Paradise Lost: How African Migrants Made Millions on Filthy Medicaid Homes Where Disabled Mainers Were Abused

Paradise Residential Services CEO Jocelyne Ininahazwe and her family enjoyed luxury Mercedes brands while the disabled Mainers who relied on the Medicaid agency for 24/7 care were living in squalor, subject to abuse and neglect by non-English speaking staff, including some who were untrained and never subjected to background checks.

That’s the chief takeaway from documents released Friday by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), including a termination letter to Paradise that cited “violations [that] place the health and safety of MaineCare Members in immediate jeopardy.”

“[Paradise Residential Services] failed to ensure individuals are protected from abuse, neglect, and exploitation, specifically, lack of food, spoiled food, unsanitary conditions in the home, broken glass throughout basement, individuals have been repeatedly left without staff, staff not supervising or providing services,” according to the DHHS letter.

The Robinson Report reported exclusively on Paradise’s termination back in March, which came only after the company managed to bilk the taxpayer-funded program for nearly $25 million.

Among the new documents, released in response to our Freedom of Access Act request, is a letter terminating Paradise’s provider agreement that describes systemic neglect and abuse of Maine residents, as well as fraudulent billing for residential care that was never provided.

The letter corroborates our earlier reporting, which cited formed two former employees who alleged Paradise was violating disability rights and failing to properly vet employees.

Paradise billed under the state’s most expensive Medicaid program, MaineCare Section 21, which provides round-the-clock residential care for adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Intellectual and Developmental Disorder (IDD).

State officials were told as early as October 2024, by a former employee, of deficiencies at Paradise but failed to effectively protect disabled residents from abuse and neglect until earlier this summer.

Paradise Residential Services, according to a March 6 letter terminating the company’s MaineCare provider agreement, was found to have severely violated MaineCare policies during inspections on Dec. 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19, 2025.

The violations uncovered included:

• Failure to maintain clean and sanitary conditions (examples cited: filth with potential to attract rodents; resident incontinence hidden in closets rather than properly cleaned; mold on a washing machine; a member’s mother having to train employees on use of the washing machine).
• Failure to ensure access to nutritious food in adequate quantities (examples: freezer containing only half a takeout drink; refrigerator limited to condiments, an uncovered tub of margarine, two foil-covered leftovers, cherry tomatoes, and three desserts, two of which were half-eaten).
• Failure to ensure employees met training and background-check requirements under the College of Direct Supports curriculum and related rules.
• Failures in medication management and secure storage.
• Failures to protect members from abuse, neglect, or exploitation, including repeated instances of members left without staff, broken glass throughout a basement, and inadequate supervision consistent with plans of care.

According to a review of federal Medicaid payment records and interviews with ex-employees, the abuse, neglect, and apparent fraud described by the state were part of a lucrative money-making scheme that led by CEO Ininahazwe and CFO Juste Arakaza, both originally of Burundi.

Ex-employees said in March that Ininahazwe and Arakaza earned handsome salaries while simultaneously paying above-market rent through Paradise to real estate holding companies they controlled.

Secretary of State corporate records show Paradise Residential Services was founded by five investors: Ininahazwe, Arakaza, Tresor Niyongabo, Enock Nijimbere Tshibungu, and Eric Nshimiyimana.

The crew of “New Mainers” earned a total of $24.6 million from their investment in the residential autism scheme, which ran from 2022 until it was halted earlier this year due to severe deficiencies.

The payment records are even more eye-popping when Paradise’s fees are compared to other adult autism providers nationally.

Payment records show the company earned more than $800,000 per year for each of the two-bed residential facilities it controlled, the very facilities the state now says were filth-ridden and hazardous to the well-being of patients. Those residents often paid rent to the company on top of the roughly $33,400 per month the company received per patient from MaineCare.

Federal payment records show Paradise consistently billed more than $32,000 per resident, per month, or roughly $400,000 annually, throughout 2022, 2023, and 2024. The national average for the same exact billing code was flat for all three years at $16,105. That sky-high billing rate places Paradise in the 95th percentile for autism care providers, meaning it was billing more per client than 95 percent of businesses providing the same service.

Paradise Residential Services housed its customers at properties owned by Ninta Services LLC and a trust owned by Ininahazwe.

