Free Republic

The Brief: * Two men from Philadelphia are accused of traveling to Minnesota to take advantage of "easy money" through the state’s Medicaid programs. * The FOX 9 Investigators confirmed both men will plead guilty during plea hearings scheduled for next month. * Authorities allege the pair’s scheme involved $3.5 million in fraudulent Medicaid billing. Federal prosecutors charged Anthony Jefferson and Lester Brown, both from Philadelphia, with exploiting the state’s social service programs to line their own pockets. At the time they were charged in December, Joe Thompson, First Assistant U.S. Attorney, stated, "These defendants came here not to enjoy...

Over 500 women have sued Virginia’s Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, alleging that the health system had "enabled" former physician Javaid Perwaiz, who is currently in prison, to perform unnecessary surgeries on them. Perwaiz was convicted of Medicaid fraud and is serving a 59-year sentence for performing unnecessary surgeries and procedures, including hysterectomies, on women without their consent. In total, 510 plaintiffs are each seeking $10 million. The 204-page complaint alleges that despite "repeated reports and clear evidence" of prior misconduct by Perwaiz, who is from Pakistan and came to the US in the 1980s, at his own OBGYN practice, the...

The Trump administration on Monday doled out billions to states from a fund Congress created to “transform” rural health care. The funds, however, will be lavished more generously on small states and states that adopt administration friendly policies. “The purpose of this $50 billion investment in rural health care is not to pay off the bills,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told reporters Monday. “The purpose of this $50 billion investment is to allow us to rightsize the system and to deal with the fundamental hindrances of improvement in rural health care.” Over...

I don’t know why Nick Shirley’s video has gotten so much attention. For the most part the attention is welcome, but it has engendered quite a few misunderstandings. The national commentary in the wake of Shirley’s video has been almost entirely ill-informed. Those who attack Shirley and try to undermine his video are missing the point. Whatever the merits of that video, there is absolutely zero doubt that there has been an enormous amount of fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community. Some of it relates to child care. In fact, child care fraud came to light a decade or more ago....

You’ve seen the video. Nick Shirley, a citizen journalist (aka a journalist), traveled around Minnesota looking for fraud at state-funded daycare centers largely run by Somali immigrants. He found obvious evidence of malfeasance — and a worldwide audience on X. Shirley’s 42-minute video has now been viewed 115 million times, even forcing a huffy response from Governor Tim Walz (last seen exaggerating his military service). Shirley deserves the attention. But when it comes to waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs, nothing holds a candle to health-care spending. Especially in blue states. And especially since the Affordable Care Act and...

It's not just Minnesota. Or just daycares. The deepest government honeypot is blue-state Medicaid. And nowhere does corruption run deeper than in New York State, where everyone wants a piece of a $120 billion honeypot. -- snip -- A few weeks ago, I received an email with the subject line, "Healthcare and the $2,100 Taxi Ride." The email began: "I have a friend who drives a taxi in XXX NY. He estimates that 80% of the cab fares are paid for by Medicaid… "Yesterday, he made a round tripper from XXX to Boston where a child had a two-hour appointment...

Federal Medicaid policy creates little incentive for states to stop potential fraudsters. Fixing that should be the priority, not demonizing Somali immigrants.A sprawling welfare scheme that saw fraudsters steal over $9 billion in Minnesota is a damning indictment of a federal and state bureaucracy that failed at some of its most basic responsibilities to taxpayers. That fraud is back at the top of the news this week after YouTuber Nick Shirley went viral with a 42-minute video in which he claims to be "investigating" the fraud scandal. In the video, Shirley knocks on the doors of several day care centers...

BLS data confirms home health aides as the fastest-growing U.S. occupation with a 10% surge to over 500,000 in 2024. It's MOSTLY Medicaid-funded. 42% are foreign-born across the US. 78% are foreign-born in NYC where most home health aides are used. Want to guess where the fraud is?

Remember when they kept claiming that illegal aliens weren’t draining Medicaid? Not only is it happening, but they’re doing it out in the open. Contra Costa County health officials are urging eligible undocumented residents without health insurance to sign up for Medi-Cal by Dec. 31. This is because starting Jan. 1 the state, in a cost-cutting move, will no longer accept new enrollees to the full-scope plan, which includes everything from check-ups to prescriptions and surgery. There are exceptions for pregnant women and children. Current Medi-Cal participants, including those without residency documents, can remain on the health plan, said Marla...

