Extending past Smart Therapy and Star Autism, Minnesota companies billed the state for roughly $400 million in both 2023 and 2024 for Minnesota Medical Assistance and related public health plans, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit to apply for the search warrants. That was up from $1.7 million in 2017.

Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf, listed as Star Autism Center’s organizer in the LLC’s original state business filing, denied the fraudulent billing allegations.

“No. There was nothing like that, but I have nothing to say at the moment,” Yussuf said.

Asha Hassan, who is listed as Smart Therapy Center’s manager in state business filings, could not be reached for comment Thursday or Friday.

Although there was a federal probe, no charges have been filed. Thursday’s raids were carried out in an attempt to gather evidence that may support an indictment, but it could be months before there’s a decision on whether to charge. In the Feeding Our Future case, FBI agents raided businesses in January 2022; criminal charges followed eight months later.

Here is what Youakim said, edited for length and clarity, about the company’s approach to growth and the holiday shopping season.

It was a good holiday season. Fourth quarter is always our biggest quarter, in terms of volume.

[But] this is a dynamic that people don’t understand about our business: If a customer fails to make a payment to us, we don’t allow them to make another purchase, and that’s completely opposite of a credit card, in my mind.

There’s a totally different approach to the holiday season between Sezzle, buy-now-pay-later and credit cards. We want to stop people from overspending. We want, of course, to help you in your holiday season, but we’re also actively trying to stop you from overspending. We might pull back limits in some cases. If a customer overspends too much and then fails to pay us, there’s always a percentage chance that some of those customers don’t want to pay us back at all ever. And we lose a customer.

Some of it’s a little bit inherent in the product. Because the product itself, even though it’s short term and smaller dollar, it’s high frequency, and if the consumer fails to make a payment, they can’t make another purchase. So we tend to be top of their repayment stack because they don’t want to lose the utility of the product. We do a little bit of pullback [of credit limits] in the holidays, which plays into that, as well.

Those new products — Premium, Anywhere, On Demand — those are all fast-rising products that are built to capture more demand. We already know Premium and Anywhere are there. On Demand, we’re learning about — is it the next killer product for us? And the more of these products where you kind of hit the nail on the head for customer demand, the more likely you gain market share.

“Pairing state-of-the-art amenities with timeless design, the Wells Fargo Center is well-positioned to attract tenants seeking a premier building in a dynamic urban environment,” the release said.

The overall office vacancy rate for downtown Minneapolis at the end of the third quarter was 23.4%, up a percentage point from the same quarter a year ago, according to brokerage firm Colliers.

Current vacancies, which are far higher than before the pandemic, are forcing some building owners to sell at significantly discounted prices. In September, a pair of office towers known as the Forum sold for $6.5 million, representing a discount of more than 90% discount from 2019 when the towers sold for nearly $74 million.