Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison spoke at a Capitol press conference on March 17, 2025, about a bill to bolster his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. Photo by Michelle Griffith/Minnesota Reformer.
Minnesota lawmakers are proposing a bill to curb Medicaid fraud by increasing penalties and bolstering Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s Medicaid fraud unit with more investigators and additional authority to subpoena financial records.
“When people steal from Medicaid, they’re stealing from all of us. They’re stealing health care from the people most vulnerable amongst us,” Ellison said at a Capitol press conference Monday. “Medicaid fraud isn’t only illegal, it’s also immoral and reprehensible.”
Ellison’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit works to uncover and prosecute people and organizations that steal from Medicaid, which in Minnesota is known as Medical Assistance. The unit’s largest investigation came out of Faribault, where prosecutors say that interpreters and drivers recruited hundreds of residents from the city about 60 miles south of the metro to specialty clinics in the Twin Cities as part of a huge, multi-million dollar fraud.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General said Minnesota’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit had the most fraud convictions among similarly sized operations in other states.
Now, lawmakers want to give the unit additional resources to catch fraud and future crime after several years of unceasing headlines about the theft of public money from Medicaid and other public programs.
The bill (HF2354) would appropriate $390,000 to the fraud unit over the next two years for nine new staff members, increasing the staff from 32 to 41.
It would also increase criminal penalties associated with Medicaid fraud, classifying it as an attempted theft of public funds rather than a completed theft. This would increase the maximum prison sentence from 2.5 years to up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000 for theft of Medicaid dollars over $35,000.
In addition, the bill would allow the Attorney General’s Office to subpoena financial records during criminal Medicaid fraud investigations.
“(The bill will) get the message out there that if you do steal this money, we will find you and we will prosecute you for that,” said Nick Wanka, director of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
The bill currently has bipartisan co-authors in the House. Sen. Ann Johnson Stewart, DFL- Wayzata, is the bill’s chief author in the Senate, and on Monday she said she’s confident the bill will also have bipartisan support in the coming days.