The ongoing federal funds fraud scandal that is continuing to develop in Minnesota expanded Monday as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that over $84 million in taxpayer dollars meant for housing assistance for the poor was illegally obtained by fraudsters in the North Star State.

The HUD investigation found that in fiscal year 2024 under the Biden administration, the agency distributed $84.6 million in “potentially erroneous payments,” including almost $500,000 to 509 deceased tenants. In addition, approximately $246,000 was disbursed to 20 individuals without Social Security numbers, indicating they were likely noncitizens.

The HUD investigation is part of a nationwide effort that has so far uncovered $5.8 billion in “questionable” rental assistance payments, including 30,000 deceased tenants. As reported by the New York Post, “approximately 11% went to more than 200,000 possibly ineligible tenants. Of those tenants, 29,715 (around 14%) were flagged as potentially deceased, 9,472 (4%) were flagged as non-citizens and 165,393 (82%) were taking funding that exceeded the threshold for assistance in their geographic region.”

The revelation came in the wake of a growing Medicaid fraud scandal that has enveloped Minnesota, in which at least $9 billion in improper payments have been uncovered, mostly centered around counterfeit day care centers that have proliferated among the Somalian immigrant community in the state.

On Monday, HUD Secretary Scott Turner joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” to unpack the developing investigation.

“[O]ver $84 million of hard-working taxpayer money … was shelled out during the Biden administration in improper assistance and serving over 500 dead people with almost $500,000 of assistance. This is a lack of stewardship,” he underscored. “It’s gross negligence. But I’m grateful at this time that our team on the ground has found these improper payments, and we will hold those accountable [who] are responsible for this.”

Turner further emphasized that the massive scale of the fraud points toward a criminal conspiracy that is occurring under the nose of Governor Tim Walz (D), the former Democratic vice presidential candidate. (Walz has since ended his reelection campaign.)

“It seems like it is coordinated,” he observed. “Every stone that’s being unturned shows us really the negligence and turning a blind eye and a lack of financial controls and really the lack of caring about the American people and taxpayer money that goes to fund these programs in Minnesota and other places around the country. And so I know under President Trump, Attorney General [Pam] Bondi, the vice president, who now has announced a new associate attorney general to go after fraud, waste, and abuse in our country.”

Turner went on to point out that the open border policies of the previous Biden administration not only inflated housing costs for Americans but also consumed tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in welfare benefits for illegal immigrants.

“Over 12 million people came across our border [under Biden],” he noted. “Illegal migrants … came across unchecked, which has really caused the housing supply in our country to be squeezed. It’s caused the cost of housing to go up. Nearly 100% of the rental demand in states like New York and California is due to illegal immigration. And so this has been a great burden on our country. … We found that over 59% of illegal alien families use one or more of our welfare programs here in America, costing about $42 billion a year. And so with that, we have to turn the faucet off and use American taxpayer money to serve the American people and American people only.”

Turner concluded by describing how the Trump administration is once again working with faith-based organizations in efforts to combat homelessness.

“We want to allow and bring the faith-based organizations back to the table as it pertains to serving our homeless neighbors,” he noted. “During the Biden administration, they really were ‘stiff-armed’ and could not come to the table to compete for our continuum of care competitive grants. So now we want to open that back up. Faith-based organizations like OurCalling and others around the country are really the ones with boots on the ground serving our homeless neighbors. And we don’t want to just house people. We want to house them, treat the root cause, get them transformed, and back to a life of independence.”