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday announced a series of proposed regulatory actions to carry out President Donald Trump's executive order directing HHS to end the practice of sex-rejecting procedures on children. During a news conference broadcast on Newsmax, Kennedy said doctors "assume a solemn obligation to protect children," but argued that medical groups have promoted "needless and irreversible" interventions for minors with gender dysphoria. The sweeping proposals are the most significant moves the Trump administration has taken so far to restrict the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical interventions for transgender children....

The fraud in Minnesota's welfare system is so astronomical that, after years of looking, they are still tallying up the damages. But the number runs upwards of $10 billion, and counting. To put that in perspective, that is the yearly GDP of Somalia, to pick a country at random. I would say "unbelievable," but this is Walz's Minnesota. US Attorney’s Office: ‘Half or more’ of $18B billed through state programs tied to fraud https://t.co/ZQhtLwcoCF— David Strom (@DavidStrom) December 18, 2025“The magnitude of fraud in Minnesota cannot be overstated." Gee, I wonder why. As the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced a new...

BREAKING: The FBI has RAIDED a Somali-owned home healthcare provider in Minnesota as the federal government continues uncovering EVEN MORE Medicaid fraud Fraud runs absolutely RAMPANT in the Somali community. START SENDING THEM BACK!

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...

On the heels of Minnesota’s still-unfolding massive social services fraud scandal, a whistleblower is exposing a similar scheme occurring among the Ohio Somali community, which she says dates back over a decade and totals millions in stolen taxpayer dollars. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Mehek Cooke, an Ohio attorney and conservative commentator, said that "Minnesota was just the tip of the spear." She said that providers within the Ohio Somali community have confided to her that they have been pressured to join in a "massive" Medicaid fraud scheme that involves doctors "rubber stamping" home health care payouts to...

(NewsNation) — Taxpayers in Maine have been bilked out of millions of dollars from the state’s Medicaid program, according to a whistleblower who in an interview with NewsNation likened the case to a burgeoning scandal in Minnesota, where people in the Somali community are accused of defrauding taxpayers of $1 billion meant for social services. The whistleblower, Christopher Bernardini, describes himself as a former “billing guru” of Gateway Community Services — a health services contractor that he says defrauded Maine’s Medicaid program. Bernardini worked for Gateway from May 2018 until April 2025 as a program coordinator. Bernardini alleges that Gateway...

More than 8 in 10 households headed by Somali refugees in the state of Minnesota are on one or more forms of American taxpayer-funded welfare, new data published by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals. The data, based on 10 years of data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), shows drastic disparities between native-born American households and Somali-born households in Minnesota, where nearly 80,000 residents have Somali ancestry compared to zero who had Somali ancestry in 1990. In particular, the data shows that 81 percent of Minnesota households headed by Somali refugees are on one or more...

As federal health care subsidies barrel toward expiration, a bipartisan group of 35 U.S. lawmakers is calling on leaders in the House and Senate to hold a vote on extending the benefits before the end of next week. The group includes Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction Republican who has been pushing for a renewal of the subsidies, known as the enhanced premium tax credit. The subsidies, passed by Democrats in Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic, helped lower insurance premiums for plans purchased through Affordable Care Act marketplaces, but are now slated to expire on Dec. 31. Many Coloradans have...

Diagnosis rates of autism among children have more than tripled over the past 15 years. One reason, which Minnesota’s welfare scandal lays bare with shocking details, is Medicaid fraud and abuse. Medicaid pays healthcare providers big bucks to diagnose and treat children with autism—sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a month for a single child. Yet states rarely verify that kids who are diagnosed actually meet the medical criteria for the disorder or that they get appropriate treatment from qualified specialists. The result: Children covered by Medicaid or the government-run Children’s Health Insurance Program are 2.5 times as likely as...

Two Illinois brothers were indicted in a superseding indictment on charges related to a scheme to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and private health care insurers and for participating in a money laundering conspiracy with the fraud proceeds. According to court documents, Minhaj Feroz Muhammad, 37, and Sufyan Feroze, 35, both of Naperville, owned and controlled, sometimes through straw owners, four clinical laboratories located in Illinois and California. Their scheme allegedly sought to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers by submitting fraudulent claims of over $293 million for COVID-19 laboratory testing services that were never provided, for which insurers paid at least...

After federal judge Indira Talwani sided with Democrats to block the defunding of Big Abortion in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for a third time, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America slammed the pro-abortion activism in a statement: “The Democrats and their radical activist judges are desperately seeking to thwart the will of the people and bail out the Big Abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is federal law passed by Congress and signed by the president. Planned Parenthood’s more than 40 closures this year are a reflection not only of taxpayers finally having...