By Harold Hutchison
A Somali-owned company may have defrauded Maine in a manner similar to schemes that ripped off at least $1 billion from Minnesota, a whistleblower told NewsNation Monday.
Christopher Bernardini, a former “billing guru” at Gateway Community Services, said that the company falsified documents to obtain payment from Maine’s Medicaid program for services to low-income and disabled clients, NewsNation reported. Abdullahi Ali, the owner of the company, reportedly ran for office in Jubaland, a region of Somalia, and boasted about funding a militia there, according to The Maine Wire. (RELATED: Minnesota Democrats Attempted To Derail GOP Lawmaker Discussing Somali Scandal Months Before Story Blew Up)
“I have a passion for helping people and I thought that we were doing the right thing this whole time,” Bernardini told NewsNation, later adding, “When I had clients calling me to tell me their staff hadn’t shown up and I was told to bill those hours anyway. It just got worse and worse until I started really putting up a stink.”
Bernardini told NewsNation that an electronic monitoring system intended to track field staff was manipulated to make it appear the clients were visited when staff actually failed to show up.
Gateway Community Services received $28.8 million in Medicaid funds from Maine, according to documents obtained by The Maine Wire via a Freedom of Access Act request.
Democrats in Maine have attacked Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles of Maine as a racist for raising concerns about The Maine Wire’s reports.
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is surging into the Minneapolis area to target illegal immigrants from Somalia after revelations into at least $1 billion in fraud, some of which allegedly went to the radical Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab. (RELATED: Left-Wing Democrat Says Deporting Somali Scammers Will Hurt US Economy)
State employees accused Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota of engaging in “systemic” retaliation against whistleblowers who warned of the fraud schemes as the Justice Department is pursuing three federal cases involving the welfare fraud scandal.
Walz admitted during a Nov. 30 appearance on “Meet the Press” that the state “attracts criminals,” but demanded that Somali residents not be demonized when questioned about the scandal by host Kristen Welker.
Gateway Community Services and Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
