- 2 days ago
FBI & ICE Raid Minneapolis Aid Group – $250M Cash Walls Found Behind Somali CEO
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Tonight, federal agents have uncovered over $250 million in cash hidden inside the walls of a
00:06Minneapolis charity. At 10.23 a.m., federal authorities stood before a wall of cameras
00:11inside the Hennepin County Federal Building and delivered a statement that would fundamentally
00:16reshape how America views charitable organizations forever. Over $250 million in cash had been
00:23discovered hidden inside the walls, floors, and ceilings of a Minneapolis non-profit that had
00:28been celebrated as a beacon of hope for East African refugees. But this was not simple
00:33embezzlement. This was not accounting fraud. This was something far more sinister. What began as a
00:39routine financial audit into irregularities at a Somali-American humanitarian organization
00:44evolved into the exposure of one of the most sophisticated money laundering and trafficking
00:49networks ever operated on American soil. The investigation revealed connections that stretched
00:54from the frozen streets of Minneapolis to the scorching deserts of East Africa, from legitimate
00:59banking institutions to underground hawala networks, from refugee resettlement programs to human smuggling
01:05corridor. And the man at the center of it all was not just stealing from vulnerable populations. He was
01:10trafficking them. The organization called itself the Sunrise Community Foundation. Its mission statement
01:16promised hope for the hopeless. It spoke of resettling refugees, providing job training, offering mental
01:21health services, and building bridges between cultures. Its CEO, a polished and articulate man
01:27named Feyre Abdi Hassan, had become the face of Somali-American success. He appeared on local news
01:32programs. He testified before city council. When he was photographed shaking hands with business leaders
01:37and receiving awards at diversity galas. His foundation received millions in federal grants meant to support
01:43at-risk youth and resettle families in violence. He drove a modest car. He wore simple suits. He projected
01:50humility at every turn. But behind that carefully constructed image was a man who had transformed
01:55charity into a criminal enterprise. And federal investigators were about to tear his empire apart
02:01piece by piece. It started at 4.17am on a Sunday morning in late January. Minneapolis was locked in the
02:07grip of a polar vortex. The temperature had dropped to 23 below zero. Wind chills made it feel closer to 40
02:13below. The streets of the Cedar Riverside neighborhood were silent, except for the low rumble of idling vehicle
02:18and the distant howl of arctic wind cutting between buildings. 51 FBI agents, 22 ICE officers,
02:25and three full SWAT teams assembled in the shadow of a five-story brick building in the corner of
02:30Riverside Avenue. This was the headquarters of the Sunrise Community Foundation. From the outside,
02:35it looked like any other urban non-profit. A former warehouse converted into office space,
02:40decorated with colorful murals depicting unity and progress. Inside, it was a vault of secret.
02:45The breach was surgical. Flashbangs detonated in the stairwell. Agents in tactical black swept
02:50through hallways lined with photographs of smiling refugee families and inspirational quotes about
02:55perseverance. They moved with precision, clearing room after room. Offices were secured. Computers
03:00were seized. Filing cabinets were tagged and cataloged. But it was on the fourth floor,
03:04inside the executive suite, where the operation took a turn that no one expected.
03:08One agent noticed something wrong with the wall behind Hassan's oak desk. The paint was slightly,
03:13the texture was newer than the surrounding surfaces. He pressed his gloved palm against it and heard
03:18a hollow echo that shouldn't have been there. Within minutes, a sledgehammer came down. The
03:23drywall crumbled. Dust filled the air. And what they found inside made every person in that room
03:29stop breathing. Stacks of cash. Bricks of $100 bills wrapped in plastic and industrial tape. Row after
03:35row. Layer after layer. Packed so tightly that some of the bills had fused together from moisture and
03:40pressure. The smell hit them immediately. That unmistakable scent of old paper, mildew,
03:45and something faintly chemical. The agents kept pulling. They tore down more walls. They found cash
03:50hidden in ceiling panels. They found it stuffed inside hollow support beams. They found it packed
03:55into fake electrical junction box and hidden behind false sections of ductwork. By the time the winter
04:00sun crept over the Minneapolis skyline, they had extracted over $22 million in US currency from that
04:06single office. But that was just the beginning. While the raid team was still documenting the scene,
04:11another unit struck a second location 14 miles northwest in the suburb of Brooklyn Park.
