by WorldTribune Staff, December 29, 2025 Real World News
New focus is being paid to how Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar went from essentially broke to being worth over $30 million in one year amid the Minnesota fraud scandal that gets hotter by the day.
The Somalia-born Omar was seen in a resurfaced video last month dishing out food in a restaurant now at the heart of the scandal.
It was Omar “who introduced the legislation that critics say paved the way for what the feds have called the largest fraud of the pandemic,” the New York Post reported on Saturday.
Omar’s MEALS Act of 2020 relaxed oversight of government-sponsored children’s meal programs during the pandemic. Critics say it allowed fraudsters to claim they served millions of meals without verification while pocketing millions of dollars in government subsidies.
Shortly after the scheme played out, Omar’s husband, political consultant Tim Mynett, launched Rose Lake Capital, a venture capital management firm, in 2022.
The firm “quietly scrubbed key officer details — including former Obama officials — as scrutiny grows over the family’s skyrocketing wealth,” The Post’s report said.
Rose Lake Capital saw its reported value go from nearly zero in 2023 to between $5 million and $25 million in just a year, and touted its officers’ $60 billion in “previous” assets under management — an amount many Wall Street money managers only dream of.
“There’s a lot of strange things going on,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center. “She was basically broke when she came into office and now she’s worth perhaps up to $30 million … she needs to come clean on these assets.”
Rose Lake Capital, which touts its “deep global networks built from on-the-ground work in more than 80 countries,” had less than $1,000 in assets in 2023, according to Omar’s financial disclosure.
The business’s only address is a WeWork in DC, according to its LinkedIn page.
Between September and October — when federal prosecutors announced charges against eight more individuals, including six of Somali descent, for their roles in the Minnesota welfare scheme — the names and bios of Rose Lake Capital’s nine officers and advisers were removed from the website. None of them were charged in the fraud.
These names include lobbyist and former Obama Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli; former Senator and Obama Ambassador to China Max Baucus; DNC Finance Chair associate Alex Hoffman; former DNC treasurer William Derrough; and former ex-CEO of Amalgamated Bank Keith Mestrich, who once described Amalgamated as “the institutional bank of the Democratic Party.”
Meanwhile, Mynett’s other business, a California winery that previously faced fraud allegations and was declared a failed venture in 2023, was suddenly worth between $1 million and $5 million in 2024 — a windfall of 9,900%, The Post noted.
Despite the high worth placed on the business, its website is a broken link, the phone number is disconnected, and the last social media post for the winery dates back to 2023.
“While working families were being ripped off by a massive welfare scam, Omar’s campaign took money from convicted fraudsters, her husband launched a firm that suddenly ballooned in value, and [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz looked the other way,” according to Kiersten Pels, spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.
When she first took office in 2019, Omar declared a net worth between negative $25,000 and negative $65,000, claimed to own no assets, and be only carrying student and car debt.
Now Omar’s assets have suddenly skyrocketed to anywhere between $6 million and $30 million, according to her latest financial disclosure.
Omar’s campaign received $7,400 in direct donations from at least three now-convicted fraudsters, though the “Squad” member insisted she returned the donations after the scandal broke.
She’s been closely linked to at least two individuals from Minnesota’s Somalian community who’ve been charged in the fraud.
“Does Ilhan Omar know these people? Are they from her wonderfully managed Home Country of Somalia?” President Trump posted on his Truth Social platform when the news of the charges first broke. “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great state, and billions of dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from.”
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