A Whistleblower Now Suspects Senate Candidate Peggy Flanagan Assisted Her Friend’s Autism Fraud

Fraud has been rampant when it comes to your tax dollars going toward supposed “care” ever since Obamacare, and Minnesota’s food program and child care fraud were the tip of the iceberg.

A state audit just found regulators ignored autism fraud complaints for years.

One whistleblower says the trail leads straight to Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan.

The Center, the Friend, and the Money

Nimco Ahmed runs the Milestone Development Center, an autism therapy provider in Minnesota's Medicaid-funded EIDBI program.

Ahmed is also a longtime DFL activist, and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan has publicly called her a friend of almost 25 years.

The Department of Human Services now confirms Milestone is under investigation for fraud.

Grant Morgan worked at Milestone for two months in late 2023 and says what he saw there had nothing to do with treating autistic kids.

"I did not see a QSP or a BCBA at all when I worked there, and it's critical that you have a professional overseeing these services," Morgan said.

Morgan also worked at a second provider, Spectrum Therapy Center, and describes both operations the same way: plenty of billing, almost no licensed clinical oversight in the room with the kids.

Minnesota's autism program exploded from $6 million in billing in 2018 to $343 million by 2024.

Morgan does not think that growth reflects more autistic kids getting help.

He thinks it reflects a system nobody was watching, and he told reporters he believes it's "very likely" Flanagan intentionally assisted the "bad actors" behind it.

Ahmed denies the allegations and calls scrutiny of her centers' care biased.

Minnesota's Regulators Had the Power and Chose Not to Use It

This state has been here before, and recently.

Minnesota already handed the country the Feeding Our Future scandal, a pandemic-era food program fraud that drained roughly $250 million while Governor Walz's administration ran the state.

Now a Legislative Auditor report says DHS had the legal authority to investigate Medicaid kickback allegations in the autism program since the late 1990s, and used that authority on exactly zero of three specific kickback complaints filed between 2021 and 2023.

Deputy Legislative Auditor Katherine Theisen confirmed DHS never referred any of those three cases to law enforcement or any outside investigator.

State Representative Kristin Robbins did not soften the conclusion.

"DHS has been complicit in fraud because they have repeatedly failed to investigate credible allegations," Robbins said.

Republican Senate candidate Michele Tafoya has already tied that failure directly to the woman running to represent Minnesota in Washington, calling it "the biggest fraud catastrophe in Minnesota history" on Flanagan's watch.

Federal Investigators Are Not Waiting on Minnesota Anymore

State regulators sat on this for years, so federal law enforcement stepped in.

The Department of Justice charged 15 defendants in a Minnesota health care fraud takedown covering more than $90 million in false billing.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, has already partnered with federal prosecutors on indictments tied to Housing Stabilization Services and Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention providers, the exact corner of the system Milestone operates in.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer opened a separate investigation into fraud across Minnesota's social services system, and then widened it, pointing directly at failures that happened on Governor Walz's watch.

Three different investigations are now circling the same program Ahmed runs, and every one of them started because someone other than DHS finally decided to look.

What a Senate Campaign Looks Like With This Hanging Over It

Flanagan is not some low-level bureaucrat caught in the crossfire.

She is the sitting Lieutenant Governor and a candidate for the United States Senate.

The woman at the center of a fraud investigation is someone Flanagan has called a close friend for a quarter century.

DHS sat on kickback complaints it had every legal right to chase for years, a pattern that let a program balloon from $6 million to $343 million with almost nobody asking where the money went.

Minnesota's autism grants alone now run larger than the entire Feeding Our Future scheme that already cost taxpayers $250 million.

Now a whistleblower who spent two months inside one of these centers says the same failure is happening again.

The money moved through a woman Flanagan has known for 25 years, and he is not shy about where he thinks responsibility lands.

Voters deciding whether to send Flanagan to the Senate now have to weigh whether "friend of 25 years" is a coincidence or a pattern.

Sources:

• Ward Clark, "Watch: Minnesota Autism Fraud Probe Reaches Lt. Governor's Inner Circle," RedState, September 21, 2026.
• Amy Curtis, "Peggy Flanagan's Longtime 'Friend' Now Under Investigation for Running Fake Autism Center," Townhall, September 21, 2026.
• Alpha News, "Former Therapist Slams 'Fraudulent Autism Centers' in Minnesota, Including One Run by Flanagan's 'Friend,'" AlphaNews.org, September 2026.
• Fox News, "New Audit Exposes Flawed System Critics Say Let Minnesota Fraud Slip Through Cracks: 'Didn't Act for Years,'" Fox News, 2026.