Sprawling ‘Minneapolis-Style’ Somali Fraud Scheme Uncovered In New State

Office buildings across Maine are filling up with home health care companies that appear to exist mostly on paper, raising red flags that mirror massive fraud schemes uncovered in Minnesota and, in some cases, leaving taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars before disappearing, a NewsNation investigation found.

In one Portland office building, 10 home health care companies connected to Somalis make up roughly half the tenants. The landlord says he rarely sees anyone from most of them.

“One guy I see coming and going, and the rest of them, I never see them, only when they pay their rent, if I’m here when they pay their rent,” said building owner Ron Nevins. “They’re never here. Nobody’s over here, and then all of a sudden, if it was one or two or three or four, I’d be like, ‘OK.’ But when there’s 10, I’ve had as many as 12 or 13 probably before. You just wonder, what’s up with this health care thing? Why are so many people doing it all from foreign lands?”

Asked whether he believes the businesses are legitimate, Nevins was blunt.

“Some, yes, but some I highly question,” he said.

The clustering of multiple home health care providers at single addresses mirrors fraud indicators identified by the House Oversight Committee in Minnesota, where investigators say billions in taxpayer dollars were siphoned off through Somali-linked shell companies billing for services that were never delivered.

One tenant in Nevins’ building, Five Star Home Health Care, overbilled MaineCare by nearly $400,000, according to state audit records obtained by The Maine Wire. The owner later abandoned the office.

“I can’t even reach him. Six months, I can’t. No return calls, no return texts, nothing,” Nevins said, adding the company owes seven months of back rent.

“There’s been no consequences, no investigation, no resolution to what happened with Five Stars Home Health Care,” said Steve Robinson, executive editor of The Maine Wire. “And that I think is something, that’s a story that we see play out time and time again with businesses throughout the home health care space, is that they can be just an office suite, just a post office box.”

Nevins said he removed the Five Star sign from the door as he tries to re-rent the vacant space.

The pattern is not limited to one building. NewsNation documented similar clusters of home health care companies in Portland and Lewiston.

“We can see Ladna Home Health Care down there. That’s a $2 million home health care agency. You can see it’s located right next to two money wiring services. Right next to it, you have Dahab Shield. Dahab Shield is the official money wiring service of the Central Bank of Somalia,” Robinson said.

Nevins said the situation leaves him angry as a taxpayer.

“You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, you know?” he said. ”It ticks me off if they’re screwing the state of Maine, because that’s my tax money, you know? So yeah, it’s kind of irritating.”

He added: “Expose the evil. I mean, my building might be small pennies in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still pennies, it’s still money. And you add up what’s going on all over the state of Maine, it’s probably millions and millions of dollars of fraud and abuse.”

The Trump administration announced on Wednesday a crackdown on illegal immigration and fraud in the Somali community in Maine.

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