Convicted Felons Are Billing Medicaid for Millions — and States Keep Paying Them

The Pattern Is Obvious. The Response Is Not.

Four states. Four separate investigations. Four cases where convicted fraudsters walked straight back into Medicaid billing — and nobody stopped them.

This isn't a coincidence. It's a systemic failure worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ohio: $5.7 Million to a Company Whose Owners Have a Fraud Playbook

Ohio Medicaid has paid $5.7 million to Omega Healthcare Services, a Columbus-based home health firm registered to Esther Acheampong, according to Daily Wire reporting.

The building is black and windowless. When Daily Wire reporters showed up during business hours, the door was locked and nobody was home.

Esther's husband, Robert Acheampong, pleaded guilty in 2005 to federal felony theft of public money. His scheme: pretend to represent a nonprofit, falsely claim 25 volunteers filed taxes for 1,000 elderly people, and bill the government $16,000 for expenses that never happened. He lost his accounting license. He got four months of house arrest.

Then he got another felony — failing to support his own children.

The feds put a $15,000 lien against him. He never paid it. In December 2024, the government quietly gave up trying to collect, noting the collection period for his criminal monetary penalties had expired.

While all that was happening, his wife built a Medicaid empire billing for visits to the elderly. The same playbook. A different name on the LLC.

Minnesota: A "Business" That Was Literally a Mailbox

In August 2025, a Hennepin County jury found Abdifatah Yusuf guilty on six counts of theft by swindle, according to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's office.

Yusuf owned Promise Health Services, LLC. It claimed to provide Home and Community Based Services to Medicaid recipients. It had no office. It operated out of a mailbox.

The agency stole over $7.2 million. Yusuf funneled more than $1 million directly into his personal account and pulled out $387,000 in cash. He spent $80,000 at luxury clothing stores, including Coach, Canada Goose, and Nordstrom. He spent $42,000 at luxury automotive dealers.

The jury also found aggravating factors supporting an upward sentencing departure. Justice, eventually. But the question remains: how does a mailbox collect millions in Medicaid reimbursements for years before anyone notices?

Maryland: She Did It Once. Got Convicted. Then Did It Again for 75 Times More Money.

This one is the most infuriating.

In 2021, Tasha S. Saunders of Parkville, Maryland pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud. She created fake patient files, stole identities of licensed counselors, and submitted fraudulent claims for mental health services never provided. She got 9 months incarceration and 9 months home detention.

She was still on probation when she did it again.

Between November 2019 and September 2024 — overlapping her first conviction — Saunders ran two more behavioral health companies: Guiding Lives Inc. and Another Chance Supportive Services LLC. She recruited her daughter, Tamyra Jordan, 26, to handle billing.

This time the tab: $3,672,958.66 in fraudulent Medicaid claims, according to Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown's office.

On December 8, 2025, Saunders was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Jordan got 5 years of supervised probation and must repay $232,900. A third co-defendant, Robert Higgins, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay back $341,900, with sentencing set for January 13, 2026.

She defrauded Medicaid. Got convicted. Got sentenced. And immediately went back to defrauding Medicaid — for 75 times as much money.

North Carolina: 28 Years in Prison, Then a Medicaid License

In Charlotte, Cedric Dean — who spent 28 years incarcerated for robbery and drug convictions — was raided by the FBI in October 2024, according to WBTV's investigation.

Federal agents allege Dean's company was reimbursed nearly $9 million by Medicaid in just 10 months. The total figure across his operation reaches $14.5 million. A forfeiture complaint alleges he spent the money on a $1 million home, cars, and RVs, and was pulling in more than $5,000 per week.

Dean has NOT been criminally charged. But the forfeiture complaint details are stark.

How did he get licensed to bill Medicaid? As a Certified Peer Support Specialist — a credential that requires 80 hours of training and 18 months of recovery. That's it. North Carolina State Representative Grant Campbell (R-Rowan), a licensed physician, told WBTV: "You pass a policy that has good intentions, but you're not doing proper oversight and it's being abused."

He called it "the trap of good intentions." North Carolina's credentialing system attached no guardrails to a program with access to federal funds.

The Structural Problem

These four cases span Ohio, Minnesota, Maryland, and North Carolina. They involve fake home health visits, fake psychiatric services, fake elderly tax counseling, and fake peer support — different services, same fraud. Bill for something that didn't happen. Collect the check. Repeat.

The pattern across all four: Medicaid pays on the honor system and audits later — if at all. A convicted fraudster can get a new LLC, a new service category, and a new stream of taxpayer dollars with minimal friction.

What This Costs You

Medicaid cost $871 billion in fiscal year 2023, according to CMS data. The Government Accountability Office has flagged Medicaid as a high-risk program for improper payments for decades.

The cases above total more than $30 million in documented fraud — and those are just the cases that got caught.

Regular people pay for this twice. Once as taxpayers funding the program. Again when fraud drives up costs, crowds out legitimate services, and gives politicians an excuse to cut benefits to the people who actually need them.

The fraudsters bought luxury cars and designer clothes. Taxpayers got the bill. And the states that paid them are still trying to explain how this keeps happening.