Somali Suitcase Stash: Feds says $130 million moved from Ohio airport to Minnesota on way overseas

Federal agents investigating a Somali immigrant operation that moved massive amounts of cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas have uncovered a new leg of the courier journey: the Columbus, Ohio airport.

Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration agents tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.

The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said.

"Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam," one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

Multiple Somali communities involved

The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.

Just the News reported exclusively last week that TSA detected nearly $700 million in cash in luggage leaving the Minneapolis airport in 2024 and 2025, frequently headed on a route to Amsterdam and then Dubai where U.S. officials lost the tracking. The TSA agents routinely alerted investigators during the Biden years, but there was little interest in probing the money movements further until President Donald Trump took office last year.

The cash movements out of Minnesota's largest airports by the Somali immigrant couriers were 90 to 99 times larger than the total amounts moved out of major international airports like John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City or Seattle and Atlanta, officials said.

As investigators began tracking the money backwards throughout its journey, they discovered the operation in Columbus, officials said Tuesday.

"Tip of the iceberg," says Rand Paul

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., has taken note of the Just the News reporting, revealing to popular podcaster Joe Rogan this week he is launching an investigation to see if the exports of cash were tied to the fraud.

"The Somalis were so good at it that they were sending hundreds of millions of dollars back overseas," Paul told Rogan in a podcast that aired Tuesday. "So I think we are at the tip of the iceberg."

"You have to check off a box when it goes through the airport, and they weren't even hiding that they were sending it back. So the poor Somalis sent like $700 million over the last couple of years," he added.

The revelations of a massive money movement operation based in America's Somali immigrant communities come amidst an investigation by federal prosecutors in Minnesota into a fraud scheme estimated to have fleeced taxpayers of as much as $9 billion in welfare that predominantly went to Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis area.

That scandal has ended Gov. Tim Walz's political ambitions, forcing the Minnesota Democrat to abandon plans to run for re-election in 2026. It also has prompted President Donald Trump to end special immigration status for Somalians seeking refuge in the U.S., and launched a major fraud investigation by the House Oversight Committee. That led the FBI and Homeland Security Department to send hundreds of agents to investigate.

More than 90 defendants, mostly of Somali descent, have been indicted, with about half already convicted of crimes, prosecutors said.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., told the Just the News podcast John Solomon Reports on Tuesday that Minnesota state employees are providing evidence that could lead to the federal prosecution of Walz, offering sworn whistleblower testimony confirming their governor failed to act after they warned about the massive Somali taxpayer fraud schemes.

"That my friend should be enough for criminal charges. The man should be in cuffs," Emmer said during a wide-ranging interview.

Walz under scrutiny

While Walz has vehemently denied wrongdoing and insisted he did not turn a blind eye to a fraud scheme that federal prosecutors say could reach $9 billion, three GOP Minnesota state legislators told Congress last week that there were more whistleblowers in state government willing to come forward to chronicle their efforts to alert the Walz administration to fraud and the subsequent retaliation they endured.

Emmer confirmed Tuesday that those whistleblowers are now cooperating with investigators and taking an important step to give testimony under oath about their efforts to alert Walz as well as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Both men are Democrats.

"There are whistleblowers out there. Expect one or more of them to start going under oath or offering affidavits that are signed, affidavits under oath, that they not only told Tim Walz about the fraud while it was happening, but that Tim Walz ignored them and in many cases retaliated against them," Emmer told Just the News.

That retaliation, Emmer said, included "threatening to blackball you from any future employment, threatening to take away your health benefits, threatening to take away your retirement benefits, and the list goes on."

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