Alleged MaineCare fraud puts $48 million in taxpayer funds at risk

By The Conservative Desk (/journals/conservative-desk)

Federal agents arrested six people Tuesday morning in connection with an alleged scheme to bill Maine’s Medicaid program for personal care that prosecutors say was never delivered. Community Home Health Care LLC, based in South Portland, had received nearly $48 million in MaineCare payments from 2019 to 2025.

A federal grand jury returned the indictment on Oct. 22. The arrests followed on Oct. 27. U.S. Attorney Andrew Benson announced the charges at a news conference that same day, joined by representatives of the FBI, the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, Homeland Security Investigations, and IRS Criminal Investigation. The defendants are Noora Abd, 37, also known as Um Mohammed, the owner and operator of the company; Faysal Kalayaf Manahe, 51, also known as Abu Aziz; Adel Al Rashid, 47, also known as Abu Ayman; Sura Almohammed, 47, also known as Um Ayman; Ether Alyaseen, 46; and Mohammed Alkhalaf, 41, also known as Abu Stayf.

Prosecutors allege a conspiracy that ran from 2020 through August 2026. According to the indictment, the company and the defendants submitted false Electronic Visit Verification records claiming personal care services had been performed when they had not. The scheme allegedly included the sharing and misuse of employee login credentials. Prosecutors say Community Home Health Care and Abd alone submitted claims totaling more than $600,000 for purported services to a single client. About $35,000 of that billing was later reversed.

Abd and Manahe face an additional charge of obstructing a health care fraud investigation. Alkhalaf is also charged with making false statements to the FBI. A health care fraud conspiracy conviction carries up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the loss amount, and up to three years of supervised release. The obstruction and false-statement counts each carry up to five years, a $250,000 fine, and up to three years of supervised release. All six defendants have pleaded not guilty. A federal judge in Bangor released them from custody on conditions after rejecting a government request to hold them without bail.

Benson put the case in plain terms. "Healthcare fraud, in all its forms, costs all of us, and today’s arrests should make it clear that if — as alleged in the indictment returned last week — you steal from our healthcare system for your own financial gain, you too will be shut down and brought to justice," he said. "Protecting the integrity of all our federally funded healthcare programs for those who need them is truly paramount."

That integrity is the core issue for taxpayers. MaineCare is a joint state-federal program that pays for medical and personal care for low-income residents. When providers bill for visits that never occur, the money comes from the same pool that is supposed to cover real patients. The Electronic Visit Verification system exists precisely to confirm that a caregiver showed up and performed the service. If login credentials can be shared and records falsified, the safeguard fails and the nearly $48 million that flowed to this one company becomes a measure of how far the system can be gamed before anyone stops it.

The case lands inside a longer fight over Medicaid integrity in Maine. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said the state needed to "clean up its act." Vice President JD Vance, visiting the state earlier, ranked its fraud problem near the top of the national list. "Outside of Minnesota and California, which are probably No. 1 and No. 2, if they’re the gold medalist and silver medalist — I heard somebody shout out New York — maybe New York is the bronze medalist, but let me be honest, maybe Maine is the bronze medalist," Vance said. "What you have in Maine is a festering problem where people have been taken advantage of and they’ve been stolen from, and your government hasn’t done anything about it."

Gov. Janet Mills characterized Trump administration scrutiny of MaineCare as "a political attack." The indictment supplies the concrete counter: a multi-year pattern of alleged false claims, a single-client billing total above $600,000, and the use of a verification system that prosecutors say was corrupted from the inside. Limited government does not mean looking away from theft. It means enforcing the statutes already on the books so that public money reaches people who actually need care and honest providers who actually deliver it.

Jonathan Goodman, lawyer for Ether Alyaseen, called the timing and manner of the arrests election-season theater. "The government’s election-season grandstanding is disturbing, setting up for press conferences while federal agents made predawn arrests in family homes where young children were asleep in their beds," Goodman said. "The Court quickly rejected the government’s request to hold my client and each of my colleague’s clients without bail, and for good reason- the government had no legitimate basis to make that request." He said he and his client look forward to an impartial jury clearing Alyaseen’s name. The charges remain allegations. The defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. The judge’s decision to release them on conditions, rather than detain them, is part of the record and part of the process the Constitution requires.

In August, after MaineCare payments stopped flowing, an employee of Community Home Health Care was cutting final paychecks when he spoke off-camera with reporter Norah Hogan. He said the company had laid off aides and told patients to seek care elsewhere because the business could not operate without the reimbursements. Real caregivers lost work. Real patients had to look for new providers. Those costs fall on families and on the ordinary Mainers whose taxes fund the program.

Free enterprise depends on the distinction between legitimate billing and invented visits. When a company can draw nearly $48 million from MaineCare while, according to prosecutors, logging care that never happened, the rule of law is what stands between the taxpayer and open season on public funds. Benson said the investigation remains open. The six defendants and the company now face the full weight of the federal charges returned last week.

Vance’s description of the problem still hangs over the case: a festering one in which people have been taken advantage of and stolen from, and in which government had not done enough about it.