Four Twin Cities men admitted to looting more than $2.2 million from a Minnesota Medicaid program meant to house the homeless and disabled, then used artificial intelligence to fake the paperwork when insurers asked questions.
The Department of Justice announced the guilty pleas Friday, naming Moktar Hassan Aden, 31, Mustafa Dayib Ali, 29, Khalid Ahmed Dayib, 26, and Abdifitah Mohamud Mohamed, 27, as co-owners of a company called Brilliant Minds Services LLC. The firm operated out of the Griggs-Midway Building in St. Paul and billed Minnesota's Housing Stabilization Services program, a Medicaid-funded effort designed to help people with disabilities and addictions find and keep housing, for work it never performed.
Court documents show Brilliant Minds claimed to serve roughly 350 beneficiaries and submitted $2,253,385.06 in claims. But the company did not deliver all the services it billed for. Where work was actually done, employees inflated the hours. Where no work was done at all, employees simply fabricated client notes to make it look like they had.
When insurance companies started asking questions, the defendants turned to AI tools to generate fake records. The DOJ called the scheme part of "a burgeoning trend of fraudsters" using artificial intelligence to target health care programs "in Minnesota and around the country."
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald did not hold back about who paid the price for the fraud.
"These defendants corruptly exploited vulnerable people and a vulnerable program to enrich themselves. Taxpayer dollars designed to provide shelter and support for the homeless and needy instead went to the pockets of these men. They have now admitted their fraudulent conduct and will face justice for their crimes."
McDonald added that the DOJ's "work to stamp out fraud in Minnesota will continue." The case is one piece of a broader federal crackdown. Days before the pleas were announced, the Trump administration disclosed that it would defer more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota as part of its push against fraud in those programs.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel Rosen framed the case in blunt terms.
"Medicaid fraud is a serious offense with real consequences. These defendants stole funds intended to support vulnerable Minnesotans who rely on housing and recovery services. Their guilty pleas underscore my office's commitment to holding accountable those who exploit public programs."
Minnesota has become a recurring setting for Medicaid fraud allegations. The state's Department of Human Services announced in November 2025 that it would terminate the Housing Stabilization Services program entirely, citing credible allegations of fraud. That decision came just two months after the DOJ announced criminal indictments against eight defendants connected to the scheme, the four who have now pleaded guilty, plus Christopher Adesoji Falade, Emmanuel Oluwademilade Falade, Asad Ahmed Adow, and Anwar Ahmed Adow.
Six of the eight defendants are part of the Somali community in Minnesota, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office told City Journal. The legal and financial scrutiny surrounding Minnesota's Somali community has intensified in recent years. Separately, the DOJ has been probing Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose own financial disclosures have drawn pointed questions from investigators and journalists alike.
The use of artificial intelligence to fabricate records sets this case apart from garden-variety billing fraud. The defendants did not just pad invoices. They deployed technology to manufacture documentation on demand, creating a paper trail that looked legitimate to the insurance companies reviewing their claims.
The DOJ's announcement flagged that tactic as an emerging threat, warning that AI-assisted fraud is spreading through health care programs nationwide. For federal prosecutors, the Brilliant Minds case is both a conviction and a signal: the tools used to commit fraud are getting more sophisticated, and the government says it intends to keep pace.
The plea agreement, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, lays out the mechanics plainly. Brilliant Minds enrolled as a Medicaid provider, set up shop in St. Paul, and began billing for housing stabilization services. Employees wrote up notes for visits that never happened. When the numbers drew scrutiny, AI filled in the gaps.
Omar's own financial irregularities, including revised disclosures that wiped out millions in reported assets, have added to a broader picture of financial accountability questions in the state's political landscape.
The DOJ did not announce sentencing dates or potential penalties for Aden, Ali, Dayib, or Mohamed. The status of the four remaining co-defendants, the two Falades and the two Adows, is also unclear. They were indicted alongside the four who pleaded guilty in September 2025 but have not entered pleas as of the DOJ's Friday announcement.
The criminal indictment described the scheme in stark language, stating that the defendants "devised and carried out a scheme to defraud federally funded health care benefits collected within Minnesota's Housing Stability Services Program." The program, it noted, "was designed to help people with disabilities and addictions find and maintain housing. Rather than provide such help, the defendants obtained and misappropriated millions of dollars in program funds."
Roughly 350 people were supposed to receive help through Brilliant Minds. How many of them actually got the housing support they needed, and how many were left without it, remains unanswered. The plea documents do not address harm to individual beneficiaries.
Minnesota's pattern of financial accountability gaps extends beyond Medicaid. Rep. Omar's financial filings showing her husband's income collapsing from millions to $200 in a single year have raised separate but parallel questions about transparency among public figures in the state.
The Trump administration's decision to defer more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to Minnesota and California signals that the federal government views the problem as systemic, not isolated. The Brilliant Minds case puts a name and a dollar figure on what that fraud looks like at the street level: a storefront office in St. Paul, fake notes for fake visits, and AI doing the heavy lifting when the questions started coming.
Meanwhile, questions about how public dollars are spent in Minnesota continue to mount. Omar's campaign has also faced scrutiny for spending thousands on Ritz-Carlton stays and luxury rides far from her district, a different category of spending, but part of the same culture of loose accountability that lets schemes like Brilliant Minds take root.
When a program built for people with disabilities and addictions gets gutted by fraud so brazen the state has to shut the whole thing down, the people who needed help the most are the ones left with nothing. That is the cost of letting accountability slide, and it is always the taxpayer and the vulnerable who pay it.