A Minnesota autism center for adults and children, which has been operating for more than 20 years, is facing closure in the wake of the massive fraud scandal in the state that dates back more than a decade and involves more than $9 billion of U.S. taxpayer money.

The Holland Center is one of many legitimate centers in the state, which collectively serve thousands of disabled people. Founder, owner, and CEO Jennifer Larson built the Holland Center for her autistic, non-speaking son, who is now 25 years old.

She said she has recently been forced to put hundreds of thousands of her own dollars into keeping the center afloat because the state didn’t pay a single claim for nearly two months.

Because of the payment delays, Larson said autism centers like hers are being forced to reduce hours, cut staff, and close in some instances. Families are scrambling for help, disabled children and adults are regressing, and parents are leaving jobs to care for their disabled loved ones.

Larson told The Epoch Times her facility can’t continue much longer.

“The feds say it’s the state. The state says it’s the feds,” Larson said.

“The kids are going to be the collateral damage.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services paused child care and family assistance funds to Minnesota in early January due to the alleged rampant fraud. The state is appealing.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services told The Epoch Times via email that the federal government’s threat of withholding funds is “not impacting the current payment situation.”

However, Larson’s center accumulated nearly two months of unpaid claims from Dec. 5 to Jan. 29, totaling more than $600,000.

‘Everything Was Flagged’

Beginning in late December 2025, the state began using a new pre-payment review vendor called Optum, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) “at every step” of its claims and reimbursement processes. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had announced the contract with the new system in late October 2025.

“They implemented it because of the fraud. Obviously, the state wasn’t catching the fraud in the 300 or 400 centers that popped up in the last three years,” Larson said. She blames the Minnesota government for turning a blind eye to the “crime ring” involving fraud at Somali-run autism centers to an immense scale.

Neither Walz nor his office could be reached for comment during multiple attempts via emails and phone calls.

Now, she said, Optum is causing the delay of claims with few or unclear explanations in the review process.

“The state has failed and lost millions and millions of dollars in the system, so, clearly, the state wasn’t going to be able to tell Optum what to look for because they didn’t know what they were doing,” Larson told The Epoch Times after she recently testified in Congress.

“All of us, for the first round, nobody got anything. Everything was flagged.”

Larson told a House subcommittee hearing on Jan. 21 that her center and numerous others in Minnesota are facing collapse after becoming collateral damage from the massive fraud scandal.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) asked Larson: “Ms. Larson, none of this would have happened if the fraud did not occur, is that accurate?”

“Yes,” she responded. “What happened in Minnesota had nothing to do with the ethical, longstanding autism providers.”

Larson said in her testimony that the state government’s “clumsy response” to fraud failed to distinguish between criminals and caregivers.

She said abrupt disruption or loss of service can destroy weeks or years of progress for disabled children and adults, causing lifelong consequences.

Payment Process

The Minnesota Department of Human Services told The Epoch Times that it sent the first batch of more than 100,000 claims to Optum for review in late December 2025.

The department said every two weeks, Optum receives batches of claims from the state. The system analyzes and flags any that need further review. Unflagged claims are paid after the initial analysis, the Minnesota Department of Human Services said.

The agency will continue sending payments for unflagged claims on regular two-week cycles. A provider will receive an update every two weeks on a flagged or suspended claim, accompanied by reason codes, the department said.

“If a claim is flagged, we may need additional information and documents from the provider before payments are made, which may cause further delay,” the Minnesota Department of Human Services said. Claims in Optum are listed as suspended until the state reaches a payment decision.

The department did not provide detailed answers on why the Holland Center or other similar, longstanding facilities might have their claims flagged.

The agency said it did not wish to disclose what kind of identifiers cause it to suspect someone is billing for services they did not provide, but officials generally look for “patterns of concern—claims that fall outside expected norms,” some of which could be blamed on administrative errors or poor documentation rather than intentional fraud.

“Optum helps the state of Minnesota identify potential fraud, waste, and abuse by conducting pre‑payment reviews,” the company said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times. “Optum has no authority to approve, deny, delay, or suspend claims, and payment decisions are made exclusively by [the Minnesota Department of Human Services] and the Office of Inspector General.”

Most claims should be paid within 30 days, and legitimate claims that may have been flagged within 90 days, as required by the federal government, according to the agency.

Financial Hit

Meanwhile, with a payroll of $250,000 every two weeks, Larson has been forced to ask many of her employees to take unpaid leave.

After nearly two months of unpaid claims, her center was partially paid on Jan. 29, bringing the owed amount down to about $300,000, Larson said. She said there’s been little to no word from state or health officials on why her claims were flagged in the first place.

Larson doesn’t expect to get another payment for two weeks, putting her in a several-hundred-thousand-dollar deficit she doesn’t think will ever rebalance.

She’s spent so much of her own money to keep the center’s lights on, Larson said, that she’s been forced to cut back on other bills to make ends meet. Fortunately, Larson said her landlords have been understanding of the situation.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services said in its email that there is no way to expedite payments to individual providers.

“We know payment delays can cause real challenges for many providers we work with, the majority of whom are legitimate businesses,” the agency wrote. “We are committed to making the pre-payment review process as efficient as possible for legitimate providers.”

Larson said there should be a simpler way.

“If they wanted to do it right, they could have said, ‘Okay, who are the providers that have been in business … five years or more, 10 years or more … who’ve had on-site audits,’” she said.

The Optum AI platform can’t substitute state officials physically looking into autism centers to ensure legitimacy, she said.

“It’s not rocket science …Go look; how about you go look? They come into my center every year and do an audit, inspection, and our documentation,” she said.

“Clearly, that’s not happening with those other centers.”

New Centers

Years ago, when Larson witnessed new autism treatment centers popping up around her area and the state, she was initially relieved because, to her, it meant more help was coming for disabled children and adults.

“There’s a need, and there’s a high prevalence of autism in the Somali community in Minnesota,” Larson said. “And I know that and I service a lot of the kids, but we can’t take them all. We’ve always had a waiting list.”

A 2023 study by the University of Minnesota showed autism rates in 4-year-olds to be much higher among Somali children compared to other races and ethnicities. The report found 1 in 18 Somali children had autism, compared to 1 in 64 for white children, 1 in 31 for Hispanic children, and 1 in 30 for non-Somali black children.

But when hundreds of autism centers popped up, it was a red flag for Larson.

“No one wants to talk about it because everyone’s scared of saying anything wrong,” Larson said. “That’s why we’re here. It’s because everyone’s too afraid to say something.”

Independent journalist Nick Shirley, who brought national attention to the alleged Minnesota fraud at day care centers with his viral video posted Dec. 26, 2025, attended the congressional hearing with Larson.

“What we saw in Minnesota is how complicit the government has been in enabling this fraud to happen. Quality ‘Learing’ Center had over 90 violations, yet they continued to give that daycare $1.9 million,” Shirley said in his testimony.

Meanwhile, the closure of Holland Center would dismantle a lifetime of work for Larson that all started with the birth of her son.

“This work is a labor of love for me,” she said. “It’s my son’s legacy.”