A troubling pattern is emerging across Maine, and it looks eerily familiar to anyone who followed the massive Somali linked fraud scandal that rocked Minnesota. Office buildings in cities like Portland and Lewiston are filling up with home health care companies that appear to exist mostly on paper, draining taxpayer dollars and then vanishing without consequences. A new investigation by NewsNation shows this is not coincidence, it is a system being exploited.
In one Portland office building alone, ten home health care companies tied to Somalis make up roughly half the tenants. The landlord, Ron Nevins, says he almost never sees anyone actually working there. Rent gets paid, occasionally, but the offices sit empty. As Nevins put it, when you see one or two questionable tenants, you shrug. When you see ten or more cycling through the same building, you start asking serious questions.
Nevins was blunt about his doubts. Some businesses might be legitimate, he said, but others clearly are not. And the paper trail backs him up. One former tenant, Five Star Home Health Care, overbilled MaineCare by nearly $400,000 before disappearing entirely. The owner abandoned the office, stopped responding to calls, and left behind months of unpaid rent. There has been no investigation, no accountability, and no resolution.
According to Steve Robinson of The Maine Wire, this is a recurring story. These companies often consist of nothing more than an office suite or a mailing address. They bill the state for services that may never be provided, pocket the money, and then quietly shut down when questions start being asked.
The clustering itself is a major red flag. House Oversight Committee investigators identified the same pattern in Minnesota, where billions were siphoned off through Somali linked shell companies billing Medicaid for phantom services. Maine now appears to be following the same script, just on a smaller scale, for now.
NewsNation also documented other suspicious setups, including home health agencies located right next to money wiring services tied to Somalia’s financial network. One example involved Ladna Home Health Care, a multimillion dollar agency located next to Dahab Shield, a money wiring service connected to Somalia’s central banking system. That proximity raises obvious questions about where the money is going.
Nevins summed up what many taxpayers are feeling. It angers him to think that his tax dollars are being stolen while the state looks the other way. His building may be small in the grand scheme, he said, but multiply this across Maine and you are talking about millions in fraud and abuse.
That concern is finally being acknowledged. The Trump administration announced Wednesday a crackdown on illegal immigration and fraud within Maine’s Somali community. That move cannot come soon enough. What is happening in these office buildings is not compassion or care. It is exploitation, of taxpayers, of social programs, and of a system that was never designed to police itself.
If Maine does not act now, Minnesota will not be the exception. It will be the blueprint.
Leave a Comment