WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration announced on Tuesday that it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota after a series of fraud schemes in recent years.

Acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Jim O’Neill announced on the social platform X that the step is in response to “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”

“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” he said.

The announcement comes after years of investigation that began with the $300 million scheme at the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.

A federal prosecutor alleged earlier in December that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants are Somali Americans, they said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said fraud will not be tolerated and his administration “will continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught.” Walz has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.

The Associated Press