55-year-old Shamso Ahmed Hassan and 25-year-old Hanaan Mursal Yusuf, both residents of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, have been charged with health care fraud in US federal court.
According to a document on the US Justice Department’s website, the two women submitted fraudulent claims to the Minnesota Medicaid’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) Program to the tune of $46.6 million. Of that sum, $21.2 million has been paid to the alleged perpetrators.
The state claims that no actual health care service was provided in exchange, and the money was paid to themselves and their staff, who were not qualified to provide the care in the first place. This conduct took place between May 2020 and December 2024.
‘As alleged in the indictment, Shamso Ahmed Hassan was a shareholder in two autism centers, Smart Therapy Center and Star Autism Center, although she did not disclose their ownership interests to the Minnesota Department of Human Services as required. Defendant Hanaan Mursal Yusuf worked as a Level II provider of EIDBI services for Smart Therapy Center and was involved in operation of the center, including submitting claims for Medicaid reimbursement.
Defendants Shamso Ahmed Hassan and Hanaan Mursal Yusuf paid kickbacks to families to incentivize them to send their children to Smart Therapy Center and Star Autism Center so that those centers could bill for EIDBI services in their children’s names,’ the case summary on Justice.gov writes.
Yahoo News also reports that some of the money defrauded from the US government has been funnelled to Kenya via wire transfers.
Back in February of this year, US Vice President JD Vance announced that the federal government is temporarily halting all Medicaid payments to the state of Minnesota while potential abuses of the system are properly investigated by the anti-fraud task force led by him. The Minnesota fraud scandal broke out in January, after on-site reporting by independent journalist and internet personality Nick Shirley exposed multiple apparently non-functional day-care centres run by Somali immigrants that had received state funds.
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