been in business over 20 years, that I've had audits every year on site, I've been like, and all the other providers like me. I mean, I know, I know a lot really great providers in the trade group I'm in and everybody got all their claims got held for no reason at all no there was no I'm sure there's no issue but they just held everybody

because they didn't know what they were doing and then then went two cycles and we started to raise alarms obviously because my payrolls 250,000 every two weeks wow and this is a yeah and it's a company that's thin margins I've never paid myself in 20 years it's not we're not like rolling in dough to be able to like make that just gives you a sense of the cost of autism which is something i've talked about before people have no idea that's for for 200 kids 150 outpatient so 350 all in 250 000 every two weeks yeah and so my Medicaid payment basically covers my payroll and then the rest of it has to cover my rent and anything else that i have to pay for right you have all your business expenses so when they cut off when they cut us off

you know, we can't make our payroll. And a lot of the companies here have already gone under. They've just had to shut down. I last week finally said, look, who wants to go on unpaid leave because we can't afford this? We finally did get paid some this week for the first two cycles, but now they're two weeks behind. So I'm gonna always be $300,000 in debt

because they're just withholding payments. Well, and let's be honest, we've been working on this story with you for the last few days. You literally said on your show on Thursday, if this payment doesn't come through, I'm going to have to shut the doors on this facility. So we're lucky that the story is not as gruesome as we were planning on. Thank God. I want to say that.

Thank God. Some of that funding came through this very morning. But I want to just talk about for people that don't know what that would be like. I mean, I think we just had a freeze here in Austin, Texas, and our kids weren't in school for five days. you know, is that, you know, when you shut down to school, even if it's for short periods of time with children that are autistic or on the spectrum, what does that do for that type of person? Like I said, it's a complete crisis. And, you know, I've had parents calling me crying, what can we do? What can we help? And, you know, they're doing the best. There's not a lot they can do

because it's just such a big gap of money, you know, and they're scared to death. I have a parent whose child has been discharged from five other locations. And now is spelling at my location and doing wonderfully. And they're scared to death. And these kids, they don't, they need the stability. They're, you know, their whole day, you know, they get their behaviors, their aggression, and everything goes off the rails when they don't have their routines. Yeah, I know that's, I'm a mom.

You know, I mean, I know my son and he's pretty chill sometimes. But, you know, when these kids, they have their routine and they know what they need and they need to have that stability. I mean, that that routine is part of what you work on, right, is getting them into a routine. If that routine breaks, in some instances, you know, I was just talking to some folks that work here with us that, you know, have children at home that are dealing with us. They're like, once you break the routine, sometimes you have to start all over again, a year's work or more. you're back to ground zero trying to build back the trust and all of those issues. So, you know, let me ask a harder question because as we sit here watching all this fraud taking place, how easy is it to commit fraud in Minnesota? Is it just like nobody's paying attention to the

amount of money you're bringing in? Because I know that you're on the up and up. As you said, I've seen your facility. It's incredible the work that you do. But, But obviously you have an insight none of us have. Is there just a lackadaisical government there that just throws money at you and never asks a question? I've talked to my billing people about this because with all this prepayment review, I really wanted to understand in depth each of our claims because they were being held. And my billing people will say there's no way this didn't happen without help. Because if we bill maybe 15 minutes on accident for a child,

child over the all of time. We get flagged, which rarely happens, but sometimes, you know, you make a little error. How they were billing for kids that didn't exist, how they were billing 24 hours a day with one therapist with eight kids, how they didn't have on-site audits like we had every single year, somebody comes in, sits down and says, I want to see these files of these kids for this time on this day. And then they want to see the kids. And if they're not there, you, you know, well, this kid's and you need to say where is the kid. So the amount of scrutiny we go through on a daily basis for 20 plus years to make sure that every single thing,

we have to bill, when we bill, we have to document every 15 minutes. And so I don't know, I mean, it's astounding, to say the least, that this was allowed to happen with three to 400 centers that weren't serving children with disabilities. And what could you think about a more awful thing to be doing than?

and pretending to serve disabled children. I can't. And I know you're being careful, but what it sounds like to me is, if you are having to have scrutiny over every 15 minutes that's happening with a child, they know if the child's been sick or missed a day and they're all over you, how, as you put it,

is billions of dollars flowing into centers that have no kids in it, and some kid with a video camera can prove that, that looks like government corruption, that looks suspect. And I hope an investigation gets into any government officials that are involved in that in your state, in every state in this country. It is time to clean this stuff up. I mean, you know, we're all, it's hard for a lot of people out there, especially parents that are, you know, footing the bill.

