Key Takeaways


Investigative journalist Steven Robinson uncovered a massive Medicaid fraud operation in Maine involving Somali diaspora and migrant services agencies. Using AI tools, he downloaded over 5,000 hidden no-bid contract documents revealing systematic fraud including contracts to a Somali warlord justified simply because "he's a refugee." The fraud extends beyond Maine, one autism program alone overbilled $46 million in a single year. Robinson estimates half of all Medicaid spending (roughly $500 billion annually) may be fraudulent, with money flowing back to Somalia through remittance services, sometimes funding terrorism. The fraud is enabled by low barriers to entry for home healthcare agencies, minimal oversight, politically connected NGOs, and a migration industrial complex that perpetuates itself like a Ponzi scheme, requiring constant new migrant arrivals to justify its existence and maintain translation services, welfare enrollment programs, and taxpayer-funded contracts.

Best Quotes

"They literally just copied and pasted his biography into the justification section where it says 'Abdullahi Ali is a Somali refugee,' as if that's enough reason to hand somebody $500,000."

"While he's in Jubaland running for office with his militia, he's getting no-bid contracts."

"One year, one program, $46 million in overbilling."

"Half of Medicaid might even be an underestimate when it comes to the total amount of fraud that's happening."

"The Medicaid fraud is literally funding terrorism."

"We took the most dysfunctional, defrauded program America has ever created and we quadrupled it."

"Their loyalty is to their clan and not to Uncle Sam or the taxpayer or to some higher ethical creed."

"It's like a Ponzi scheme. You have to have this continuous flow of migrants in order for these migrant agencies to justify their own existence."

Conclusion

The Medicaid fraud crisis represents not just waste but a systematic failure that has created a migration industrial complex dependent on perpetual fraud for survival. Robinson's work demonstrates how AI tools can expose government corruption at scale, revealing fraud hidden in plain sight through overdisclosure. The situation is politically protected at state levels, with NGOs and politicians benefiting from the system while working-class Americans are priced out of housing and healthcare. The solution requires political will to suspend and reenroll all Medicaid providers with rigorous verification, authority governors already possess but refuse to use. Without immediate action and accountability, this trillion-dollar scheme will continue extracting wealth from American taxpayers while enriching foreign actors and funding instability abroad.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro

0:30 - Recapping the story

8:28 - Why Medicaid is susceptible to fraud

21:25 - Bitkey & Unchained

23:41 - How the fraud works

30:06 - Asylum seekers & obfuscating the fraud

38:04 - CrowdHealth & SLNT

39:40 - Tracking fraudsters & the no-bid contract pipeline

1:01:57 - Minneapolis parallels & escalating threats

1:08:06 - "Somalia First" & government complicity

1:22:23 - AI tools & fiat's role

1:32:04 - Somali assimilation & foreign connections

Transcript

(00:00) We took the most dysfunctional, defrauded program America has ever created and we quadrupled it. And then we added in a bunch of non-citizens after Obamacare was done. Exactly what you would do if you were trying to destroy a health care system in a country. Half of Medicaid might even be an underestimate when it comes to the total amount of fraud that's happening.

(00:17) It's like a Ponzi scheme. You have to have this continuous flow of migrants in order for these migrant agencies to justify their own existence. The Medicaid fraud is literally funding terrorism. Steve, thank you for joining us. >> Thanks for having me, Marty. Appreciate it. >> Well, I know you're a busy man.

(00:37) Uh especially the last couple of weeks. I think uh you've hit the scene. Uh I mean, you've been on the scene for a while, but I think you're um conversation with Shawn Ryan is going pretty viral right now. And as we were just discussing before we hit record, obvious Nick Shirley, uh his on the ground reporting in Minneapolis definitely caught the eye and the attention of uh the country and has spawned a bunch of copycat uh sleuths, if you will, which I'm all in favor for.

(01:07) But you've been uh so sleuththing on this particular Medicaid fraud ring uh in Maine specifically for the better part of a year. Uh, and so I think you out of anybody uh, considering your investigative journalism skills and how long you've been on this beat, understand this story more than um, many others out there.

