Willie Sutton was named to the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List in 1950 after a series of bank robberies and various escapes from prison. When asked by a bank teller after one robbery, “Why do you rob banks?” Sutton reportedly answered, “Because that is where the money is!”
Sutton had the reputation of being a gentleman despite his dastardly deeds, and he dressed in the finest suits possible to carry out his bank robberies. According to FBI records, one victim said, “Being robbed by Willie Sutton was like going to the movies except the usher had a gun.”
If Sutton were alive today, he wouldn’t go through the trouble of brandishing a gun to enter a bank and ask them to empty their till and bring back sacks of cash. All he would have to do is follow the lead of the ransackers of many social service programs in Minnesota and rob the state and federal government of hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of taxpayer funds and redirect them to offshore bank accounts with the help of very sophisticated computer and online technical experts. He could still dress in fancy, expensive clothes or in pajamas and sit in front of his computer screen and watch his offshore bank accounts magically fill each day simply because “unsupervised or mismanaged government funds are where the money is!” nowadays.
Once news hit about millions of dollars being missing from Somalian-run child care centers in Minnesota, the initial reaction among many had to have been, “How could that have been at all possible?” Until proven otherwise, it stands to reason that unless state, local and federal governments are equipped with the latest in anti-theft technology and the requisite computer technology and experts to constantly monitor the cash flows of trillions of dollars of government spending around the nation and the world, there remains the possibility that such treachery can occur.
But why should one dollar of taxpayer money ever be allowed to be stolen, squandered or wasted in the first place?
There used to be a time when conservative Republicans and fiscal tightwad Southern Democrats would do everything within their power to protect the taxpayer from having one dime of their taxes wasted or stolen from the government they trusted their elected officials to manage wisely.
After decades of almost mindless spending beyond our tax revenue income streams, we now have sophisticated financial technological thieves who have penetrated the walls of our government either with the support of certain elected officials or in what appears to be a total state of neglect in Minnesota under Gov. Tim Walz. Walz was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2024 on the ticket with Kamala Harris, if you need to be reminded of how close he came to being second in line to the presidency.
How much other stolen money has been taken from our state, federal and local government coffers in recent decades? According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, federal offenders sentenced for government benefits fraud rose 242% from 2020 to 2024. Surely not every malefactor was arrested and convicted. The number attempting fraud may have risen 1000% for all we know.
With so much money being injected into the economy by the Fed and appropriated by Congress during COVID-19, 21st-century Willie Suttons must have flocked like financial vultures to see who could scavenge the largest carcass of government money in illegal ways in the shortest possible time.
All it took to uncover the fraud in Minnesota was for some guy with a cell phone camera to walk into one of the child care centers run by Somalians and ask to see where the children were during the day. When he did not see any, he had video proof that blew the roof off this story recently.
This is where government and our elected officials have failed us. They are the ones with the duty and responsibility to not only allocate funds for public policy purposes but also to provide the critical oversight and management to make sure those tax dollars are spent only on the intended purpose, not wasted or stolen by rogue agents.
With 2026 being a midterm election year, it is important to ask candidates if they will support continued diligence to protect your tax payments. If they will not, then find someone else who will.
