MINNEAPOLIS (NewsNation) — A former Navy intelligence officer assigned to track terrorist financing says he documented hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from Minnesota day care fraud schemes directly to Al-Shabaab terror networks in Somalia as early as 2016 — nearly a decade before federal authorities began widespread prosecutions.

Phillip Parrish, a lieutenant in the Navy who joined the Joint Terrorism Task Force in 2016, said he tracked money couriers from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to the Netherlands, then to Nairobi, Kenya, and finally into Mogadishu money exchanges called “hawalas” — the same exchanges the Treasury Department designated in 2012 as fronts for the al-Qaida-linked terror group al-Shabab.

“In 2016, we were already tracking that was adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars, and that was just what we were tracking,” Parrish told NewsNation. “Then, by now, fast forward nearly 10 years later, yeah, when they’re talking about $9 billion, that’s a real figure, and that’s probably conservative.”

Parrish’s account raises questions about why Minnesota officials did not act on early warnings about fraud schemes that allegedly fleeced taxpayers of billions through fake day care centers and other programs.

Parrish said his investigation began when he noticed an unusual pattern of cash leaving Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Money traced to Somalia hawalas Treasury labeled terror fronts in 2012

“There’s an interesting pattern here happening, where the money’s coming out of Minneapolis International Airport. Well, where’s it coming from?” Parrish said. “How are they getting it in Minneapolis? Where is it coming from? Well, that led to some research about a list of fake companies. Well, it’s all cash that’s coming out of these fake day cares or daycares with inflated numbers.”

When asked how much money was involved, Parrish described the scale as massive.

“Hundreds of millions. You’re talking suitcases of evidence, reports of suspicious activity, reports from banking, TSA, reports from the airport, and then the military side of the house, tracking who it got to,” he said. 

“You’re talking about tens of thousands, $300,000, $500,000, all these different varying amounts, daily. The open source material will tell you every other week out of Terminal 2, but it was daily out of Terminal 2, it was daily.”

“Direct portions of it were ending up in the hands of terrorists, absolutely, all the way from pirate boats being bought to essentially the administration of a terrorist network, administratively,” he said.

Parrish said his reports were used by military operations abroad but largely ignored by the public and state officials.

Officer: ‘No doubt’ money funded terrorists, pirate boats, terror networks

“Hundreds of men and women like me know the truth. It’s been the truth all along,” Parrish said. “We don’t know why we’ve been ignored, other than thieving and grifting, a culture of thieving and grifting that was intentional, no matter how it started.”

Parrish suggested the fraud schemes were part of a broader system dependent on continued immigration to sustain fraudulent programs.

“This grift machine is dependent on this flow of immigrants, legal or illegal, to continue the flow of the programs that they built legislatively,” Parrish said. “And the reason why they have such a fit about Medicaid being cut wasn’t because it was really hurting Minnesota citizens. It’s because the pipeline shut off.”

The revelations come as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have surged into Minnesota following viral videos showing day care centers that appeared empty despite receiving millions in taxpayer funds. Federal authorities have launched investigations into suspected fraud at child care and health care facilities across the state.