A whistleblower is sounding the alarm on alleged fraud perpetrated by some in Ohio’s Somali community.
During an appearance on Fox News, attorney Mehek Cooke suggested that there is “massive fraud” in Ohio’s Medicaid home care system tied to a small group of scammers in the Somali community in Columbus.
Cooke explained, “the problem today is not the community…it’s actually the criminals within the Somalian community that have exploited Ohio’s Medicaid program because we have a system rigth now.”
She pointed out how the perpetrators target elderly people, coaching them to claim they have serious health or memory problems. They collaborate with medical professionals to get them approved for in-home care services — funded by taxpayers. Some doctors are allegedly “getting kickbacks, which means that if they rubber-stamp this, once that individual or that provider starts getting funding throught hes tate of Ohio, they get a kickback.”
Cooke detailed an entire organized operation built around the scheme. The group uses “door knockers” who canvas neighborhoods to recruit seniors and families into the program. Once these individuals are signed up, the perpetrators bill the state for unnecessary services, or services that are never providded at all. This is a practice known as “ghost billing.”
Even further, many of those involved in the scam are not going along with it willingly, according to Cooke. She said those who refuse “have been excommunicated from a lot of these activities and a lot of even patient care.” However, these individuals feel a duty “to expose this” because the scammers are stealing money meant for those who genuinely need it.
The Denver Gazette reported in March about a small Somali nonprofit organization that used the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to con over $2 million out of the Biden administration. They tricked the White House into giving them these funds, which were ostensibly intended for relief.
Elon Musk, who President Donald Trump tasked with improving government efficiency, recently criticized taxpayer-funded nonprofit organizations for maintaining poor auditing practices and ultimately costing the public unnecessary money. Indeed, reports of corruption and mismanagement have emerged at many nonprofit organizations that receive public funding, particularly those responsible for providing community services. The case of Somali Community Link underscores how, even after an organization fails to display good stewardship of public funds, officials often continue handing them money anyway.
In 2022, Somali Community Link received $2.3 million from the Department of the Treasury to help administer its Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Nonprofit organizations that receive over $750,000 in federal grant funding are required to contract an independent auditor to review their legal compliance. The audit of Somali Community Link’s use of relief funds raised multiple red flags.
According to the investigation, $187,111 in grant funding that Somali Community Link received to distribute as rental assistance was not spent for that purpose or returned to the Treasury Department. An additional $10,000 in funds the organization received for a food assistance program met the same fate.
“The organization’s failure to perform regular budget‐to‐actual comparisons and establish adequate cash management controls contributed to unspent funds remaining unreturned,” the audit says.
These operations are similar to a network recently exposed in Minnesota, where Somalis started a nonprofit and dozens of shell companies that scammed the federal child nutrition programs during the pandemic. They falsely claimed to feed tens of thousands of low-income children. In reality, they were funneling the money to a violent radical Islamic terrorist group in Somalia.
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