Whistleblower warns massive fraud is happening in Ohio Somali community, Minnesota ‘just tip of the spear’
Ohio attorney Mehek Cooke said, 'What we're seeing in Minneapolis is just a snippet of what's happening in Ohio'
By Peter Pinedo Fox News
Published December 12, 2025 7:45am EST
FIRST ON FOX: 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 healthcare payouts to the family members of elderly individuals for fake medical conditions.
She explained that scammers in the community have been exploiting a loophole in Ohio’s Medicaid program that allows individuals to receive Medicaid payments, totaling as much as $91,000 per year per individual, for care they are supposedly providing to a family member. Doctors who approve these payments in turn receive kickbacks themselves, according to Cooke.
"They're just rubberstamping a lot of these. And then that same individual, a week later, that's supposed to be bedridden, is all over social media, whether they're out dancing at a party or something like that. So, the symptoms aren't really adding up at the end of the day."
Cooke noted that she believes that "the problem today is not the community; it's actually the criminals within the Somalian community that have exploited Ohio's Medicaid program because we have a system right now that's one of the easiest in the Midwest to game."
"Say I want to take care of my elderly aging parents at some point. I can become a home health provider, and this is where the Somali community has been really clever. They've been able to find loopholes in Ohio law to provide for care for family members, even when they don't need it," Cooke explained.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/whistleblower-warns-massive-fraud-happening-ohio-somali-community-minnesota-just-tip-spear