04:16This was a residential property registered under a shell company called Northland Community Services
04:21LLC. The house sat on three acres of land at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. It looked like any other
04:27upper-middle-class home. But the moment agents breached the front door, they knew this was no ordinary
04:32resident. The entire first floor had been gutted and converted into a processing center. Industrial
04:37money counters lined the walls. Vacuum sealers and shrink-wrapped machines sat on folding tables.
04:43Dozens of labeled boxes were stacked against every wall, each marked with a destination code. Nairobi,
04:48Mombasa, Dubai, Istanbul, Doha. Agents found another $28 million in that house alone. But the money was not
04:56the most disturbing discovery. In a locked safe beneath the basement floor, investigators found ledgers,
05:01handwritten logs detailing payments, names, dates, wire transfer confirmations,
05:06nor in a series of encrypted hard drives that would take federal cyber forensics analysts four
05:11days to crack. When they finally broke through the encryption, the scope of what they were looking
05:15at became horrifyingly clear. This was not just money laundering. This was the financial backbone of
05:21a transnational human trafficking network. Inside a sterile room at the FBI's Minneapolis field
05:26office, forensic accountants began mapping the trail. The numbers were staggering. Over the
05:31past six years, the Sunrise Community Foundation had received more than $500 million in combined
05:37funding. Federal refugee assistance grants, state social services contracts, private donations
05:42from corporations seeking tax benefits, foundation grants from well-meaning philanthropy. On paper,
05:48that money was supposed to feed the hungry, shelter the displaced, provide medical care,
05:52and offer pathways to citizenship. In reality, less than 18% of it ever reached the people it was
05:58meant to serve. The rest vanished into a labyrinth of ghost companies, fake vendors, and fraudulent
06:04invoices that would make a cartel accountant envious. One line item claimed $11 million for emergency
06:11medical supplies shipped to refugee camps in Kenya. The supplies never existed. The shipping company was
06:16a shell. The warehouse listed as the origin point was a vacant lot in Gary, Indiana. Another invoice showed
06:22$9 million paid to a construction firm for building community centers across Minnesota. The centers were
06:28never built. The construction firm was registered to a deceased individual whose identity had been
06:33stolen from a nursing home in Duluth. Man, the money did not simply disappear. It was systematically
06:38rerouted, laundered through currency exchanges in Dubai and Nairobi, wired to accounts in Turkey and
06:44Qatar, funneled into logistics networks that moved human cargo across international borders.
06:49The analysts uncovered a code name buried in the encrypted files, Operation Horizon Bridge. It was
06:54a human trafficking pipeline disguised as legitimate refugee transport. The operation worked with
07:00terrifying efficiency. Sunrise Community Foundation would identify vulnerable individuals in East African
07:05refugee camps, people desperate to reach America, families willing to pay anything for the promise
07:10of safety. The foundation would file legitimate asylum paperwork through proper channels, establishing a
07:16trail of documentation that appeared completely legal. But for every legitimate refugee case, there were
07:21three more that existed only on paper. Ghost applicants, phantom families, people who were never
07:27resettled but whose paperwork generated federal payments. And then there were the real victims.
07:32Young women promised safe passage to America, who were instead trafficked through a network of transit
07:38houses stretching from Nairobi to Istanbul to Mexico City. Young men promised jobs who were instead forced into
07:45labor or coerced into criminal operations. Children separated from families who vanished into systems
07:51designed to exploit them. The trafficking network generated an estimated $40 million annually. And every
07:57dollar flowed back to Minneapolis. And here is the part that made federal investigators realize they were
08:02dealing with something far larger than one corrupt man. Now the money flows were too clean. The audits were too
08:08convenient. The federal oversight that should have caught this years ago was mysteriously absent. Someone with real
08:13power was protecting Farah Abdi Hassan. That someone was a woman named Commissioner Diane Hartwell, a fictional
08:20high-ranking state official who had built her career on progressive social policy and compassionate
08:25immigration reform. She had championed refugee resettlement programs. She had praised organizations
08:30like Sunrise Community Foundation in press conferences and public hearings. She had personally signed off on
08:36tens of millions in state funding without question. And according to the encrypted files found in Hassan's safe,
08:42she had received quarterly wire transfers totaling over $3 million across four years from accounts
08:47directly linked to the foundation. And the evidence was damning. Hartwell's digital signature appeared on
08:52documents authorizing emergency grant extensions that bypassed normal oversight. Her personal financial
08:58advisor was listed as a silent partner in four of the shell companies used to launder stolen funds.
