All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Massive Somali Fraud in Minnesota with Nick Shirley, California Asset Seizure, $20B Groq-Nvidia Deal
31 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
All right, we have a massive show for you today, besties. But it's not going to be our prediction show. We thought we were doing predictions end of the year. But we had so many amazing stories to cover in the news that we're going to do predictions next week. The first story is we have investigative journalist Nick Shirley on. He has uncovered in a breaking 42 minute video that went viral a
$110 million in potential fraud in Minnesota. It's part of $9 billion in overall fraud, and we've got him on the show here exclusively. This video apparently perhaps prompted responses from Kash Patel and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. who have sent agents in to inspect these facilities. Here's some sort of important context.
These entitlement frauds in Minnesota have been going on for over 10 years. It's a 13, 14-year-old story. It started by an investigative reporter named Jeff Balon. launched his first investigation into this in February of 2013 at Fox 9 News, local investigative journalists.
Chapter 2: How did Nick Shirley uncover the daycare fraud in Minnesota?
And after that expose, charges were brought in 2014 against a Somali woman and her husband. They skipped bail. They never faced trial. Here's a 45-second clip from 2016 from Bailon.
Ali is facing numerous counts of theft by swindle and racketeering. She ran a daycare business and home health care company that catered to low-income families. But former employees told the Fox 9 investigators back in 2013 that it was really part of a scam to collect millions in public subsidies.
When I saw the bank account for the business, there were large cath withdrawals. on a continuous basis.
Can I ask you a few questions? A year after our investigation, Ali was arrested and charged with bilking the state out of about $4 million.
Okay, since 2018, Minnesota has seen $9 billion, around $9 billion, in entitlement frauds, according to federal prosecutors. Just to give you guys a concept of what that means, that's half of the total amount spent on 14 entitlement programs in the state. So here's the direct quote from the federal prosecutor on the Minnesota fraud. The magnitude cannot be overstated.
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Chapter 3: Why is the daycare fraud story resonating with the public?
It's staggering. Industrial scale fraud. There have been over 90 convictions for more than $800 million in fraud since 2022. In 2022, 47 defendants were charged in a $250 million fraud scheme called Feeding Our Future that was supposed to feed hungry kids. Then up to $220 million was stolen in funds for kids with autism.
Then $300 million was stolen in Medicaid funds meant to help people with disabilities avoid homelessness. So starting with that Feeding Our Future fraud in 2022, 82 of 92 people charged have been Somalian. Joining us right now, 23-year-old investigative journalist, Nick Shirley. Welcome to the program.
Thank you. It's been a crazy past few days out here in Minnesota.
So I guess a good place to start is you could tell the audience a little bit about your background when you got into investigative journalism. Obviously, you've got a YouTube channel. I watched some of your early videos when you were 16, 17 years old. I would say along the Mr. Beast vibes and then suddenly making a turn into politics.
specifically around immigration and some Vox pop kind of man on the street stuff. But maybe you could tell us a little bit of how you got into all this and how you got into this specific story.
Yeah, so I've been doing YouTube as far as I can pretty much remember since I was a sophomore in high school.
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Chapter 4: What connections exist between the fraud and potential terrorist organizations?
It was just something I thought I would be good at. So I'd do YouTube videos and all I could do in high school is to do prank videos, sneaking into places, just kind of fun stuff you can do on the weekend. And then as I've grown older and I've had other experiences, I've... matured and I've wanted to get more into more serious topics.
And so as I've been able to go places and kind of see the world for what it is in different countries and whatnot and have different experiences, they kind of led me to get into this more investigative journalism content and also Back in around 2020, you couldn't even make political content on YouTube without being demonetized.
For instance, if you were to put Trump in a YouTube title or thumbnail on my channel, you would get demonetized because I was a smaller channel. So it was impossible to make that sort of content. And I was younger. I was about 17, 18 years old at that time.
And now YouTube allows you to monetize. I noticed you had ads baked into the program, like many podcasters, and you're not affiliated with any news source. And to the best of my knowledge, you're not backed by any special interest groups. You're not backed by some rich billionaire. Where's the money coming to do this reporting from? And just to confirm that with the audience.
Yeah, everything I do, I'm 100% independent. And so I make my money off of YouTube, off of brand deals inside of YouTube videos. And if people want to donate money, they can do that. However, everything I do is straight from my own hands and I don't have any other people really working for me other than me and myself, my mom, and a few other editors.
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Chapter 5: How does entitlement fraud impact Minnesota's economy?
So tell us about the origin of this story and then I'll hand it off to the rest of the besties to do some follow-up questions.
Yeah, so I've been looking into this fraud for a long time. Since last June, I came to Minnesota to kind of do a video on what was happening with the Somali population as far as how much it was increasing and how certain towns have been, the demographics have changed, and how churches are turning into mosques and how mosques are growing inside of...
