Thanks to Susan yesterday, here is the latest from Maine and lucky Lewiston. From the Sun Journal, a paper that has been doing some good reporting (see this story last week) on the subject of Somalis and crime:
LEWISTON — An Auburn man and a Portland woman were indicted on 23 combined federal counts in an alleged attempt to defraud the government of thousands of dollars from state and federal programs in a case that likely is linked to a federal raid of a Lewiston office building in June.
According to the indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, Yusuf Guled, 74, of Auburn arranged to have Dahabo Abdulle Osman, 58, of Portland serve as his personal care assistant to provide services for him at his home.
The indictment says Osman was paid based on false and fictitious time sheets that totaled more than $61,000.
Guled allegedly made false statements to nurse assessors to qualify for the services Osman was to provide, but which weren’t necessary.
Both defendants were charged with making false statements on their applications or for their continued eligibility to receive federal benefits, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Chapman said Tuesday.
Those benefits included:
• Supplemental Social Security income payments.
• Public housing or Section 8 subsidized housing.
• MaineCare.
• Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
• Food stamps.
Guled failed to disclose or falsely reported the number of bank accounts he held and the amounts they contained, the indictment says.
Someone has got to find out who is training these Somalis in the art of ripping-off the taxpayers.
Then here the Sun Journal reminds us of the story we posted on the raid of Home Health Care Offices in Lewiston last June and makes a connection to these two.
In early June, federal agents swarmed two floors of a downtown Lewiston office building, apparently seizing documents from two health care related organizations that provide personal home care assistants. The agents worked for the FBI as well as inspector general’s offices at Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agents spent hours packing up boxes of documents, then loaded them into government vehicles and drove off without answering reporters’ questions.
The two agencies that were raided were Global Home Health Care and Decent Home Care Inc. The two Lewiston agencies to which the indictment refers are not named but are identified generically as Agencies 2 and 3.
A similar raid was carried out that day on Allen Avenue in Portland.
In July 2006, Guled arranged for Osman to be hired as his personal care assistant, according to the indictment. From that date until November 2008, Osman was paid by the two Lewiston agencies and the unnamed Portland agency to provide Guled with services. At various times in 2006 and up to around March 2007, Osman lived with Guled in his public housing, the indictment says.
Just a reminder, we wrote about how Maine’s welfare was a big reason that secondary migrants (Somalis who had been resettled elsewhere in the US) were attracted to Maine in the first place, here.
Think about it, if Obama’s expanded health care plan goes through there will be expanded opportunities to rip-off the taxpayer, not just in Maine, but from one end of the country to the other!