You know, even the Medicare, Medicaid doesn't cover all of the things it takes, as you know, to raise a child with autism. I mean, it's an astronomical expense, let alone just what it takes to be at home to not be able to get to your job at times, all of the way that it affects. you and to think that you're paying taxes that are just going to fraud like this. It's really disturbing. So is there light then today as you're seeing these payments? You're going to be behind, you know, something I can't imagine, $300,000 every two weeks. That's a lot of money. But is there communication opening up?

Do you feel like they're going to get this fixed? I think DHS, there was a hearing yesterday and they're trying to say that they're up to date on their billings, which they're not, because we're all two weeks behind. I think it was a need-jerk reaction. They didn't actually think about the collateral damage. They didn't think about the fact that we can't bankroll 90 days of payroll. We are, you know, that this isn't, well, who can? I don't know what industry can bankroll 90 days of payroll. But, you know, I think they are actually seeing the light and regretting what they've done.

and I hope they reverse it. I did get the first two cycles, like I said, but it was one was over the holidays, so it was lower anyway. I'm still in trouble, though, because all my landlords at least gave us reprieve like January. They said, okay, we get it. But now on my biggest center, I owe $100,000 in rent because I didn't pay January and I need February. That's $100,000 right there that I don't have because I didn't get the, I'm buying 300. And so it's a catch-up game that's going to be really hard to catch up on. I mean, I do have a little breathing room, like you said. It's not like I'm closing on Monday now, but it's not going to be an easy road unless they actually repair the damage that they're doing to us daily. Because every day, I fall more behind.

You've been deeply involved in politics. It's one of the things when I met you, you were a founder of the Canary Party and attempt to sort of bring this autism issue into politics, to have politicians discussing it. You and I have gone to state capitals, uh, deep, deeply involved with the Republican Party. I think I can say that. You've been, you know, I think your name is on enough things. I can say that safely. Was this a learning experience just about government?

I mean, big government and what happens. Is it hard to fix problems like this, like fraud? Or do you just think this is just total ineptitude? I'm just scared that it could happen again. Yeah, I mean, having a business and it's interesting, and I try not to read comments. on articles and things where things are posted, that, you know, if you do rely on the government,

for me, it's 60% of what we bring in, and they can just blanket pull it out like that from you, I just don't know if it's how I can feel comfortable going forward in an industry where that can happen. I don't know why it could happen again. They can just say, no, we're not going to pay you again. And then what do you do? So I think what it taught me is, well, it's taught me a lot, actually, and it scares me, it scares me a lot for Minnesota and a lot of the states, California and a lot of the blue states, because if anything can be learned from this for the states that haven't pulled their Medicaid is don't do what Minnesota did and don't shut down the real people who are servicing real children and real adults and have real disabilities. Don't do that.

do something else. If there's any lesson to be learned from this, regardless of what happens with me. But that's what I think. I think it's government isn't paying attention to the people. And again, it wasn't CMS that did this. It was Governor Walls that did this. And that keeps kind of getting confused, unfortunately. Yeah, I did. I'm glad I, we cleared that up because I didn't have that right. I was like, Bobby, where are you at? What are you doing? This is one of our own. I've been yelling. I'm talking Bobby. I'm texting Bobby too. I'm like, Come on. Somebody help me out here. Speaking of Bobby, speaking of Bobby, let's move to, I think, probably the greatest headline of the week is the new interagency autism coordinating committee.