Real estate records show that shortly after Ninta was formed in 2024, Arakaza transferred properties in Lewiston, Westbrook, and Old Orchard Beach to its ownership. Arakaza also conveyed a Lewiston property to Heaven View Housing LLC in December 2022. Similarly, on Sept. 21, 2023, Jocelyne Ininahazwe conveyed a Gorham property and an Auburn property to the Jocelyne/Jocelyn Revocable Trust for $0 consideration.

As previously reported, the state was alerted to Paradise’s noncompliance with employee screening rules in October 2024, but DHHS officials only stopped payments to the company more than a year later.

Ininahazwe was not content with merely running Paradise.

Medicaid records show she also formed Royal Residential Care LLC, another apparent autism company with the same phone number as Paradise. Those same records show that Ininahazwe and Arakaza formed an additional Medicaid agency in Ohio in January 2025, Ebenezer Care Homes LLC.

Ininahazwe and Arakaza weren’t the only ones in the Paradise orbit with side hustles.

Kelly-Klaus Sahabo, also rendered Kelly Sahabo or Kelly Shabo, is identified in public reporting and corporate records as the son of Jocelyne Ininahazwe.

On March 9, 2022, the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency (MDEA) arrested him on two counts of Class B trafficking in Schedule W drugs, crack cocaine.

Approximately 76 grams of crack cocaine, with a street value of approximately $7,600, two firearms, one reported stolen, and $3,125 in suspected proceeds were seized from a Buxton residence. Bail was set at $500.

Public records further reflect that Sahabo held a real estate salesperson license, and a consent agreement with the Real Estate Commission followed the arrest.

Sahabo’s license later expired or was not renewed in March 2026, the same month in which the Paradise Medicaid scheme came crashing down.

Despite raking in tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to provide care for a vulnerable population, the MaineCare Section 21 industry and its two-bed residential care facilities are subject to little regulatory scrutiny.

Paradise was incorporated in 2020 but never received a license until Jan. 10, 2026, and Paradise is one of many MaineCare agencies that have made millions of dollars on MaineCare Section 21 waiver individuals without a state license.

Earning Millions Abusing the Disabled

Maine DHHS found Paradise failed to maintain residences in clean and sanitary condition, citing filth with the potential to attract rodents and mold on a washing machine. The letter states that the mother of one resident had to train Paradise employees on how to operate the machine.

Inspectors found the company failed to ensure residents had access to nutritious food in adequate quantities. In one home, the letter states, the refrigerator held condiments, an uncovered tub of margarine, two foil-covered leftovers, cherry tomatoes, and three desserts, two of them half-eaten.

The lack of food is notable not only because Paradise was receiving more than $33,000 per month to care for the individuals in the home, but also because the residents typically receive food stamp benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), meaning each should have been able to buy food with their EBT card.

The department found Paradise failed to ensure that employees met state training and background-check requirements for direct support professionals, the workers who provide hands-on care in Section 21 homes. The letter cites two College of Direct Supports audits, conducted in May 2023 and June 2024, and a fiscal 2024-2025 findings summary.

That finding is notable given that a former training director for Paradise said the company hired almost exclusively from the non-English-speaking African migrant population, raising questions as to whether Paradise was billing for “work” provided by individuals who were not authorized to work legally in the U.S.

The department found the company failed to administer medications in accordance with state guidelines, including a requirement that medications be securely stored at all times.

The most serious finding concerns member rights.

The letter states that Paradise failed to ensure residents were protected from abuse, neglect, and exploitation, citing findings that disabled clients were “repeatedly left without staff.”

Four residents are identified by redacted name and location, with incident dates ranging from June 2024 to Feb. 3, 2026.

The department cited both the MaineCare Benefits Manual and 14-197 C.M.R. Ch. 1, the state rule establishing the rights of Mainers receiving services for intellectual disability and autism, as the standards Paradise violated.

The sixth violation applies to every resident at every Paradise location: failure to correct previously identified deficiencies and demonstrated inability over time.

The letter’s own evidence list shows the department had been documenting problems at Paradise since 2024.

