Minnesota’s Somali fraud scandal has dominated the headlines for several weeks, yet similar allegations of abuses in Ohio remain largely ignored by the media. Whistleblowers and investigators in Ohio claim to have uncovered Somali networks allegedly exploiting Medicaid’s home‑health caregiver program, siphoning millions of Ohio’s taxpayer dollars through false claims. And although these allegations are largely unacknowledged by the State’s Attorney General’s office at this point, several media sources are beginning to report on them.
Ohio’s Somali fraudsters appear to have exploited a loophole in Ohio’s Medicaid waiver program that allows family members to become paid caregivers to people who never needed care to begin with.
In many ways, Ohio’s scandal mirrors Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future fraud because it may be exposing how weak governmental oversight of social service programs may have enabled systemic abuse. But while Minnesota’s Somali-linked fraud involved receiving federal funds for meals that were never provided through the state’s Department of Education, Ohio’s Somali fraudsters appear to have exploited a loophole in Ohio’s Medicaid waiver program that allows family members to become paid caregivers to people who never needed care to begin with. (RELATED: Walz Can’t Escape the Somali Fraud Scandal)
Whistleblower reports estimate that Somali‑linked Medicaid fraud in Ohio has siphoned off millions of dollars over the past decade, with individual payouts reaching as high as $91,000 per person annually.
According to news reports, Mehek Cooke, an Ohio attorney who is familiar with the fraud and has led the investigation, has alleged that for more than decade, individuals within Ohio’s Somali community — the second largest in the country — have pressured Ohio healthcare providers to “rubberstamp” Somali community members to receive Medicaid funding enabling them to become home healthcare providers for family members who do not actually need it. Clinicians who are compliant in helping them become caregivers — even though their family members do not need care — are given a “kickback” once the individual family member caregiver is approved for Medicaid payment. Under this waiver system, no one has had to medically certify that the individual receiving the caregiving actually needs the care.
According to Cooke, who had previously worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio, handling criminal cases involving corruption, terrorism, drug trafficking, asset forfeiture, and money laundering, “The ones that are corrupt, the ones that are getting kickbacks, the ones that know full well that a Somalian individual really doesn’t need that care, they’re just rubber stamping a lot of these. And then that same individual, a week later, that’s supposed to be bedridden, is all over social media, whether they’re out dancing at a party or something like that, so the symptoms aren’t really adding up at the end of the day.”
Cooke claims that Ohio’s Somali Medicaid fraud has been running for over a decade, making it systemic rather than isolated. The scheme relied on loopholes in caregiver rules and complicit medical professionals. It also depended upon the Somali community’s silence about how potential caregivers were “coached” on how to file false claims, apply for the fraudulent funds, and find the compliant clinicians. And although these are only unproven allegations at this stage, providers within the Somali community allegedly told attorney Mehek Cooke that nearly 99 percent of applicants filing false claims were coached to lie to doctors about the medical conditions of their loved ones in order to qualify for Medicaid’s home‑health caregiver program.
At this point, however, these are only allegations by whistleblowers. While Cooke, a former federal prosecutor, is bringing evidence to light, specific large-scale indictments directly related to the specific Somali caregiver fraud claims made by Cooke have not been filed. And to be fair, we must acknowledge that the Ohio Attorney General’s office has, in fact, actively prosecuted several Medicaid fraud cases in the past, with Attorney General Dave Yost telling reporters that his office is working to “recover ill-gotten gains and bring fraudsters to justice.”
But none of the Ohio cases Yost has cited involve the Somali family caregiver allegations. According to news reports, queries made to the Ohio Department of Medicaid have gone unanswered. The situation remains an ongoing — but as yet unproven — news story based only on whistleblower testimony.
Cooke continues to assert that what we have seen in Minneapolis is “just a snippet of what is happening in Ohio.” From Cooke’s perspective, the systemic abuse by the Somali community in Ohio has continued because the state failed to have in place proper safeguards, including audits of the program. Yet Yost’s office has successfully prosecuted several Medicaid fraud cases based on comprehensive audits of the state’s Medicaid program.
Whether or not Cooke’s allegations of Somali‑linked Medicaid fraud in Ohio ultimately result in indictments, the parallels between Minnesota and Ohio highlight a deeper truth: without rigorous oversight and consistent audits, taxpayer‑funded social service programs remain vulnerable to systemic abuse. Until stronger safeguards are enforced, programs like Medicaid will remain easy targets for systemic fraud, including the kind of Somali family caregiver allegations now coming to light.
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