Whistleblower Alleges Somali Welfare Fraud in Ohio

A whistleblower claims that the Somali migrant community in Ohio is also involved in the same sort of massive social services funding fraud being uncovered day-by-day in Minnesota.

Ohio attorney Mehek Cooke says that the same sort of theft of public funding seen in Minnesota has been occurring in the Buckeye State for more than a decade, Fox News reports.

Cooke also accuses Ohio doctors of “rubber stamping” the fraud by failing to do any due diligence on those who are filing for aid.

“They’re just rubberstamping 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 says.

Cooke adds that the Somali scammers in Ohio are exploiting a loophole in the state’s Medicaid program that has doled out as much as $91,000 a year per individual, money that is supposed to be paying to care for elderly or infirm family members in the home. She says that Ohio’s system is the “easiest in the Midwest to game.”

Many blame the Somali fraud issue on the country’s flawed culture. “Amoral familism is a [Somali] cultural blueprint,” says Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who fled from her Somali father to live in Europe. “It assumes that… survival depends on extracting maximum benefit for one’s own family,” regardless of the damage to fellow citizens, she wrote in December.

Cooke also alleges that many of these doctors are getting kickbacks from the scammers.

Cooke explained how the scam works, telling Fox News, “Say I want to take care of my elderly aging parents at some point. I can become a home health provider, and this is where the Somali community has been really clever. They’ve been able to find loopholes in Ohio law to provide for care for family members, even when they don’t need it.”

“We have entrusted states to look at the funding and to allocate it to build programs, to build rules and regulations,” she continued. “But unfortunately, in states like Ohio, it is being infiltrated and broken down because you don’t actually have independent assessments with not only doctors but somebody at the Department of Medicaid coming in.”

“So, a lot of times what’s happening is an individual is coached to lie to a doctor,” she said, adding that much of the time those filing don’t even qualify for the benefits.

“What we’re seeing in Minneapolis is just a snippet of what’s happening in Ohio,” Cooke exclaimed.

Cooke insisted the system is more at fault than is the Somali community. She thinks similar fraud is occurring in every other state that has such programs.

“I think every state, in addition to Ohio, should be asking for audits of their Medicaid system and their programs,” she concluded. “At the end of the day, Ohio taxpayers are hurting, the American people are hurting, and we don’t have enough tax dollars.”