MUSLIM FRAUD
Pakistani Muslims Indicted in $10,000,000 Health Care Fraud
FEB 15, 2026 5:00 PM
BY DANIEL GREENFIELD
This time it’s in Chicago.
It’s not just Somalis, and it’s happening all over the country.
Last month, I reported on a $68 million Pakistani Medicaid fraud scheme with ties to top New York Democrat officials.
Now here’s a $10 million out of Chicago according to this federal indictment.
Two foreign nationals participated in a $10 million scheme to
fraudulently bill Medicare and private insurers for nonexistent health
care services, according to an indictment returned in federal court in
Chicago.
In 2023 and 2024, Burhan Mirza and Kashif Iqbal, along with several
co-schemers, used nominee-owned laboratories and durable medical
equipment providers to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare and private
health care benefit programs for items and services that were not
provided, the indictment states. Mirza, 31, is a Pakistani native who
resided in Pakistan and obtained the identifying information of
individuals, providers, and insurers without their knowledge and used
the information to support the bogus claims submitted on behalf of the
nominee-owned companies, the indictment states. Iqbal, 48, is a
Pakistani native who resided in Lavon, Texas, and was allegedly
associated with a number of durable medical equipment providers that
submitted fraudulent claims to insurers. Iqbal also laundered fraud
proceeds obtained by the co-schemers and coordinated the transfer of
money obtained through the scheme to Pakistan, the indictment states.
Three alleged co-schemers were previously indicted as part of this
investigation and have pleaded guilty to federal health care fraud
charges. Mir Akbar Khan, 57, of West Chicago, Illinois, recruited and
managed individuals, including Fasiur Rahman Syed, 47, a citizen of
India who resided in Chicago, to pose as the nominee owners of the
purported medical businesses that Mirza and Iqbal used in their false
submissions to Medicare. Navaid Rasheed, 43, a citizen of Pakistan who
resided in Plano, Texas, admitted that he tracked payments of false
claims in the United States to the nominee-owned companies, as well as
disbursement of the fraud proceeds to the co-schemers. Khan, Syed, and
Rasheed are awaiting sentencing.
Syed may be a citizen of India, but based on his name, he’s likely Muslim.
And again, this is just the tip of a huge iceberg. Everywhere our welfare state reaches, the state of foreign fraud does, too.
Somali Migrants Scam Minnesota Taxpayers Out of Billions, Fund Jihad Group
NOV 25, 2025 2:00 PM
BY HUGH FITZGERALD
Muslims have committed giant welfare frauds all over the country, but
no place has been hit as hard as Minnesota by these frauds. Somali
immigrants overwhelmingly commit the frauds — the largest Somali
population in the country is in Minneapolis — and while the exact cost
of the fraud is not known, some investigators suggest losses in the
billions. This is money that is no longer available to provide succor
to Minnesota’s poor and disabled. And what is still more infuriating,
much of that money is sent abroad by the local fraudsters to Somalia,
where a large cut of the loot goes to the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist
group al-Shabaab. American taxpayers, that is, are unknowingly
providing huge sums to a group linked to the very worst of Islamic
terrorist groups.
Robert Spencer wrote about this here, and more on this fraud — one of
so many that have been uncovered involving Somalis in Minnesota — can
be found here: “Federal investigators warn Minnesota welfare fraud may
have helped fund Al-Shabaab,” by Kayla Gaskins, The National News Desk,
November 21, 2025:
Federal prosecutors say Minnesota is facing one of the largest
welfare-fraud waves in U.S. history—schemes so widespread and lucrative
that some of the stolen money may have ended up in the hands of
Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization operating in
Somalia.
Correction: No, “that stolen money may have ended up in the hands of Al-Shabab” — it did end up in the terror group’s hands.
According to a recent report in City Journal, former federal
counterterrorism officials believe portions of the money stolen from
Minnesota’s Medicaid and social-service programs were routed overseas
through informal cash-transfer networks known as hawalas. Once the
funds reached Somalia, investigators say, Al-Shabaab routinely took a
share—regardless of the sender’s intentions.