Minnesota, I thought it'd be an interesting topic for people to see. And when I was there, a lot of people were starting to tell me about the fraud that was taking place. And I was like, well, how do I, I just can't come and label everyone saying there's fraud happening. I need evidence. I need actual proof. And so I've been doing my own investigation.
And then a man by the name of David, who's inside of my YouTube video, he's been doing his own investigation for years. As he works next to some of these childcare centers and he's driven by and he's never seen a single child at any of these daycares. And so he started looking into the funding and he was able to get the numbers of how much money these people were receiving from CCAP funding.
which is tax exempt. And it was in the millions of dollars. And so I told him, all right, I'm coming to Minnesota. Let's go see what's happening in these daycares. And when I got there, I was shocked to see when the first daycare we went to, all the windows were blacked out and you didn't even have the option to open the door. Everything was locked.
So explain the mechanics of the fraud, just so the audience, if they haven't seen this, understand how these frauds are being played out.
Yeah, so massive welfare frauds being committed. People are opening up these daycares, home healthcare clinics, you name it. Anything that has anything to do with like welfare or even just like helping people in general, like with daycare or with healthcare. They're opening up these companies and then they're able to receive millions of dollars.
And the state, for instance, I don't know if they're doing any checkups on these places because these places literally had signs that said leering instead of learning on their doors, on the outside. And what business is operating in a way where you can't even go inside or the windows are all blocked out? Very strange.
Nick, let me ask you a question that I think a lot of people have, which is when your video, first of all, let me just say, took a lot of courage and it was well produced and you communicated some very complicated information in a very simple way, which I think is a tremendous skill. But the question that everybody asks is, how do we know that you are right?
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of California's wealth tax on private property?
Yeah, and it's specific to build on that, Shamath. The allegation has come out, oh, you went on a Saturday. Oh, you went during Christmas. And I guess you could address that because now people are obviously betting your journalism.
Yeah, well, I went on December 16th as a weekday before Christmas break. So there's that. And then, sorry, the question as far as like, did I do the vetting and whatnot? The man who helped me like lead the investigation himself, David, he had all the paperwork from the Capitol. He had somebody from inside the Capitol leaking him the information.
So there was my like fact check per se was he had a source from inside the Capitol. That's how we were able to get the number specifically.
Do you think that it's going to be important for you to have lawyers that help you navigate? Because like, if you build on this, there's obviously more fraud in Minnesota. There's a bunch of stuff in our home state, a lot of people would love you and people like you to start looking in all of these crevices.
but how important will it be that you have all of the legal eyes dotted, T's crossed here?
Yeah, that's a good question. I haven't really thought too much about that because I've never been in this position where you have hundreds of millions, like I think over 500 million people saw that video just alone, just from all the impressions, aside from the main video getting 100 million, 125 million views, right? So yeah, that's something I definitely need to think about.
But I think more than anything, I'm not trying to go in and, I'm more so just giving people transparency from the outside where people can't see it when they're sitting from behind the desk talking about it. Right. Right. I wasn't trying to barge in any of these businesses. I was simply asking like, okay, like, is it possible to enroll in child, a child in here?
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Chapter 7: What insights did Chamath provide about the Groq-Nvidia deal?
And they would say, no, like what daycare center doesn't have a paper for somebody enroll a child. So I think like the, Yeah, I guess if I was going to do defamation on specific people and stuff, like James O'Keefe style, I know he's always having to lawyer up, which I don't want to ever have to do. That's like, would suck because I hate getting, I don't want to ever have to deal with that stuff.
Are you done with Minnesota? Like, have you uncovered everything you need to uncover? And now you're going to look at another state? There was a lot of traffic this weekend about Ohio, Illinois, California. What do you do now?
Yeah, so I've been making YouTube videos consistently for the past 104 days, and I'll continue to show the fraud that's taking place here inside of Minnesota. It's not like I only just do videos on fraud, but I think just showing people what's happening inside the country is super important.
And yes, there's a lot more fraud taking place here in Minnesota, and I do have a part two episode on a whole different segment of the fraud that is taking place. within the state of Minnesota. And like you said, a lot of people have reached out to me, whether it be California, Ohio.
And at that point, I will have to kind of, I'll be doing my research as well to then not have to be in a position where somebody can try and sue me.
What does it make you feel, Nick, as an American? And also as a young American, you grow up whatever your belief system is, what do you think? Put aside the investigative journalist part. What do you think as just an American, as a young American?
About the fraud?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's very upsetting. I mean, so many of my friends and so many people are working. We're like, we're working so hard just to be able to get by. Like, I don't even have a friend that owns a house at this point in their life. And they're 23 years old. And we talked to our grandparents and they're all like talking about how they bought their first house. We're married.
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