African Medicaid Scammers Exposed By Daily Wire Indicted For Fraud, Flee To Africa

An Ohio grand jury this week indicted an African couple living in Ohio on charges of Medicaid fraud, money laundering, and identity fraud — two months after The Daily Wire exposed the pair as part of its Medicaid Millions series.

But it was too late: the couple had already returned to their native Africa, highlighting the vulnerabilities of paying millions of dollars to foreign-born providers of dubious Medicaid services.

Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson announced on Wednesday that Roberta Acheampong, 39, and her husband, Godfred Owusu-Sekyere, 46, face “12 felony charges for allegedly defrauding Ohio’s Medicaid program of $9.3 million.” He said investigators believe the couple is now living in Kenya or Ghana.

The Daily Wire testified to the U.S. Senate specifically on Acheampong, describing the fraudster as “a janitor who changed the name of her janitorial LLC to One Community Mental Health, then billed the government $100,000 in the first month. It later billed up to $650,000 a month. Meanwhile she started a daycare and an addiction treatment center. Then she left the country.”

Wilson, in his statement on the felony charges, said they were the result of “a complex, years-long investigation” that “revealed widespread fraudulent billing tied to One Community Mental Health, a ‘behavioral-health clinic’ that the couple owned and operated in Ohio.

“The two allegedly exploited refugees seeking resettlement services, billing Medicaid multiple times a week for entire households, without their knowledge, for unnecessary mental health and therapeutic behavioral services that were never provided,” the attorney general said. “They are also accused of forging documents and stealing the identities of translation and transportation staff members to submit fraudulent Medicaid claims under their names.”

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His office also said that banking records show Acheampong used the “stolen” funds to “finance a lavish lifestyle, including purchases of real estate and a Porsche.”

The charges come just a few months after the Daily Wire’s May 5 story, Inside Ohio’s Home Health Empire: 7 Buildings, 288 Medicaid Companies, $250 Million, in which the business was identified as one of the most eyebrow-raising businesses in a pocket of Ohio where Medicaid fraud runs rampant.

At 1425 East Dublin, One Community Mental Health LLC, run by Roberta Acheampong, billed 70,000 claims totaling $8 million, according to the data reviewed. The Daily Wire roamed the building but saw no physical presence.

The home health industry is not her first business tied to taxpayer funds. In 2019, Acheampong created Royals African International Food Market Inc., but soon a lien was placed against it by the Economic & Community Development Institute, which gives federally-funded loans for “social and economic change.”

She incorporated Nahsek Interpreting Services LLC, which three months later changed its name to Royals Cleaning Services LLC. In September 2020, the cleaning service changed its name to One Community Mental Health LLC. This time, she struck gold.

In its first month of billing Medicaid, it had $96,000 worth of instant clients without so much as a website. By January 2023, it was charging taxpayers $654,000 a month for “therapeutic behavioral services,” “psychosocial rehabilitation services,” and “community psychiatric supportive treatment,” the billing records reviewed by The Daily Wire show.

With government money flowing in, Acheampong, whose business was cleaning houses a few months earlier, bought a $1.1 million home in a gated community in Powell, Ohio, records indicate. The Daily Wire visited the home to speak to Acheampong, but it was empty and listed for sale.

In February 2021, she created the nonprofit 1st Access Community Resources, for “Providing Community Base [sic] Case Management Services.” The filing paperwork was also sent to the food market. The nonprofit was quickly abandoned. In December 2022, Acheampong incorporated Little Stars of America Learning Center LLC. Its address was listed as the address of the aforementioned African market.

Soon, she had another for-profit company, One Community Developmental Support Services LLC, listed under the category of residential treatment facilities. Spending data for that category isn’t public.

Since her companies didn’t seem to exist at their offices, The Daily Wire visited Acheampong’s home, on a luxury private lane, and found it empty and for sale.

A neighbor told us that the realtor selling Acheampong’s house said she had left the country and was liquidating all of her assets in the United States. Hours after The Daily Wire story published mentioning Acheampong, the home was taken off the market.

“Who buys a million-plus dollar home and never opens the blinds and never has a light on?” the neighbor said.

This reporter also raised the Acheampong example to the U.S. House of Representatives:

Chairman COMER. You also reported companies with rapid and unusual growth. Should state oversight authorities have been alarmed by these trends?

Mr. ROSIAK. Yes. I mean, for example, there was a janitor who renamed her LLC to be Mental Health and started billing Medicaid $100,000 in the first month, later up to $650,000 in one month, and then she left the country. And so, if you were to start a roofing business, it takes time to build clients. How do you get $100,000 in business the first month? That is something people could ask.

…

Mr. GILL. What are some of these names that you come across? Do you hear the same names, or are they different names?

Mr. ROSIAK. Yes, it is funny because this started off, I was investigating a guy named Robert Acheampong. And then I found a different scammer named Roberta Acheampong. And I thought they were related, but they were not. It is just that is how common it is to scam Medicaid when your name is Acheampong.

Investigators may still have more to look into: The indicted husband’s name is Godfred Owusu-Sekyere.

Someone with the same last name has billed Medicaid more than $12 million for home health care in Virginia. Abena Owusu-Sekyere runs 1st Option Home Health in Woodbridge, Virginia, which has billed nearly $300,000 a month for “personal care services,” the Medicaid code which means that people who are not nurses act as servants to people in their homes, doing tasks like cooking and cleaning. Abena also runs a second home-health company, Gracestar Health Services.

The Daily Wire has found that the people getting paid for “personal services” are often refugees and migrants who live in multi-generational households and claim the older generation is disabled, resulting in payments to themselves for simply conducting normal family tasks in their own home.