The manager of the Quality Learning Center facing fraud accusations in Minneapolis responded to the allegations on Tuesday, saying, “There’s no fraud going on whatsoever.”
The center, whose sign is misspelled Quality “Learing” Center, has reportedly received $4 million in state funding. But when independent journalist Nick Shirley showed up at the center in a video that went viral last week, there were no children to be found. The learning center’s manager, Ibrahim Ali, claimed that Shirley showed up too early for any kids to be present since the center operates from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
“Kids come to us, clients come to us, their parents come to us – they’re here daily, they leave on time, they come on time. There is no fraud going on whatsoever,” Ali said.
Ali added that the center serves children “after school hours,” and has been doing so since 2017. The Quality Learning Center is licensed as a “day program” to serve infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children.
The Quality Learning Center has been hit with numerous violations by the state, most recently in June for the facility being in poor condition and cribs not meeting safety requirements. The center has also been cited multiple times for attendance records missing information and has been fined at least twice for failing to conduct proper background checks for employees. No one picked up the phone when The Daily Wire tried to call a number for the center posted online. The line for a second number the center advertised was busy.
Ali refuted claims from Minnesota state regulators that the learning center had recently shut down.
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Tikki Brown, the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families, said at a press conference on Monday that many of the daycare and learning centers that Shirley visited in his video had already shut their doors for good, including the Quality Learning Center. A spokeswoman for the department later clarified that Quality Learning Center “decided to remain open,” according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
“We haven’t closed. We’ve never closed,” Ali said. “There was never a time where kids were told to stop coming. There was never a time we told our employees to stop coming. All that is false information.”
The daycare manager argued that Shirley’s reporting was an attempt to “put out a certain message about a certain group [of people],” adding the fraud accusations have hurt his business as well as the Somali community.
“Are you trying to record that we’re doing fraud or are you trying to put the Somali name and the fraud in the same sentence?” Ali asked. “That’s what really hurt us the last couple of days.”
Asked about the misspelled sign, Ali blamed the graphic designer hired by the learning center, the New York Post reported.
“What I understand is [the owners] dealt with a graphic designer. He did it incorrectly. I guess they didn’t think it was a big issue,” he said.
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