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The astonishing scale of the Somali immigrant fraud in Minnesota begs the question: is it happening here? You already know the answer.
A mother of seven has been charged with being at the centre of a web of scammers who made $800,000 from fake welfare claims and took money meant for people living with disabilities.
Just any old “mother of seven”, is it? Nothing else we should know?
Australian Federal Police investigators allege Whittlesea mother Istarlin Hassan, 49, and four others, including her 30-year-old Lalor hairdresser boyfriend Matin Ibrahim, began a fraudulent family day care operation in 2014 to pilfer money from government childcare benefits, parenting payments and NDIS payments.
Almost there: about as close as the legacy media will get to telling us the whole truth.
Hassan is, in fact, a Somali immigrant. Her “Lalor hairdresser boyfriend” is a Kurdish ‘refugee’.
And, just as in Minnesota, the community which migrates together, steals together.
Caroline Semisi, 32, from Meadow Heights and Asha Mohamed, 31, from Coburg also allegedly claimed benefits to care for the Whittlesea mother’s children as family daycare educators, despite never doing so.
Was it a ‘Quality Learing Center’?
But the Somali fraud in Victoria is mere chump change, compared to what Middle Eastern fraudsters are ripping off from the Australian taxpayer in, surprise, surprise, Lakemba.
Lakemba is the Muslim epicentre in Australia. Nearly 70 per cent of Lakemba’s population is Muslim. It’s home to the largest mosque in Australia – the very one where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was abused and driven out by a violent Muslim mob last week.
There are an astonishing 1,300 National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) providers in Lakemba. That’s one for every 14 people. For all that, though, as an investigation by independent journalists Drew Pavlou and Pete Zogoulas found, many are closed and deserted. One has a luxury, quarter-million-dollar car parked out front. The ones that are operating, the journalists say, are overcharging for work they don’t do.
The pair carried out an undercover sting as part of what they describe as a long-running campaign to expose alleged abuses of the scheme.
Zogoulas booked an Airbnb in the suburb and deliberately left the property mostly tidy, placing only a few towels on the floor.
He then hired an NDIS-registered cleaning company while posing as the carer of a scheme participant.
According to the investigators, two cleaners arrived without professional equipment. Zogoulas said he watched from his car and timed the visit, which he claims lasted just 24 minutes.
He alleges the towels were left untouched, tissues from the apartment were used for cleaning and very little other work was completed.
The pair say the business later billed $236 for two hours of work, claiming a ‘government-mandated two-hour minimum’ applied to NDIS cleaning jobs.
After confronting the company owner and revealing the actual cleaning time, the pair say the supposed minimum charge was dropped and the invoice was revised to just $24 […]
However, the company strongly disputes the pair’s account of events.
The owner said the caller repeatedly refused to provide an NDIS number.
So, why did they take the job on and agree to bill it to the NDIS?
Still, it was slightly better than the reception they got from the luxury car guys. Zogoulas was abused and attacked by conspicuously Middle Eastern staff.
Meanwhile, authorities are letting the likely multi-billion-dollar fraud go on, with practically zero prosecutions.
In early 2025, just 0.22 per cent of more than 7,000 fraud reports resulted in prosecutions, with authorities admitting the legal system was struggling to keep pace with the volume of alleged rorts.
The federal government says it is now stepping up efforts to crack down on fraud within the scheme.
Just like they slashed home electricity bills and made Australia more socially cohesive?
Here’s one of the 0.22 per cent of prosecutions of immigrant welfare fraud they actually carried out.
The director of a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) provider has been charged over his alleged role in defrauding millions of taxpayer dollars.
Billal Chami, 31, is accused of being involved in laundering $3.6 million in cash, which police said derived from fraudulent claims to the NDIS.
If that is just 0.22 per cent of the fraud, then the scale of immigrant welfare fraud in Australia, that puts the scale of the fraud that’s not being prosecuted at somewhere around $1.4 billion.
