A convicted Somali fraudster-turned-fugitive now accused of stealing nearly $11 million from Minnesota’s Medicaid program previously donated to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), according to matching business registration records and campaign finance filings reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Abdirashid Ismail Said, who is fleeing a slew of felony charges in what the state has dubbed its “largest-ever Medicaid fraud prosecution,” cut a $1,000 check, the maximum amount allowed, to Omar when she first ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016.
The donation receipt, dated November 2015, shows that Said described himself as a “self-employed business owner.”
His address listed on Omar’s 2015 campaign contributions form matched the location of Said’s consultancy firm, “Prestiege Consulting and Marketing,” which he misspelled when he incorporated the company, before he moved its office to a strip mall in northeast Minneapolis, where many of his various business ventures, including Ultimate Healthcare, were ostensibly located under one roof.
Said, then the owner of Ultimate Healthcare, was convicted of fraudulently billing Medicaid for sham personal care services between 2016 and 2017.
During the criminal proceedings, Said’s associates submitted written testimony to the court claiming he was fundraising as part of a community project for the construction of a school in Somalia that would teach orphan girls.
One community member spoke to “his deep conviction in educating the girl child,” going on to mention that Said had personally helped her pay rent and handle legal fees.
Another testified that Said “does not let his friends or neighbors down,” often helping them through tough financial times. Speaking of his “generosity,” the character witness, a self-described Medicare “certificator” at Nurse On Call, wrote in sworn statements that Said “comes thru all the time when called on to help.”
In lieu of prison time, Said was sentenced to 100 hours of community service followed by two years of supervised probation.
Current criminal case against Said considered Minnesota’s largest Medicaid fraud prosecution
Said is suspected of orchestrating a sprawling healthcare fraud scheme that swindled the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the state’s Medicaid agency, out of approximately $11 million in fraudulent reimbursement claims.
According to the charging documents, Said managed a “criminal enterprise” of bogus healthcare businesses whose staff submitted forged timesheets to support billing for services that were never actually performed. The network of Medicaid-funded providers, operating out of the old Ultimate Healthcare office, allegedly paid Said through his consulting company, Prestiege, as a workaround while he was banned from directly accessing Medicaid funds.
Prosecutors say Said attempted to conceal the fraud conspiracy by lying to the court about the nature of his financial transactions with co-conspirators. Said claimed that his cut of the funds was not part of a kickback arrangement, rather that they were merely loans from friends given to pay off restitution to the government for his prior fraud conviction.
At a probation violation hearing, Said said prosecutors simply do not understand the Somali community’s “culture” of transferring money between friends, sometimes without a paper trail, and mistake such cultural differences as funneling funds or evidence of fraud.
HOW MINNESOTA’S SOMALI FRAUD INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX HAS STOLEN MILLIONS FROM MEDICAID
“This is part of our culture, to help people,” Said said, arguing that Somalis tend to help one another out financially under the table.
When the judge asked if he had a physical payment agreement or terms and conditions outlined for the loans in question, Said said, “No, your honor. In our culture, we trust one another.”
Per police, Said’s phone data showed him telling a fellow fraudster who was charged alongside him, “We gonna party bro. Insha Allah.” According to their texts, the co-conspirator replied, “Next pay period bro I’ll bill 50k,” explicitly stating, “I’m gonna over bill the hours … And do a hit and run.”
Said failed to appear at a pretrial hearing on April 7 and has not turned up since, indefinitely derailing his jury trial that was scheduled to begin this week.
At the outset of the case, now rendered “dormant,” prosecutors in the Minnesota attorney general’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit raised concerns about Said fleeing, warning that there is “a substantial likelihood” that he would take off. Officials noted that Said has “significant family ties outside of the United States,” namely his wife and child residing in Nairobi, Kenya.
“Given the nature and severity of the charges, and SAID’s familial ties outside the jurisdiction of Minnesota, I believe there is a potential SAID may flee, hide, or otherwise prevent the execution of the warrant,” the prosecution wrote in an initial request to seal the 79-page criminal complaint.
Said had the option of posting a $50,000 bond with certain conditions, such as surrendering his passport, or paying an extra bond amount of $150,000 without the added travel restrictions. He chose the latter, which allowed him to keep his passport.
The unconditional bond stipulations were ordered by Hennepin County Judge Juan Hoyos, an appointee of former Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, over the objections of prosecutors who asked that bail be set at $1 million.
As of Wednesday, Said has an active warrant out for his arrest. Authorities continue to search for him. His whereabouts remain unknown, as he is set to stand trial on charges of perjury, theft by swindling, aiding and abetting theft, and racketeering.
Not the first fraudster Omar has accepted campaign cash from
Omar’s congressional office did not respond to a Washington Examiner inquiry about whether the congresswoman intends to return Said’s donation or redirect the money to another cause, as she has in the past with other campaign contributions sent from suspected fraudsters.
In 2022, Omar forwarded campaign funds to a variety of community organizations “out of an abundance of caution” after she received donations from two suspects implicated in the Feeding Our Future plot, an organized fraud ring that involved dozens of fake food distributors, predominantly operated by members of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora, defrauding a federally funded child nutrition program by about $250 million.
Those two Omar donors, Ahmed Abdullahi Ghedi and Abdihakim Ali Ahmed, later pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering, marking the 45th and 47th convictions secured in the largest-known fraud scheme in U.S. history to take advantage of pandemic-era public assistance programming, particularly funds meant to provide meals to underprivileged children during the COVID-19 crisis.
Omar, following sweeping search warrants that named Ghedi and Ahmed, passed her 2021 donations from the Feeding Our Future fraudsters on to food pantries primarily serving immigrant populations in Minneapolis, including Sabathani Community Center, an African-founded nonprofit organization.
“All of these charities provide food assistance, amongst other critical services, to several communities in Minneapolis,” an Omar spokesman told Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering immigrants and minority communities in Minnesota.
Omar, herself a Somali refugee, also faced scrutiny at the time for authoring a bill believed to have incentivized the Feeding Our Future co-conspirators to set up phantom tax-exempt entities and enroll them as food distribution sites in the child nutrition program.
In response to the 2020 school shutdowns, Omar worked to vastly expand the flexibility of food delivery support systems, introducing legislation that was supposed to guarantee that children, who otherwise relied on free or reduced-price school lunches, still got fed outside of the traditional school setting.
Omar’s Maintaining Essential Access to Lunch for Students Act granted waivers permitting nonschool-based distributors to bypass Agriculture Department regulations governing how meals are distributed to students and who is authorized to do so.
Officials say the Feeding Our Future scammers exploited the relaxed federal enrollment requirements, which allowed nonprofit groups to participate in the program and claim reimbursements. Qualifying distributors were able to recoup the cost of prepared meals purportedly served to children under the auspices of the program, though many of the Feeding Our Future shell companies never actually fed any children.
Omar has since defended her sponsorship of the MEALs Act, despite its ties to the Feeding Our Future indictments.
“Do you regret pushing for that bill, the MEALS Act? Do you think it led to the fraud?” Fox News Digital asked Omar. She said, “Absolutely not,” insisting, “It did help feed kids.”
ILHAN OMAR’S OBSCURE FINANCIAL DISCLOSURES UNDER SCRUTINY AMID MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
Much of the child nutrition money obtained by the Feeding Our Future fraudsters instead went toward high-end real estate, flashy cars, designer clothes, and overseas vacations.
Authorities say Ghedi and Ahmed, the defendants who donated a total of $5,400 to Omar’s reelection campaign, spent their share of the child nutrition money on luxury property, particularly putting the funds toward the purchase of a $2.8 million mansion in Minneapolis.