Ohio Officials Testify Before Fraud Task Force

The House Oversight Committee task force, led by Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, met on Wednesday to study Medicaid fraud in Ohio. Lawmakers heard from The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak, as well as Ohio Auditor Keith Faber and State Rep. Mike Dovilla.

The hearing also saw a simple question from Gill nearly bring a Ohio lawmaker to tears.

‘No Verification, No Oversight’

As Rosiak explained, “unsupervised and untrained workers” can collect money for providing services, even and including companionship and conversation, or family members who are Medicaid beneficiaries. There’s “no verification and little oversight,” Rosiak warned about the home health care system, highlighting how his investigation “found millionaire tax cheats, almost all of them foreign-born, ripping off taxpayers at a scale that threatens to bankrupt America.”

Columbus has the second largest concentration of Somalis in the country and the largest concentration of Bhutanese outside of Bhutan.

In northeast Columbus, this was “a side hustle” for many suspected fraudsters. While many were taking in money from taxpayers, they weren’t paying their own taxes, and often had criminal records. Many used relatives as company owners on paper.

“Whistleblowers in the area tell me companies knock on doors in ethnic neighborhoods where most people are on Medicaid, and most people live in multigenerational households, and they tell the older family member to go to particular doctors and claim particular symptoms, and then they will put the younger family member on their payroll, with the parent as their only patient,” Rosiak explained, which can result in $90,000 a a year.

For this year’s audit, Faber’s office identified up to $4.44 billion in fraud related exposure connected to ineligible recipients in Ohio’s Medicaid program and an ineligibility rate of 15.6%, which he said “again highlighted the need for substantially stronger oversight and internal controls.”

Approximately 56% of home health care services were not processed through the electronic visit verification system to verify services, that they came from the right caregiver, and within an authorized time and location. That this represents an estimated 1.1 billion claims not matched with EVV visits “is a significant control weakness,” Faber said.

A March 2024 report found that more than 124,000 individuals were enrolled in Ohio Medicaid and at least one other state for three consecutive months, with organizations associated with such enrollees receiving more than $1 billion.

In the General Assembly, Dovilla is working on a Medicaid integrity bill as a member of the Medicaid Committee. He described the bill as having provisions to “strengthen provider enrollment, improve electronic visit verification, impose additional safeguards on high-risk providers, enhance fraud reporting, and increase penalties for fraud.”

Brought Nearly to Tears

An exchange between Gill and state Sen. Nickie Antoni grew heated when the congressman asked her, “Has Somali immigration been good for Ohio?” She first claimed it was outside of her purview.

Gill pressed further, asking if she’d like to see more immigration. “I’m processing your question, and I have to say that I was almost brought to tears just now,” Antonio responded. While Gill pointed to 72% of Somali immigrants being on welfare, Antonio spoke out against “the rate and the level of hateful rhetoric based on false information.”

They continued to speak over one another, with Gill reiterating about Somalis “defrauding your state at an astounding rate,” to billions of dollars, while Antonio stressed how “shocking” she found the framing.

Gill had just asked Rosiak about alleged fraudsters who were of Somali, other African, or Bhutanese origin, which was 100% of the companies he looked into.

When asked if there was a connection between the Medicaid fraud in Ohio and the Somali fraud in Minnesota, Rosiak replied, “Yeah, it’s the same people. They all have relatives in both places and they move back and forth,”

Rosiak further testified, “there is a large interstate criminal enterprise of Somali fraudsters that are defrauding the federal government in multiple states of bill potentially billions of dollars.”

When task force member Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, brought up race as well, Rosiak testified that a home health owner he spoke told him he was “going to tell everyone you’re a racist.”

Jordan responded, “That’s how the Left operates.”

The congressman also offered a contrast between Ohio and Minnesota. “The only difference is… in Ohio they’re actually doing something about it,” while in the more liberal Minnesota they “didn’t do squat” at the state level, Jordan said, citing the issue “might cause backlash among the Somali community… a core voting bloc.”

“Politics stopped them in Minnesota, it’s not stopping Mr. Faber, Mr. Dovilla from doing their work,” Jordan continued.