Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf, the 27-year-old president and CEO of Star Autism Center LLC, pleaded guilty Monday in connection with more than $6 million in fraudulent claims submitted to Minnesota's government, KARE reported. Yussuf now faces roughly five years in prison for a scheme that exploited a state program designed to help children with autism, bilked Medicaid, and allegedly put unqualified teenagers in charge of delivering therapy that was never actually provided.
The Department of Justice charged Yussuf in December 2025 with making fraudulent Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) claims, a state program that funds intensive one-on-one therapy for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. According to a DOJ press release issued at the time of the charges, Yussuf and his team collected more than $6 million through those fraudulent claims.
KARE reported that Yussuf founded Star Autism Center LLC in 2020, when he was just 22 years old, and ran it for about four years. The company held itself out as providing "necessary one-on-one therapy to children with autism." But at his Monday plea hearing, Yussuf admitted he did not know any individuals with autism, according to KARE. The man running a multimillion-dollar autism therapy operation had zero personal familiarity with the condition his company claimed to treat.
The DOJ's December 2025 press release laid out the alleged mechanics of the operation. Star Autism allegedly hired unqualified teenagers as "behavioral technicians." Yussuf's team allegedly approached Minnesota parents of Somali descent to "recruit" their children into the center and qualify them for autism services, even if the children were not autistic. The center also allegedly "paid monthly cash kickbacks" to the parents of enrolled children, with the amounts tied to the level of services authorized by the Minnesota Department of Human Services for each child.
The DOJ further alleged that Yussuf and his team submitted millions in Medicaid reimbursement claims that 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 in Star Autism's ownership. Yussuf also reportedly spent over $100,000 on a Freightliner semi-truck and sent over $200,000 to Kenya.
Yussuf's guilty plea falls amid a broader federal pushback against health care fraud in Minnesota. President Donald Trump announced in January the creation of the Department of Justice Division for National Fraud Enforcement, a new unit built to pursue exactly this kind of case. That announcement followed independent journalist Nick Shirley's viral videos exposing alleged fraud within Minnesota's Somali community, footage that drew national attention to systematic abuse of taxpayer-funded programs in the state.
On Feb. 25, Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announced new enforcement measures, including deferring $259.5 million in quarterly Medicaid funding to Minnesota and imposing a nationwide moratorium on Medicare enrollment for specific suppliers. Those steps signal that the administration views Minnesota's fraud problem not as a handful of isolated bad actors but as a systemic failure requiring structural intervention.
The vast majority of defendants charged by the DOJ in recent Minnesota fraud schemes have been of Somali descent, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation. That pattern raises hard questions about the oversight mechanisms that allowed these schemes to operate for years. Investigators will need to determine how Star Autism passed whatever vetting Minnesota requires for EIDBI providers, how millions in claims were paid without verification of services rendered, and whether additional individuals connected to the company's ownership will face charges.
Yussuf faces roughly five years in prison, though no sentencing date has been publicly confirmed. Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether any co-defendants or co-conspirators will be charged in connection with the Star Autism scheme, despite the DOJ's reference to others who allegedly shared in the proceeds.
A 22-year-old with no connection to autism built a company, staffed it with teenagers, recruited children who did not need services, billed Medicaid for therapy that never happened, and collected $6 million before anyone in state government noticed. The federal crackdown is welcome. The question Minnesota taxpayers deserve answered is why it took this long.