09:03Her office had repeatedly blocked or delayed audits requested by federal watchdog agencies. Most damning of all,
09:09investigators found encrypted communications between Hartwell and Hassan discussing operational timelines
09:14and what they referred to as Phase 3 expansion. What was Phase 3? The answer came from a third
09:19location raided that same morning, a commercial property in the industrial district of St. Paul,
09:24a former meatpacking plant that had been purchased three years earlier by a company called Prairie
09:28Wind Logistics. On paper, it was a distribution warehouse. In reality, it was a transit point for human cargo.
09:35When federal agents breached the facility at dawn, they found a building that had been completely
09:40retrofitted for its true purpose. The main warehouse floor had been divided into holding areas using
09:45chain link fencing and plastic sheeting. Cots lined the walls. There were portable toilets,
09:50bulk food supplies, and medical kits. The capacity was designed for over 200 people at a time.
09:56Agents found evidence that the facility had been used recently. Discarded clothing, personal effects,
10:01food wrappers with dates from the previous week. But the building was empty. Someone had been warned.
10:05In a locked office at the rear of the facility, investigators found something that changed the
10:10scope of the investigation entirely. A computer server containing detailed records of human cargo
10:15movements. Manifests listing names, ages, countries of origin, transit routes, and final destinations.
10:22Over 4,000 individuals had passed through this single facility in the past three years alone.
10:274,000 human beings reduced to logistics data. The records showed that phase three was not simply
10:32an expansion of existing operations. It was the establishment of a permanent trafficking corridor
10:37connecting East Africa to the American Midwest through a series of transit points in Turkey,
10:42Mexico, and the southern border. The network had connections to criminal organizations operating
10:47along the US-Mexico border. Money from Minneapolis was flowing to smuggling operations in Sonora and
10:53Chihuahua. Payments were being made to corrupt officials in multiple countries. The
10:56trafficking pipeline was designed to be self-sustaining, generating revenue while
11:01simultaneously laundering the proceeds of the charity fraud. This was not corruption. This was
11:06infrastructure. At 5.47 a.m., the command center at FBI headquarters in Minneapolis transformed
11:12into a war room. A massive digital map covered the entire wall. Red markers pulsed across the Twin
11:18Cities metro area, across Minnesota, across Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas. Each marker represented a
11:24location tied to the Sunrise Community Foundation network. Over 1,100 federal agents were mobilized that
11:30morning. FBI, ICE, DEA, DHS, ATF, Homeland Security investigation, U.S. Marshals, state troopers,
11:39local SWAT teams from 14 jurisdictions, Black Hawk helicopters lifted off from staging areas across the
11:44region, and armored vehicles rolled through suburban streets still dark with pre-dawn shadow. Surveillance
11:50drones circled above target locations, feeding real-time imagery to commanders coordinating the
11:55largest simultaneous law enforcement operation in Minnesota history. The raids happened with
11:59devastating precision. Simultaneous strikes across 43 locations in six states. Agents hit apartment
12:06complexes in Minneapolis, where cash couriers lived under assumed identity. They stormed storage
12:11facilities in St. Cloud, filled with counterfeit documents, falsified immigration paperwork, and blank
12:16social security card. They seized luxury vehicles registered to non-profit board members who had no
12:21legitimate income. They raided a wire transfer business in Bloomington that had moved over
12:2690 million dollars to overseas accounts in the previous 18 months. In Rochester, agents discovered
12:32a second processing facility disguised as a trucking depot. In Fargo, they found a network of safe houses
12:38used to shelter trafficking victims before they were moved to their final destinations. In Des Moines,
12:43they arrested a corrupt immigration attorney who had processed over 600 fraudulent asylum
12:48applications for the network. By noon, federal agents had seized over 250 million dollars in total
12:55asset. They confiscated 3.2 million in cryptocurrency wallets. They recovered 61 illegal firearms, including
13:02assault-style weapon. They arrested 94 individuals, including Farah Abdi Hassan, number seven members of his
13:08inner circle, three state employees who had accepted bribes to expedite grant approvals, two social
