Former employees of Gateway Community Services, a migrant-run social services agency with offices throughout Maine, have alleged in interviews with The Robinson Report that the company artificially inflated Medicaid billing for at least seven years.
The whistleblower allegations surfaced after a report by the Maine Wire on March 21 revealed that Gateway Community Services had previously been audited by the Maine Department of Human Services (DHHS) and received a Notice of Violation stating the company had over-billed MaineCare, Maine’s version of Medicaid, by close to one million dollars from 2015-2017. As of at least 2022, that sum had not been repaid, according to state records.
The report also disclosed that Abdullahi Ali, the CEO of Gateway Community Services and a celebrated Somali-American refugee, claimed to be financing Somali paramilitary groups during his unsuccessful 2024 campaign for an elected office in Somalia.
At the same time he claimed in Kenyan TV interviews to be funding Somali militia as part of his campaign to become the next president of Jubaland, he was receiving millions in taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments and other government payments, according to government records.
Now, three former employees, including one who has come forward publicly and reported his allegations to the Office of the State Auditor, have revealed details of Ali’s roughly $5 million per year MaineCare business that paint a picture of systematic abuse of the taxpayer-funded program.
From 2019 to 2024, the company billed MaineCare for a total of $28.8 million, according to DHHS records. In addition, the company has received multiple other contracts from the Mills Administration in recent years for community health outreach work.
The allegations submitted to the Office of the State Auditor, if true, would implicate Gateway Community Services and its leadership in multiple state and federal crimes, including Medicaid fraud, wire fraud, forgery, and other criminal offenses.
The whistleblower claims are also strikingly similar to the allegations the FBI made last year against several Minnesota-based autism care providers.
That investigation grew out of the “Feeding Our Future” scandal, a massive fraud scheme whose perpetrators stole over $250 million in federal funds allocated for child nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I worked as the main biller and payroll specialist for two of the programs within the agency [Gateway Community Services].
“Those being section 28, which is rehabilitative home and community supports for children with autism, and also for the personal support specialist program (PSS)… I have suspected fraud within these programs many times, particularly over the last few months…”
“Well, this is, this is borderline fraud,” he recalled saying. “I told them a long time ago, this is, this is borderline,” he said.
“I don’t understand how they’ve gotten away with it for as long as they have…”
