Treasury secretary announces cash rewards for Minnesota fraud whistleblowers

Whistleblowers who come forward with information related to Minnesota’s sprawling fraud scandal will receive cash payments, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday on Fox News.

The Trump administration launched a wide-scale fraud investigation in Minnesota amid a growing web of allegations involving money-laundering schemes and misuse of taxpayer funds.

"We know that these rats will turn on each other," Bessent told "The Ingraham Angle."

"We are going to offer whistleblower payments to anyone who wants to tell us the who, what, when, where and how this fraud has been done. I think that that will give us a great leap forward on how to get it done," he added.

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Several Minnesota childcare and food-distribution facilities have been accused of misusing federal funds while a recent audit showed corruption tied to taxpayer-funded grant programs.

The daycare and food-distribution sites allegedly did not provide childcare or serve food, but instead used the federal funds they received to launder money.

A state audit found limited monitoring of grant programs within the Department of Human Services’ Behavioral Health Administration, which distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to mental health and addiction services.

The Trump administration froze multiple federal funding streams to Minnesota, including certain funding from the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

However, a federal judge on Friday temporarily halted the Trump administration from freezing about $10 billion in federal funding to five Democratic-led states. 

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Bessent said the fraud continues, pointing to a recent finding in which a convicted fraudster allegedly attempted to bribe a juror.

"One of the people who has been convicted of fraud — she was given $200,000 to bribe a juror," he explained. "And she was so corrupt, she skimmed $80,000 of it and only tried to give a $120,000 bribe."