Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins told Newsmax on Thursday that whistleblowers who tried to expose massive fraud schemes tied to Minnesota’s Somali community were accused of racism while state officials ignored repeated warnings.

Appearing on Newsmax’s “National Report,” Robbins said the state’s exploding fraud scandals — including the Feeding Our Future case and abuse in Medicaid-funded programs — were allowed to spiral because Democrat leadership refused to act when the first red flags emerged years ago.

“The majority of the crimes charged so far are in the Somali community,” she said. “Aimee Bock, the [Feeding Our Future] ringleader, is not Somali, but most of the other people in Feeding Our Future and what we’re seeing in the autism centers … tend to be from the Somali community.”

Still, many of the people who first tried to expose the fraud were themselves members of the Somali community, Robbins said.

“But a lot of my good whistleblowers are also from the Somali community, so there are people who want to help clean it up,” she said.

Robbins said a newly released Minnesota House majority report found that whistleblowers raising alarms about childcare fraud as far back as 2018 were ignored, silenced, and discouraged from reporting misconduct.

“We just released our majority report a couple weeks ago and it shows that from back in 2018 when the childcare fraud was first exposed, whistleblowers were told to delete things, to not report to the office of legislative auditor,” she said.

According to Robbins, the failure to stop the original childcare fraud schemes opened the door for the same players to exploit additional taxpayer-funded programs.

“Gov. [Tim] Walz shut down the criminal investigation unit and a lot of those individuals involved in that original childcare fraud then became the Feeding Our Future fraudsters in the nutrition program,” Robbins said. “That morphed into autism, sober homes, integrated community supports, housing stabilization.”

“So, if they would have really shut it down when the first whistleblowers were talking about childcare fraud, this billions in fraud in Medicaid would not have happened,” she added.

Robbins accused Walz’s administration of using COVID-19 restrictions as an excuse for failing to conduct inspections and oversight while fraud ballooned across the state.

“They blame it on COVID rules, ‘We couldn’t go out and do site visits,’” she said. “Other states were doing it.”

“This happened in Minnesota for a reason,” Robbins continued. “It’s because people turned a blind eye to fraud.”

She said officials were reluctant to aggressively investigate because of fears they would be accused of targeting the Somali community.

“When whistleblowers raised their hand and said, ‘Hey, we need to look at this,’ they were accused of being racist because it’s mostly in the Somali community,” Robbins said.

Minnesotans are outraged that taxpayer dollars allegedly intended for vulnerable residents were instead used to fund lavish lifestyles and overseas investments, she said.

“People work so hard for their money and it’s going to buy luxury homes, cars, a resort in Kenya, an apartment building in Nairobi,” Robbins said. “People have had it.”