In June, Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office put out a press release celebrating the fact that “Since 2019, Minnesota’s [Medicaid Fraud Control Unit] MFCU has secured more than 340 convictions for Medicaid fraud and has won $90 million in judgments and recoveries.”
KSTP reporters Kirsten Swanson & Morgan Reddekopp write that “The $90 million figure represents restitution from criminal cases prosecuted by the AG’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU), along with civil settlements and judgements ordered by the courts,” but go on to note that:
…a months-long review of state court records by 5 INVESTIGATES found convicted fraudsters have paid just a small fraction of the criminal restitution they’ve been ordered to return to the state.
Since 2019, judges have ordered defendants to pay back nearly $32 million in restitution in MFCU-prosecuted cases. As of May, the amount recorded as paid back in the state court system was just over three million dollars.
So just 10% of the money Medicaid fraudsters have been ordered to pay back – one dollar in every ten – has actually been paid back.
In an interview with KSTP, Ellison disputed this figure:
When asked during the interview about the small amount of restitution that’s been repaid, Ellison initially disputed the accuracy of the figure and pointed to a piece of paper he pulled from his jacket pocket.
The paper included a breakdown of MFCU’s recoveries from 2019 to 2025.
“Those are recoveries, orders, some civil settlements,” said Nicolas Wanka, director of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, who was standing off camera during the exchange. “I would have to go look at the collections data.”
“So let me be clear,” Ellison said. “This is money that was gotten back from the thieves?”
“No,” Wanka responded. “Those are restitution orders and judgments.”
For the man in charge of fighting fraud in these programs to be so clueless about such basic numbers gives us some idea of how the problem got so bad in the first place. Part of Minnesota’s fraud problem is the result of the Attorney General’s sheer incompetence.
When 5 INVESTIGATES later asked the AG’s office for a breakdown of how much of the $92 million has actually been paid back or received by the state, Ellison’s chief of staff responded Monday via email, saying that they “play no role in collecting restitution: that is the role of the probation system and the court.”
“For this simple fact, we do not have the numbers you are looking for,” he wrote.
He offered a similar explanation for other civil judgments — totaling about $61 million — and explained those funds are paid directly to the victim, which in many instances, would be the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the state agency that oversees Medical Assistance.
Once again, Ellison’s bombastic announcements melt into pleas of helplessness when asked to back them up.
After the money is gone it is always going to be difficult to get it back. That makes it all the more important that we prevent it getting stolen in the first place.