The allegation, described by one former investigator as a “yes,
absolutely” scenario, adds a national-security dimension to a widening
series of criminal cases already rattling the state.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota has charged dozens of
defendants across multiple schemes, including housing-assistance fraud,
pandemic child-nutrition fraud, and millions of dollars in false
billing for autism therapy. Collectively, prosecutors estimate
taxpayers have lost billions.
David Gaither, a former Minnesota state senator, said the scale of
fraud has diverted resources away from vulnerable people, the programs
were designed to help. “There are people that legitimately need those
resources who are not getting them,” he said. “It’s beyond criminal.”
Minnesota is home to one of the largest Somali-American populations in
the United States, and many of the defendants in the major fraud cases
come from that community. Kayesh Magan, a former fraud investigator at
the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and himself Somali-American,
wrote last year that it is “uncomfortable and true” that nearly all
defendants in the high-profile cases are Somali.
“They have taken advantage of one of the most generous countries in the
world and one of the most generous states in that country,” Gaither
said.
Ryan Thorpe, an investigative reporter who has examined the fraud
cases, said law enforcement alone cannot keep up. “Pretty much across
the board, people I spoke to said there isn’t a law-enforcement
solution to this,” Thorpe said. “It’s simply playing whack-a-mole.
There needs to be a policy change.”…
What kind of policy change? What about refusing to allow any welfare
benefits to be sent to migrants during the first five years of their
presence in the United States? Or monitoring, using Somali agents, the
hawala networks by which money is transferred from America to Somalia?
Or going to visit the homes where these fraudsters claim they have
provided housing assistance to tenants? Or simply keeping track of the
assets — houses, stocks, bank accounts — of those suspected of
involvement in these frauds, noting those that are suspiciously large?
Such measures won’t stop this fraud entirely, but may cut it down to a
less maddening size. As of now, investigators believe that “billions of
dollars” have been lost to networks of Somali fraudsters and such
measures will certainly make both the fraud in Minnesota, and the
transfer of funds to Somalia, more difficult. In Somalia itself, the
FBI ought to have agents, preferably Somalis, on the ground, to monitor
large infusions of cash into Al-Shabaab coffers.
Minnesota is the home of the Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the most
visible member of the state’s congressional delegation, who has made
herself a presence on the national scene. A Muslim, Keith Ellison, is
the attorney general of Minnesota. He has prosecuted a handful of very
small cases of Medicaid fraud, but has yet to show much interest in
investigating the massive Minnesota fraud cases. He was secretly
recorded promising to help some Somalis who he said were being
investigated unnecessarily for “piddly stuff” that turned out to be a
massive billion-dollar fraud.
Many local politicians, alas, are reluctant to lose the support of the
Somali-American voters in the state, who vote as a bloc. Close to
100,000 Somalis now in Minnesota were born in Somalia. In addition,
there are tens of thousands more Somali-Americans, born in the U.S.,
who are the children of those first-generation immigrants.
Now that Minnesota taxpayers have discovered that they have been
scammed of what federal investigators estimate to be “billions of
dollars,” in Housing Aid fraud, Pandemic Child Nutrition fraud, and
Autism fraud, by Somali-Americans, and learned, too, that much of that
money — hundreds of millions of dollars — was sent to the
al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab, will they in fury vote out Governor Tim
Walz, who was asleep at the wheel during the worst of these frauds, or
Attorney General Keith Ellison, who failed to grasp the size and
seriousness of those frauds? David Gaither, a former state senator, who
has been in the forefront of those denouncing the fraud and its link to
al-Shabaab, should be encouraged to run for governor, and if he wins on
a wave of taxpayer fury, his first order of business should be to clamp
down on Somali fraudsters, force them to disgorge as much of their
ill-gotten gains that are still reachable, deport any of those
convicted of crimes back to Somalia, and charge the people running the
hawala networks by which money has been transferred from Minnesota to
al-Shabaab in Somalia, with supporting international terrorism. That’s
what I would call a good start.