It cites a site visit and feedback to Paradise leadership on Oct. 17, 2024; a Jan. 3, 2025, email to company leadership raising training concerns, noncompliance, and falsification of records; site visits in May 2025; and a house audit in September 2025 with a follow-up report and timelines.

One evidence entry references concerns raised to Paradise leadership by Carol Waig, the company’s former training director. Waig said in March that she met in person with three senior state officials in 2025 and handed over a thumb drive of documentation. The senior OADS official at that meeting arrived 10 minutes late, took no notes, and never followed up, Waig said.

The department executed a new MaineCare provider agreement with Paradise on Nov. 17, 2025, according to a copy attached to the termination letter. Paradise CEO Jocelyne Ininahazwe had signed it on June 19. The agreement lists more than 20 waiver service locations.

Inspectors conducted the visits that produced the immediate jeopardy finding beginning Dec. 13, 26 days after the department countersigned the agreement.

OADS notified Paradise of the deficiencies on Dec. 17 and directed the company to correct them and submit a self-assessment, the letter states. Paradise did not correct them, according to the department, and its self-assessment asserted that the deficiencies had not occurred.

The department issued a notice of deficiency with sanctions on Jan. 16, 2026, and suspended authorization for new clients. Additional complaints and site visits followed, the letter states, revealing both uncorrected and additional violations.

The emergency termination came seven weeks later.

The Robinson Report’s long-running investigation into Paradise Residential Services LLC and other MaineCare Section 21 operators has found an identical playbook used by a small cohort of MaineCare entrepreneurs, a cohort that makes up the fastest-growing subset of all MaineCare spending. The autism profiteers entered the state post-2018 and were almost exclusively migrants with historical ties to Central Africa and Arizona.

The companies began rapidly billing tens of millions of dollars using a combination of implausibly high billing practices, as compared with similar companies nationally, and real estate holding companies. The operators of the schemes earned millions by paying themselves exorbitant salaries and by paying rent through the autism agencies into their real estate holding companies.

“Every time we encounter a credible suspicion”

The March 6 date is significant for a second reason.

That same day, Mills issued a statement attacking Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as a “TV Doctor” and rejecting claims of Medicaid fraud in Maine. She accused the Trump administration of weaponizing the federal inquiry for political purposes.

At the time, Mills was running what would become an unglamorous U.S. Senate campaign, one she would lose to an avowed communist who later withdrew from the nomination amid allegations of sexual assault, only to be replaced by an ex-Senate president who fathered two children with his second cousin.

In a February video responding to a federal audit that identified roughly $46 million in improper MaineCare payments for autism services in 2023, the governor called Oz a “former TV doctor,” described the federal oversight as a “predetermined political cudgel” aimed at Democratic-led states, and said the state acts on fraud whenever it finds it.

“I can assure you, every time we encounter a credible suspicion of fraud, we do take action and we refer the matter to the Attorney General’s Office for investigation,” Mills said in the video.

The federal audit concerned children’s autism programs, not the MaineCare Section 21 program Paradise billed under.

Regardless, Mills’ public denials now stand in stark contrast to what was actually happening. While she was attacking Oz, she was scrambling behind the scenes to cut off funding for Medicaid providers who had been dogged by serious deficiencies for more than a year.

DHHS spokeswoman Lindsay Hammes said in February that the federal audit contained no findings or allegations of fraud, only potential documentation and compliance issues. The report “does not question the appropriateness or necessity of services, nor does it allege intentional wrongdoing by providers or the State,” Hammes said in a written statement.

Unlike that statement, the letter to Paradise is a direct allegation of fraud, as are the handful of other letters the Mills administration touted on Friday.

The Paradise file the department assembled over those same months did allege wrongdoing. It alleged that adults with intellectual disabilities were being left alone, left hungry, and left in unsanitary conditions in homes the state was paying for.

The department did not describe any of that publicly until it was asked, and only after an in-person visit from Oz, as reported exclusively by Jon Fetherston and The Maine Wire.

In March, when The Robinson Report first broke the Paradise story, DHHS spokeswoman Lindsay Hammes declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

It’s unclear whether that litigation has now been resolved.

Ininahazwe has declined repeated interview requests since December. When a reporter approached her outside the company’s Congress Street office in March, she drove away in her Mercedes E-Series.