Two Minnesota fraudsters allegedly swindled more than $21 million in funding earmarked for autism services through two bogus companies and then spent it lavishly on overseas property, officials said.
Shamso Ahmed Hassan, 55, and Hanaan Mursal Yusuf, 25, whose mugshots were released on Wednesday, made off like bandits by submitting millions of dollars in fake claims to Minnesota’s Early Intensive Development and Behavioral Intervention Program [EIDBI] between May 2020 and December 2024, authorities said.
The pair enrolled two companies co-owned by Hassan — Smart Therapy Center LLC and Star Autism Center LLC — as service providers to submit the claims and were secured $21.2 million in funds aimed at helping people, under 21, with autism.
The swindlers were part of an extensive scheme to use the stolen money on themselves and their families, including buying property in Kenya and a truck.
Hassan and her employee, Yusuf, who live together and are both US citizens, remain in federal custody pending court proceedings, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Their arrests are part of a larger fraud scheme that totaled more than $46 million and included two other defendants, Asha Farhan Hassan, 28, and Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf, 27 — who appear to be siblings — both previously took plea deals tied to their involvement in the scams at Star Autism and Smart Therapy.
The $300-$1,500 monthly payments meant for autistic children — referred to by the code word “computer” — were “disguised” when the defendants wrote checks to employees and family members of the facilities that were then cashed and paid out to the parents as kickbacks each month, according to federal prosecutors.
The new indictment against Shamso Ahmed Hassan and Hanaan Yusuf — both of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota — include allegations against co-conspirator 1 and 2, whose identifying details match those of Asha Hassan and Abdinajib Yussuf.
Hassan and Yusuf — the lead biller at Smart Therapy — enrolled with the health department as Level II providers of autism services through the EIDBI, with Yusuf eventually upgrading to become a Level I provider on Jan. 1, 2024, the court papers claimed.
This allowed “Smart Therapy to bill for her services at a higher rate,” the indictment alleged.
Hassan is also accused of scamming both adult and child food benefits programs by claiming Smart Therapy was serving 300 children both breakfast and lunch seven days a week, the feds alleged.
By April 2021, Smart Therapy claimed to serve 1,200 meals a day, seven days a week — which Hassan knew was “grossly inflated,” prosecutors said.
Between 2020 and 2021, she claimed the center served almost 200,000 meals to kids, for which she claimed $465,000, according to the indictment.
From 2018 to 2025, spending in Minnesota’s EIDBI program, which funds autism centers, rose from more than $600,000 to over $400 million, Department of Justice officials said.
Both companies lost their Minnesota state licenses earlier this year, according to officials.
The recent indictments were among 15 unveiled by the Justice Department Thursday in connection with more than $90 million of stolen taxpayer funding for fraudulent services in Minnesota — including one scammer who leaped from a fourth-story balcony before being apprehended by the FBI.