Hi, everybody. Cheryl Ackison here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After Hours.

Today, a Minnesota fraud whistleblower. If only someone influential had listened to

state employee Faye Bernstein years ago when she warned of a system ripe for fraud.

Sunday, March 15th on full measure, I'm reporting from Minneapolis on that notorious theft

of taxpayer dollars you've heard so much about. The web of fraud that's taken place there

largely by residents from Somalia,

siphoned billions of dollars from programs meant to help the vulnerable.

And this is taxpayer money.

In many cases, your taxpayer money, federal money.

But years before the national headlines, insiders were sounding the alarm about a system primed for abuse

on a wide scale. One of those insiders is Faye Bernstein. You'll hear from her in today's podcast.

Then Minnesota State Representative Kristen Robbins, she's been listening to numerous whistleblowers.

She heads up the legislature's main fraud prevention

committee and has some new information about revelations in the massive fraud scandal. But first,

here's whistleblower Faye Bernstein, who's a compliance officer at the Minnesota Department

of Human Services, her job to make sure welfare-related contracts followed the rules.

The fraud problem that we have at the Minnesota Department of Human Services has lasted

for at least, in my knowledge, six to

seven years, likely before that. And I think so much of the problem can be attributed to two things.

We have quite poor on qualified leadership, and we have a real serious problem with retaliation towards

employees who speak about anything that is fraud-related. When and how did this first come

to your attention? What did you notice? In 2019, I got a promotion that allowed me to see the contracting habits processes of other staff.

...