The young CEO of a purported autism center serving Minnesota’s Somali community pleaded guilty Monday to raking in over $6 million in a fraud scheme, according to KARE.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf, 27, in December 2025 with making fraudulent Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) claims to the Minnesota government. Yussuf and his team raked in more than $6 million through the fraudulent claims, according to a DOJ press release at the time.
Yussuf was the president and CEO of Star Autism Center LLC, which supposedly provided “necessary one-on-one therapy to children with autism,” He founded the company in 2020 when he was just 22 years old, and ran it four about four years, KARE reported.
The 27-year-old said at his Monday plea hearing that he did not know any individuals with autism, according to the outlet. Yussuf is set to face roughly five years in prison.
Star Autism hired unqualified teenagers as “behavioral technicians,” per the DOJ’s December 2025 release. Yussuf’s team approached Minnesota parents of Somali descent to “recruit” their children to the center and qualify them for autism services — even if they were not autistic.
The center also “paid monthly cash kickbacks” to the parents of children enrolled for EIDBI services dependent on what services the Minnesota Department of Human Services authorized a child to receive, according to the release. Yussuf and his team also submitted millions in claims for “Medicaid reimbursement,” many of which were “fraudulently inflated, billed without providers’ knowledge, and for services that were not actually provided.”
According to the press release, Yussuf “shared in the proceeds” of the scheme with others involved with the ownership of Star Autism. Yussuf reportedly spent over $100,000 on a “freightliner semi-truck,” and sent over $200,000 to Kenya.
The Trump administration has actively targeted perpetrators of health care fraud, especially in Minnesota, over the past few months. Vice President JD Vance and Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Mehmet Oz announced “new steps to crack down” on medicare and medicaid fraud on Feb. 25, including “deferring $259.5 million of quarterly Medicaid funding in Minnesota” and “a nationwide moratorium on Medicare enrollment” for specific suppliers.
President Donald Trump announced in January the creation of the Department of Justice Division for National Fraud Enforcement following independent journalist Nick Shirley’s viral videos exposing alleged fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community. The vast majority of defendants charged by the DOJ in recent Minnesota fraud schemes have been of Somali descent.
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