Since Acting AG Todd Blanche announced 14 indictments in Columbus on June 4, the Ohio Medicaid fraud investigation has expanded on multiple fronts — in Congress, in the state legislature, and in devastating testimony that puts Ohio's own bureaucrats on the hot seat.

Congress Dug In — And What They Found Is Ugly

On June 3, Rep. Brandon Gill's (R-TX) House Oversight Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights held a hearing titled "Universal Basic Fraud: Vulnerabilities in Medicaid Waiver Programs." The witnesses weren't partisan firebrands — they were Ohio Auditor Keith Faber, Ohio state Rep. Mike Dovilla, and Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak, who broke the original story.

Rosiak's testimony laid out the mechanics. Under Ohio's Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) waiver program, unsupervised, untrained workers can bill taxpayers for services including companionship and conversation — with ZERO verification. He described a system where companies knock on doors in ethnic neighborhoods, coach elderly residents to claim specific symptoms, then put a younger family member on payroll as a caregiver with the parent as their only "patient." The payout: up to $90,000 a year per household, according to his testimony reported by the Daily Signal.

Rosiak described shell companies billing for services never rendered, operating out of empty offices. His reporting found the fraud concentrated heavily in Columbus — home to the second-largest Somali population in the U.S. and the largest Bhutanese population outside Bhutan. Many of the suspected fraudsters had criminal records and weren't paying taxes, while flaunting private jets and yachts on social media.

The Number That Should Make Everyone Furious

Ohio Auditor Keith Faber told Congress his office identified up to $4.44 billion in fraud-related exposure in Ohio's Medicaid program, with an ineligibility rate of 15.6%. Approximately 56% of home health care services were NOT processed through the electronic visit verification system — meaning more than half of billed visits had no digital confirmation they ever happened.

The state had an electronic verification system. More than half the claims bypassed it entirely. And somehow nobody acted.

'They Lacked the Political Will'

The sharpest testimony came from Mehek Cooke, the Daily Signal's senior national security and legal analyst and an Ohio attorney, who testified on June 3 about her own months-long investigation.

Cooke told the task force that whistleblowers came to her in December 2025, saying they had already brought evidence of massive fraud to Ohio legislators AND the state attorney general's office. They asked the AG's office not to share their names because they "feared to be stoned to death within that community." Nothing happened.

She described providers coaching Medicaid applicants on what symptoms to claim, sometimes speaking FOR patients during medical evaluations. When doctors ran actual tests — MRIs, CT scans — and declined to approve services because the need wasn't substantiated, those doctors were threatened and pressured with kickbacks.

Cooke said she provided all of this to the Ohio Department of Medicaid. The state's response amounted to what she called a "national embarrassment" — a state that had the information and simply lacked the political will to act on it.

What the Feds Actually Did — vs. What Still Needs Doing

Blanche's June 4 announcement included 14 indictments spanning Medicaid providers, behavioral health services fraud targeting autistic patients, and a romance fraud scheme. Four people were charged in the Southern District of Ohio in a behavioral health fraud scheme netting more than $30 million. Total taxpayer damage across all new cases: an estimated $50 million.

Blanche also took a pointed shot at Democratic-controlled states like Hawaii and Minnesota, saying compliance in those states was "so lax or nonexistent that you could literally just steal millions and millions of dollars with nobody even checking."

He's not wrong about the broader problem. But $50 million in indictments against a $4.44 billion fraud exposure is a rounding error. The federal action is a start — not a solution.

Mainstream Coverage Missed the Real Story

Most mainstream outlets treated June 4's press conference as the whole story — political theater with some indictments attached. They overlooked the congressional hearing that happened the day before, and Cooke's testimony that implicates Ohio's own government in the failure.

This wasn't just foreign-born fraudsters gaming a broken system. The system was broken by design — or at minimum, left broken by choice. State officials had whistleblower reports. The electronic verification system existed and was ignored. The Ohio AG's office was approached and did nothing with the information.

The fraud ran because nobody in Ohio wanted to be the person who said the Medicaid home care program serving immigrant communities was riddled with crime.

What Comes Next

Taxpayers funded up to $4.44 billion in potential Medicaid fraud in a single state. Ohio knew. Ohio's auditor knew. Ohio's AG's office was handed evidence by whistleblowers. The federal government had to fly in from Washington to do what Columbus should have done years ago.

The indictments are welcome. But until someone explains why Ohio's own institutions sat on this — and for how long — the real accountability hasn't happened yet.