In a stunning display of bureaucratic incompetence—or worse, willful blindness—Ohio’s Medicaid program has funneled more than $5.7 million to Omega Healthcare Services, a company whose leadership includes individuals with a documented history of defrauding government programs. The firm’s president once saw her daycare shuttered for failing to produce records, while her husband pleaded guilty to stealing public funds by fabricating services for the elderly. Yet the checks keep flowing.
This is not an isolated oversight in an otherwise sound system. It is emblematic of a entitlement apparatus grown so vast and unaccountable that past convictions appear to carry little weight when new applications arrive with fresh corporate shells. Ohio’s taxpayers, many of them working families struggling under inflation and high taxes, are subsidizing what looks like a family enterprise in recycling government largesse.
The details paint a picture of networks exploiting vulnerable programs designed to help the truly needy. Omega Healthcare Services operates from a nondescript black building in Columbus, home to one of the nation’s largest African immigrant communities and a hotspot for Medicaid spending. State records show payments began flowing in June 2020, shortly after the company’s certification for home health services. When investigators visited during business hours, the office was locked and empty.
Robert Acheampong’s 2005 guilty plea involved posing as a nonprofit representative to secure federal grants for nonexistent volunteer tax help for seniors—a scheme eerily similar to the home health billing now enriching his family. He received probation, a lien he apparently ignored, and later another felony for failing to support his children.
Federal efforts to collect eventually expired. Meanwhile, his wife’s business thrived on Medicaid “personal services” payments, part of a category rife with abuse where relatives are sometimes paid to care for their own family members.
Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine has defended the state’s oversight as robust. Yet the approval of Omega raises pointed questions about what vetting actually occurs. Business records initially listed Esther and a teenager from Canton—son of a convicted fraudster—as incorporators. That teenager’s mother told reporters her son had no real involvement and expressed shock that government funds flowed so easily.
https://truthbasedmedia.com/ohio-medicaid-hands-millions-to-company-tied-to-convicted-fraudster-while-taxpayers-foot-the-bill/