Ohio Grand Jury Indicts Couple in $9.3 Million Medicaid Fraud Case, But They're Already in Africa

A Franklin County grand jury this week indicted a former Powell, Ohio couple on 12 felony charges tied to $9.3 million in alleged Medicaid fraud. The problem: they're not in Ohio anymore.

Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson announced the charges against Roberta Acheampong, 39, and her husband Godfred Owusu-Sekyere, 46, this week. Investigators believe the pair is now living in Kenya or Ghana, according to Wilson's office. The charges include Medicaid fraud, money laundering, identity fraud, telecommunications fraud, theft and forgery.

The couple owned and operated One Community Mental Health, described by Wilson as a "behavioral-health clinic" in Franklin County. According to Wilson's statement, the investigation found the two "allegedly exploited refugees seeking resettlement services, billing Medicaid multiple times a week for entire households, without their knowledge, for unnecessary mental health and therapeutic behavioral services that were never provided."

Wilson's office also alleges the couple forged documents and stole the identities of translation and transportation staff to file fraudulent claims under those employees' names. Banking records reviewed by investigators show the money was moved through multiple accounts, according to Wilson, and used to buy real estate and a Porsche.

How the story broke

The Daily Wire first surfaced Acheampong's case as part of its Medicaid Millions investigative series, publishing a report in May on Ohio's home health industry that identified One Community Mental Health as one of several eyebrow-raising Medicaid billers clustered in central Ohio. That report found the company, operating out of a building at 1425 East Dublin, had billed 70,000 claims totaling $8 million, despite the outlet finding no visible physical operation at the address during a site visit.

According to the Daily Wire, Acheampong was previously a janitor who renamed her janitorial LLC to One Community Mental Health and began billing the government $100,000 in the company's first month, later scaling to $650,000 a month. The outlet says it testified about the case directly to the U.S. Senate. Around the same time, the couple started a daycare and an addiction treatment center, the outlet reported, before leaving the country.

The indictment came roughly two months after that reporting, according to the Daily Wire, by which point the couple had already relocated overseas.

The scale of the problem

This case isn't isolated. Ten other Medicaid providers were indicted the same week in Franklin County, accused of stealing a combined $563,860 from the program, according to Wilson's office, as reported by The Center Square.

Ohio's Medicaid program covers about 2.7 million people and costs roughly $39 billion a year, with $27 billion coming from federal taxpayers and $12 billion from the state, according to figures cited by The Center Square. The state's Medicaid budget has nearly doubled over the past decade, according to the Health Policy Institute of Ohio.

"We are committed to rooting out Medicaid fraud and holding offenders accountable," Wilson said in his statement.

What's unresolved

No extradition has been announced, and it's unclear whether Ohio or federal authorities have any active process underway to bring Acheampong and Owusu-Sekyere back to face the charges. Neither the Daily Wire nor The Center Square reported any statement from the couple or their legal representation, and it does not appear either has responded publicly to the allegations. As of this writing, these are charges, not convictions, and the couple is presumed innocent unless proven otherwise in court.

Both outlets' reporting raises a systemic question: how did a single-person LLC, previously used for janitorial work, get approved to bill Medicaid hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for mental health services with seemingly no physical footprint checked before the payments went out. Ohio's Medicaid program processes billions of dollars in claims annually, and this case, along with the ten other providers indicted the same week for a combined $563,860 in alleged theft, suggests verification gaps that predate this particular couple.

Wilson's office has not detailed what specific changes, if any, are planned to Ohio's Medicaid provider enrollment or claims-auditing process in response to this case. That may leave the underlying vulnerability unaddressed. Foreign-national providers billing large sums with minimal on-site verification could operate another scheme before systemic changes take effect.