Fourteen people are facing charges in Ohio for schemes that netted them more than $50 million from Medicaid, behavioral health services, federal funds for COVID relief and individual victims across the U.S. The announcement includes scams beyond the recently reported alleged fraud involving home health providers billing Ohio Medicaid.
Interim U.S. attorney general Todd Blanche, FBI director Kash Patel and Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz were joined by outgoing Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost along with AG candidate Auditor Keith Faber, auditor candidate Secretary of State Frank LaRose and secretary of state candidate Treasurer Robert Sprague for the announcement. Yost announced there were two indictments his office was involved in.
“In total over $42 million, just in these two cases," Yost said. "One is a state case that was indicted just Wednesday in Butler County. We've been working on that case since the beginning of the year."
Robert Haley of Cincinnati faces 31 felony charges in Butler County for allegedly defrauding Ohio’s Medicaid program of more than $12 million. Yost's office said as a health care provider, Haley allegedly billed more than 60,000 Medicaid claims for services that were not provided.
A few hours after the announcement, Ohio Medicaid announced payments to 49 home health providers have been suspended. Medicaid said in a statement that the billing patterns of those providers raised concerns and the state is investigating.
A report of widespread Medicaid fraud among home health care providers in 2024 from a conservative national outlet has fired up discussion about fraud in the program. The report from the Daily Wire said a third of the $1.5 billion spent on home health care in Ohio is billed to providers in central Ohio.
"This is a mecca for Somalian populations. It's a hub for Nepalese and Bhutanese populations. These are insular groups," Oz said. "But we are naive to think that practices that were felt to be commonplace in other parts of the world wouldn't come to this great country if we didn't pay attention to some of the program integrity issues, which were ignored en masse with the prior administration."
Yost said the other case his office worked on started in September 2024. It resulted in a federal indictment in the Southern District of Ohio accusing four people, including two employees of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, of scamming over $30 million from money for behavioral health services. The fraud allegedly happened in 2024 and 2025. Prosecutors identified 14 luxury vehicles and almost $470,000 in three bank accounts related to the case.
In addition, the officials announced four people are accused of stealing over $1.4 million in Covid-19 relief funds in 2021. And the Northern District of Ohio has charged three people from Ghana in a $15 million romance fraud, and two others are awaiting extradition. Prosecutors said from July 2024 to April 2026, they were targeting 130 older Americans on social media and dating sites. A house in Ghana, jewelry and four luxury cars were seized.
"We're not going to recover everything," Patel said, adding that the priority has to be stopping fraud before it happens. "When we turn off the funds because either states or we know that whether it's a center, whether it's a program, whether it's a hospital, whether it's an individual that is not qualified, that also stops the flow of money."
Republicans have controlled state government since 2011. Legislative leaders have blamed Gov. Mike DeWine and his former Medicaid director Maureen Corcoran, who left last year, for not doing more to halt fraud. An executive order from DeWine allows Medicaid to suspend payments that raise red flags. Lawmakers have focused on a Republican-backed anti-fraud bill introduced in March which would require electronic visit verification for providers and would ban family members from being paid by Medicaid to offer personal care services, including to disabled Ohioans.