(01:26) And so I think maybe just to jump off why how you caught the scent of this particular story, why you decided to chase it and what's unraveled over the last 10 11 months. >> Yeah. So, we uh got some documents leaked to us that pointed toward uh Medicaid overbilling issues at a host of left-wing NOS's. Uh and these are documents that aren't routinely published, but they are public records.

(01:51) They should be published, but for political reasons, the Power Zippy kind of sweep them under the rug and and and don't um you know, they don't brag about the fraud that they found within Maine's Medicaid system. Uh we had these documents leaked to us. is showed uh this one NGO in particular, Gateway Community Services.

(02:10) It's been described as a nonprofit, but it's not. It's just a business. It's a it's an LLC, and they have a 501c3 filing for the purpose of taking uh taxpayer money that could only go to 501c3s. So, it's not a nonprofit in any any sense of the term. It's a it's a migrant services agency that's totally taxpayer funded. And the documents that we had found u showed that they were audited in around 2018 for uh reimbursements that they had submitted in 2015 to 2017 and the government found hey like 35% of the claims we've paid you for. You don't

(02:46) have the documents to substantiate these. So they give them an opportunity to come back and show the paperwork and essentially prove that the claims they were paid for are legitimate. Um, based on that, we began digging into Gateway Community Services. And what we found was an organization that wasn't just some podunk nonprofit, um, you know, like dogooder liberals trying to, I don't know, you know, fix poverty or teach people English.

(03:14) What we found was a really politically connected organization. Uh the CEO uh Abdulahi Ali was uh photographed at all kinds of events with the governor of Maine with top ranking uh Democratic politicians from the state. Uh representative Deca Da a former assistant executive director at Gateway uh is on the appropriations committee in the state legislature and she's the former mayor of South Portland.

(03:37) uh Representative Ysef Ysef is a former employee of the organization, also a former roommate of Abdullahi uh Ali and he's now you know making his way up the legislature and Eklas Ahmed who is a Sudin refugee is running the office of new Americans which was just recently uh created here in the state of Maine. So you have a an NGO that's really punching above its weight in terms of its political connections, the influence it has uh over policy.

(04:04) And as we dug more, we found additionally that uh on top of the $5 million a year of Medicaid money that was flowing into this organization, it was also receiving no bid contracts. And these no- bid contracts were for things that really looked a lot like campaign activity. We found that before the 2022 election, which is important here in Maine because that's when Governor Mills was standing for reelection against former Republican Governor Paul Leage, uh, Gateway Community Services and some of its allied NOS's received no bid contracts

(04:38) to create what were called or community health outreach workers. And you didn't have to have any qualifications in order to be a taxpayer funded chow. All you had to do was be able to knock on, you know, uh, the door of a migrant or a non-English-speaking resident of Maine and sign them up for Medicaid, sign them up for food stamps, and even buy them household supplies.

(05:01) Uh, with literally walking around money is what the Chows were doing is is going doortodoor in migrant neighborhoods and signing people up for welfare and giving them money, food, supplies, whatever. Uh and under federal law, you are required to offer assistance uh registering to vote anytime you sign somebody up for a fedally funded benefits program, which is Medicaid, which is SNAP.

(05:24) So what you effectively had was this politically connected uh migrant services organization run by a Somali refugee staffed by multiple uh Somali refugees and asylum seekers was getting no bid contract government money piped into it in order to go out and register high propensity Democrat voters and collect information on them that was available to political groups that were all operating out of the same offices in Lewon and Portland.

(05:52) So for us that was uh highly interesting. Anytime you see taxpayer money being used to tip the scales of an election that's something that's interesting and newsworthy I think. Uh and then on top of all of this uh I guess after the 2022 election and emboldened Abdulahi Ali is running for president in Jubiland Somalia which I didn't know about.

(06:13) I learned about Jubiland uh you know through the course of this reporting but it's the semi-autonomous state in southern Somalia largely controlled by al-Shabaab and uh the uh Abdulahi Ali was running as one of three candidates in a tumultuous election