MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — The Quality “Learing” Center Minneapolis, a purported day care flagged in a viral video designed to expose fraud, may have been bustling with kids Monday, but it is typically such a ghost town that it appeared closed, a local told The Post.
The resident called the kiddie scene at the site Monday — a few days after explosive footage called it out and suggested it was part of widespread state fraud — “highly unusual.
“We’ve never seen kids go in there until today. That parking lot is empty all the time, and I was under the impression that place is permanently closed,” the person said.
Monday’s busy parking lot and the roughly 20 kids streaming in and out as The Post staked out the site were in stark contrast to the neighbor’s description and YouTuber Nick Shirley’s video showing what appeared to be a facility that wasn’t in use.
“You do realize there’s supposed to be 99 children here in this building, and there’s no one here?” Shirley asked the person answering the door to the site in his clip, which was posted online Friday.
No children appeared to be at the center at the time. The facility says its hours are Monday to Thursday, 2 to 10 p.m.
Ibrahim Ali, the son of the owner who said he was the manager, claimed to The Post on Monday that Shirley’s visit came before they opened for the day.
“Do you go to a coffee shop at 11 p.m. and say, ‘Hey, they’re not working’?” Ali argued to The Post.
He also blamed a graphic designer for the now-infamous typo on the site’s sign.
“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,” said Ali, 26, who claimed he helps out with homework and paperwork at the facility.
“That’s gonna be fixed,” he said of the sign.
It wasn’t immediately clear how long the misspelled exterior sign has been in place.
Shirley released his video amid a massive scandal involving Minnesota’s taxpayer-funded social services, including day cares.
The up to $9 billion alleged scam purportedly involved businesses lying about providing services for needy people to rake in millions of dollars in government funding.
Quality Learning has not been publicly named as one of the businesses suspected by the feds in their burgeoning probe.
A woman opening the center at 2 p.m. Monday said Shirley’s reporting was inaccurate.
“We don’t have fraud. That’s a lie,” she said, adding, “I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to my lawyer.”
Outside the center, another worker took out his smartphone to record a Post reporter who was asking him questions about the situation.
“Don’t f–king come to this area. Get the f–k out of here,” the employee said angrily.
The Minnesota Department of Human Services paid a visit to ABC Learning Center — several miles away from Quality “Learing” Center — Monday morning as part of the large-scale investigation into the widespread alleged fraud, which reportedly mainly involves members of the state’s Somali immigrant community.
“They wanted two months of attendance [records], we gave them two months of attendance,” Ahmed Hasan, director of ABC Learning Center, told The Post.
He said the agency said they were going to check if everything was correct.
Hasan told The Post they were “scared to open the door” when Shirley and his crew also came knocking at his center.
“That time ICE was coming for the Somali community. We were scared to open the door,” he said.
“They come with eight people. Five of them had masks. We thought they were ICE.”
He called the focus on Somali immigrant fraud “a targeted situation,” and said the allegations against his and other day care facilities in Minneapolis were “a political game.”
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