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As the FBI continues to carry out raids on alleged fraudsters in Minnesota, former Vikings captain Jack Brewer is speaking out on suspicious shopping activity he claims to have witnessed by the state’s Somali population.
“You start seeing so many Somalians there purchasing these luxury goods. And I always wondered, how in the world did these folks get so much money? Because when you look and you see, that when they come here, more than 50% of them are on welfare,” Brewer said in an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Saturday in America.”
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Brewer previously said he saw Somali alleged fraudsters buy luxury sports cars in his state, and revealed what he saw in the halls of his state’s malls in the late 2000s to early 2010s.
“They weren’t necessarily doing well in the economy, so you’d always wonder how they get so much money. They’re at the mall, they’re shopping, they’re at Louis Vuitton stores and they’re buying them,” Brewer said.
“You didn’t expect Somali immigrants who were supposedly coming here to flee their country doing that well. So I always questioned that. And when you started to look, it started to all make sense.”
Brewer was a standout special teams player and team captain for the Minnesota Vikings. Signed as a free agent, he played 15 games in 2002, leading the team in special teams tackles and securing his first career interception against Green Bay. He was named team captain in 2003.
Back in early January, shortly after the allegations of fraud became a widespread national story, Brewer came forward to recall seeing alleged fraudsters at Maserati dealerships.
“You go to one of them, and they have Bentley and Maserati dealerships in Minnesota. I know because I’ve done business with them, and I’ve been endorsed by them as an athlete,” Brewer told Fox News Digital in January.
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“Now, you go in there, and some of their main customers are these Somali fraudsters buying high-end cars in a state that gets four months of sunlight and decent weather. They’re driving around sports cars like you would see in Beverly Hills or South Beach Miami, all off the back of the American taxpayer.”
The Somali population in Minneapolis and St. Paul grew significantly starting in the early to mid-1990s, driven by refugees fleeing Somalia’s civil war, with substantial numbers arriving after 1991 and continuing through the 2000s.
The collapse of Somalia’s government in 1991 led to widespread conflict, forcing millions to flee the country. At the time, Brewer was just a child in Grapevine, Texas. By the time he transferred from SMU to the University of Minnesota, the Somali population was estimated at approximately 15,000 people, according to the Minnesota State Demographic Center.
By the time Brewer joined the Minnesota Vikings in 2002, at least 5,123 Minnesota students reported speaking Somali as their primary language at home, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Now, Minnesota and its Somali population are under the spotlight for welfare and Medicaid fraud, including a massive $300 million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. It drew renewed national attention in 2025 as convictions piled up and the state became a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s broader “war on fraud.”
“A lot of people want to use race and color and all of these different things, but when you start to look at populations, people need to come here to work,” Brewer said Saturday. “You don’t come here and rob a nation…
“This is not about race, this is about a culture of people, a country, that have come over here, and they’ve worked with people in America, these liberals in America have taught them how to steal from the U.S. government.”
Federal authorities raided more than 20 locations, including childcare facilities, in Minneapolis on Tuesday as part of a sweeping fraud investigation into largely Somali-owned businesses, sources confirmed to Fox News.
Authorities executed 22 federal search warrants in Minnesota on Tuesday morning as part of the operation, which is not immigration-related.
The raids center on federal fraud investigations into largely Somali-owned businesses, including childcare facilities that registered their daycare with the state but were allegedly billing for care that was not provided.
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