I know so many honest citizens who could have benefitted from a tiny fraction of that money.

But it's been under investigation for 4.5 years as I understand, and the theoretical numbers thrown by politicians (hype/lies) are increasingly confusing. So what's the hope for any correction?

It says right in the first para, "could be" $9B. They obviously have no real idea. It sounds like the audit turned up a large amount of spending that can't be positively accounted for. Similar to the multiple trillions missing in all recent DoD audits. We really don't know how much has truly been "stolen" versus just not being properly recorded.

It’s not like multi-billion Medicare / Medicaid fraud is unheard of. What makes you certain it’s not a serious number?

It seems people in this thread are getting downvoted for pointing out that your questions are reasonable.

There's a lot of disputes between state and federal authorities about this. The 9B figure is being disputed, and there's a lot of claims that the state has been kept in the dark about it intentionally, with claims that MN GOP House members on fraud investigation committees have been purposely withholding information from the state, forwarding their information instead to federal prosecutors. These House members don't seem to deny this:

https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/house-fraud-committee-wi...

https://www.startribune.com/walz-says-theres-no-evidence-of-...

I'm not sure people are really disputing that the fraud happened. I think there are disagreements about the scope of it and about the way in which the investigation has been happening, and the motives for the way in which it has happened.

Here's the whistleblower portal they set up earlier this year for example:

https://mnhouserepublicans.com/whistleblower-portal/

They then forwarded tips to the federal DOJ and not the state.

So are they picking on MN? I don't think the fraud, to the extent it is there, is them picking on them. The way in which this has unfolded might be.

There is plenty of fraud to go around but most of it is sophisticated and distributed (ie. lots of individual fraudulent PPP loans from somewhat real businesses exaggerating their expenses). The difference in MN is the fraud is jaw-droppingly stupid. Just read the Feeding our Future wikipedia page [1].

The fraudsters knew they were under suspicion, still got money from the state ,sued the state to force them to pay more - claiming racism, won, a judge forced the state to pay them 250m, blatantly spent the money on sports cars (again - knowing they were being investigated), got caught, tried to pay off the jury, the person who tried to pay of the jury stole the bribe money.

The investigation was wrapped up some time ago, but it did not get a lot of attention for obvious political reasons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Our_Future

Pretty average size population for a US state.

That statement is not factually incorrect. Neither is this statement: “Up to 100% of US citizens may be criminals”

The press release is 100% political.

As someone who lives in Minnesota, I wish the US Attorney’s office would provide data about the alleged Medicare fraud to the MN state government, like they have requested.

Instead, they speculate about a ridiculous amount of money being stolen ($9B) that is likely an order of magnitude larger than the actual loss, providing no proof, and sharing zero information with the relevant agencies in Minnesota’s government.

If there is fraud, please prosecute it and collaborate with my state’s government to uncover it so our tax dollars can go towards medical care for real people.

Actual fraud has happened here in MN, an organization called Feed Our Future stole hundreds of millions of dollars by claiming to provide food to students. [0], [1] We’d appreciate any actual help the federal government can provide, instead we get politicized press releases.

[0] https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/minnea...

[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/78th-defendant-charged-fe...