Ohio Republican lawmakers push back against fraud amid recent discovery of Somalis moving $130 million overseas

Republican lawmakers are fighting fraud in the state by introducing a bill at the state level to prevent it and promising to introduce similar legislation in the future.

A U.S. senator said a separate measure could be looming at the federal level.

State Reps. Phil Plummer, R-Dayton, and Thomas Young, R-Washington Twp., introduced House Bill 647, which lawmakers said would make it easier to pursue fraud by childcare providers that receive taxpayer money. The measure would expand the Ohio attorney general’s authority to investigate childcare fraud, make it easier to stop payments to suspect childcare facilities, and ensure daycares are paid by attendance rather than enrollment, according to WOSU Public Media.

“We are going to stay one step ahead of this and keep closing the gaps,” Plummer said.

Young added that he and Plummer know the fraudsters’ “angles” and “strategies,” and “these changes will help close those gaps.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, also promised to introduce a bill to make it harder to send taxpayer money overseas.

“Fraudsters and criminals are abusing the system to send MILLIONS in taxpayer dollars abroad while working Americans pay the price. I’ll introduce a bill this week to prevent ANYONE on public assistance from sending remittances overseas,” he wrote on X. “The fraud must end.”

Moreno was responding to a story published by Just the News, which revealed that federal agents not only found out that Americans of Somali origin were moving millions in bulk cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas but also using John Glenn Columbus International Airport as their stopping point since November 2023.

“Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one anonymous official familiar with the investigation told the news source.

The recent announcements come amid the Somali immigrants allegedly being involved in fraud in Minnesota, and, considering that Ohio has the second-largest population of Somali immigrants, many lawmakers, especially the conservative ones, are becoming increasingly concerned about Somalis doing the same thing in the Buckeye State.

Gov. Mike DeWine has acknowledged fraud does happen, though he has generally downplayed the scope of the problem, going so far as to say that people investigating what’s going on are trying to find problems where none exist.

“Fraud does occur, and if we think fraud doesn’t occur, we’re wrong,” DeWine conceded, NPR reported.

Even though an insider told Ohio.News that the Ohio Department of Children and Youth identified at least $20 million in fraud, a veteran daycare center owner in the state pushed back against the claims of widespread fraud, calling the allegations “insulting” because the industry is highly regulated, making fraud impossible.