Sitting with you at that hearing behind you was your son, Kaden, who has been with you all along the way. He is now one of the members of a government agency that's going to be helping. helping to decide where billions of dollars on funding around the autism issue is going to go. Caden Larson is a non-speaking adult with autism, is currently enrolled at Normandale Community College in Minnesota studying mathematics. Cadence serves as a board member of children with autism, deserve education, which connects families with grants for medical service education therapy. Larson also works for communications for all in Spellers Freedom Foundation, which aims to bring spelling and typing as a method of communication and education to socialization.

education to socioeconomically challenged communities and public schools. This is one of the great stories of all times. I mean, you know, let's just talk about spellers for a second. You had a son, he would walk with you. I met him. Always beautiful, beautiful smile, but I didn't, you know, I want to say, was it five or six years ago he, we didn't know what his communication level was or what his education level was? I don't want to misstate the amount of years. is weird because I'm losing track of time, but describe prior to spellers where you were at with Kaden. It's 2020, right when COVID was hitting when we started spelling. But prior to that, you know, I always knew he was in there. I just couldn't reach him. I believed he was there,

but he had no way to communicate even with an iPad, even, you know, the buttons. He just never got it. They thought he had the intellect of a four-year-old. That's what, you know, psych testing would tell me. And so no, you know, I spent 20 years just guessing what he wanted and, you know, I'm trying to make it through. And he's lovely and this is, you know, spelling started in 2020. And then you know this, Del. It saved his life. And I was speaking with people about that, about his cancer in 2022. Well, tell us just a little bit because this is, I mean, so he basically told you I'm having issues that you wouldn't have known.

otherwise, right? He was able to communicate. Well, he had some issues during his cancer that if he couldn't tell me, that weren't presenting a fever, that he would have died. And his oncologist is on saying that because he had infections that hurt,

you know, to urinate, another thing, and if he couldn't tell me, Mom, this, you know, I feel this way, he would have died because he had no white count. Yeah, so, no, he's a trooper. And he is so, to be on IAC. You should have seen them this morning. It's so, so absolutely over the top. I couldn't be more proud also, but yeah. Well, it's an amazing story. It's a great team of

people that Bobby Kennedy's put together there. So many of our friends that you know, some great scientists, doctors, you know, there's many that I'm sure wish they could be on. They don't want to say it is a dream team. There's some people like you out there here in my own company that I wish we're on that, but it's a really great step in the right direction. So as you look at this work that you've been doing, you're right there on the ground for with children, you've taken care of your own, you've been involved in politics. What is your feeling now about what Kennedy is doing? Do you have hope that we're going to start seeing some light at the end of the tunnel on this journey?

Oh, 100%. I think Bobby's doing all the right things. I am supportive of everything he's done. I'm supportive of the people he's working with. I'm supportive of what they did for Hep B, what they're doing with all the schedule, what he's done with the food pyramid. He's been doing amazing things that we all know

for 20 years have been the right things to do. And finally, for those of us who've been screaming in the wind and, you know, victimized and, you know, called crazy, you know, tinfoil people, hey, guess what, like you were saying in your last segment, there's no proof. There's no proof. There's no double-blind studies. All this, I'm so happy he's suing the Academy of Pediatrics. I know a doctor here in the Twin Cities who had to leave his practice because he was being victimized by his practice saying, if you don't do this, you're going to be fired. And so then he just left.

So I think this is, everything he's doing, I 100% support. I do have, I do finally have, hope. I just think the administration, we got to get through the midterms and we've got to keep we've got to keep Bobby there and we got to keep the power on the right side of the issues. Well, great. Well, you know, I look forward to talking about that more and this is going to be a very important year. If you'll stick around for off the record, which is just a little interview I do after the show, I'd love to actually talk to you about adults. What's going to happen to these children, are there enough centers out there as parents are aging out where they can't take care of these children? I know it's a huge issue. I'd like to know your perspective on that.

But before we do that, if people want to help with your work or donate or get involved, what's the best way to contact you and help out? Well, any help is appreciated. It's a rough time. Just go to info at hollumcenter.com. That's my just our email and my staff can direct them. Yeah, it is a tough time, so I appreciate anybody who wants to support. All right. Well, this is an issue that's close to us, and we have a very active audience, so I'm sure they're going to help you out.

And keep us posted. If anything shifts, if this goes negative in any way, I'm going to scream bloody murder and I'll help you do it. So we'll make sure that we get this worked out, right? Okay. All right, take care, Jen. I'll talk to you soon. All right.

Okay, thank you.