Ohio, home to the country’s second-largest Somali population, has a multibillion-dollar Somali fraud crisis similar to the scandal in Minnesota, members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform warned this week.“Recent reporting shows that many of the Somali and Bhutanese communities commit a large portion, if not the majority, of home health Medicaid fraud in Ohio,” said Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), chairman of the House oversight committee’s task force on exposing institutional abuses, at a hearing on Wednesday examining fraud in Ohio’s Medicaid program.An investigative series by the Daily Wire recently reported that sham home healthcare companies, primarily operated by immigrants from Somalia and Bhutan, are billing Medicaid for services never actually rendered. Such billing schemes exploiting vulnerabilities in Ohio’s Medicaid system are estimated to have stolen more than $1.2 billion from the federal government in recent years.
Gill asked Luke Rosiak, the Daily Wire reporter who identified numerous individuals and agencies in Ohio that he believes have committed Medicaid fraud, how many of those entities or operators had Bhutanese, Somali, or otherwise African-origin names.
