‘The Most Sketchy Business Here’: Nick Shirley Goes in Search of Somali Transportation Companies

(DCNF)—Independent investigative journalist Nick Shirley uncovered additional alleged welfare fraud in Minneapolis in a new video released Tuesday, documenting transportation companies with idle vans and questionable addresses.

In Shirley’s latest upload he uncovered more signs of widespread welfare fraud while investigating transportation companies tied to Minnesota’s public assistance system, pointing to idle vehicles, nonexistent offices, and businesses that appear to exist only on paper. While visiting a listed address for Dreamline Transportation, Shirley said the registered location was a liquor store lined with mailboxes.

Shirley also documented more than a dozen vans branded with Dreamline’s name sitting untouched for months, buried in snow with no tire tracks. The video showed that the vehicles were photographed repeatedly over an eight-month period and found parked in the exact same positions, suggesting they were never used to transport anyone.

Shirley said the findings raised questions about claims that the vans serve healthcare, childcare, or adult daycare clients.

“If these vans are being used to transport people, whether it be healthcare or childcare, there would be snow tracks. And there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 vehicles here. No snow tracks anywhere,” Shirley said.

The investigation then turned to Silver Mountain Inc. LLC, another firm listed at a Minneapolis address. When Shirley and his companion David asked the building’s occupants about Silver Mountain, they said they had never heard of it. One man ordered the journalists to leave.

“All right, we’re moving on. So, Silver Mountain does not exist,” Shirley concluded.

Shirley said the pattern repeated across multiple sites, with three different welfare-linked companies allegedly tied to the same address. He said these transportation firms play a central role in enabling fraud by creating a paper trail that makes it appear people are moved between daycare centers, healthcare providers, and other services that never actually receive them.

At another location tied to Eponia Transport LLC, Shirley found no signage, no vehicles, and little evidence of an operating business. A neighboring office tenant told him the supposed transportation operator rarely appeared and kept an office containing little more than a couch.

“So there was a transportation company here in 305, for a long time, even before I joined the building a few years ago. He’s never really here. I’ve seen the office a couple times. There’s barely anything in there but a couch. And then I see him maybe twice a month.”

“And there’s no transport vehicles outside?” Shirley asked the man.

“I know everybody in the building,” the man said. “And this specific space here is probably the most sketchy out of any other business here.”

As Shirley pressed his investigation further, he asked how long the alleged scheme could survive if Minnesota cut off transportation reimbursements. His companion David responded that removing that single component would have an immediate impact.

“How quick do you think the fraud would dry out here in Minnesota if they were to cut out the transportation side of the fraud?” Shirley asked.

“I think it would have a massive effect and that the signal that that would send would let people know the party’s over,” David said.

Shirley posted another video on Jan. 6, accusing Minnesota’s medical transport network of widespread abuse. He said his year-long probe uncovered about 1,200 medical ride providers operating statewide. Shirley conducted the investigation alongside David, whom he credited with supplying research, records, and on-the-ground observations that helped reveal what he called large-scale fraud.

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