13:14workers who had falsified refugee placement reports, and a senior investigator from the state auditor's
13:18office who had been paid to bury red flags. But the biggest arrest came that evening. At 7.51 p.m.,
13:25federal marshals walked into the Minnesota state office building and took Commissioner Diane Hartwell into
13:30custody. The charges were devastating. Conspiracy to commit wire, money laundering, human trafficking,
13:36racketeering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to defraud the United States. If convicted on all
13:41counts, she faced the rest of her natural life in federal prison. The investigation did not stop with
13:47the arrests. Analysts began tracing the money backward and forward through time. They discovered
13:52that Sunrise Community Foundation was not an isolated operation. It was one node in a larger network that
13:58had established similar operations in Ohio, Michigan, and North Dakota. Each organization followed the same
14:05blueprint. Apply for federal refugee assistance grant. Create fake service programs with minimal
14:10documentation. Skim the funds through fraudulent invoices. Launder the money through shell companies
14:15and hawala networks. Use a portion of the proceeds to fund human trafficking operations that generated
14:21additional revenue. The model was elegant in its corruption. Every dollar stolen generated more dollars.
14:26Every trafficking victim represented both revenue and cover for financial crimes. The legitimate refugee
14:32work provided perfect camouflage for illegal operations. Investigators estimated that the
14:37combined network had stolen over 700 million dollars from federal programs over the past decade.
14:42It had trafficked more than 12,000 individuals through its pipeline. It had corrupted public officials
14:48in eight states. And it had been operating in plain sight the entire time. The victims were everywhere.
14:53They were in the refugee camps, exploited by people who claimed to offer salvation. They were in the transit
14:59houses, stripped of dignity and hope. They were in American cities, trapped in labor arrangements they
15:04never agreed to. Terrified to seek help from authorities they had been told would deport them.
15:09They were in communities across the Midwest. Families who had trusted Sunrise Community Foundation with
15:14their most vulnerable moments. And only to discover they had been statistics in a profit calculation.
15:19The cost of this betrayal cannot be measured in dollars alone. It is measured in lives
15:24shattered. In families separated. In hope destroyed. In trust broken beyond repair.
15:29It is measured in the young woman from Mogadishu who paid everything her family had for safe passage
15:34and ended up imprisoned in a transit house in Turkey. It is measured in the elderly man from Kenya
15:39who believed he was helping his grandchildren reach America and instead funded the network that
15:44exploited them. It is measured in the honest social workers and non-profit employees who dedicated their
15:49lives to refugee services and now face suspicion because of the actions of criminals who wore the
15:54same badges. Power does not always announce itself with violence. Sometimes it hides behind smiles and
16:00handshakes and the language of compassion. Sometimes it wears modest clothing and speaks softly at community
16:06meetings. Sometimes it calls itself a hero while it traffics the vulnerable. This story is a warning.
16:12It is a reminder that the most dangerous corruption is not the kind that arrives with obvious malice.
16:18It is the kind that builds itself from within, using our laws, our generosity, our belief that people
16:24who claim to help others deserve our trust. The individuals arrested in this operation will face
16:29justice. The systems they exploited will be reformed. The victims they harmed will receive support.
16:34But the lesson must not be forgotten. Trust must be earned, not assumed. Oversight must be vigilant,
16:40not convenient. And those who exploit the vulnerable must understand that, eventually, the walls they hide
16:46behind will come down. If you are still watching this, tap like so more people see what really
16:51happened in Minneapolis. Comment expose if you believe corruption like this needs to be dragged
16:55into the light. And remember, this is a fictional dramatization. But the lessons it carries are real.
17:01Because somewhere right now, someone else is filing another grant application. Someone else is building
17:06another shell company. Someone else is hiding another fortune inside walls that were meant to shelter hope.
17:11And they are counting on the world to look the other way. Do not let them.
Comments