Highlights from a year in federal welfare fraud

The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, led by Vice President Vance, has prioritized pursuing convictions against those stealing from programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This shows in the numbers and the news cycle, as 2026 has been a record year for anti-fraud law enforcement.

The White House “Fraud Ledger” tracks the money uncovered, saved, and seized in fraud enforcement operations claims since January 2025. As of October, the tracker shows the fraud task force has uncovered $260.7 billion in fraud, stopped $72 billion per year in future fraudulent payments, and recovered $58.9 billion in ill-gotten gains.

While a serious criminal matter, many of the major fraud arrests, indictments, and convictions include outrageous and sometimes comical details, some of which are listed below. (Note: in the still-alleged cases, such as indictments, charges filed and arrests, the defendants retain their presumption of innocence until proven guilty.)

February 2026 (Florida and Texas)

February 2026 featured a pair of fraud convictions, totaling more than half a billion dollars. Though separate incidents, both involved men who had previously held spots on National Football League rosters.

In Florida, former tight end Joel Rufus French was convicted for a $197 million Medicare fraud scheme. The conspirators were caught, in part, because they billed Medicare for supposedly providing medical braces to amputees who didn’t have limbs to wear the braces in the first place.

Later that same month in Texas, former offensive lineman Keith J. Gray was convicted for committing $328 million worth of Medicare fraud. Gray submitted claims for bogus genetic testing services that made him so much money he laundered it into luxury vehicle purchases and texted a co-conspirator that he was “filling [his] bathtub” with dollar bills.

March 2026 (Massachusetts)

Antonio Bonheur and Saul Alisme pleaded guilty in a $7 million SNAP fraud bust in Boston. Both were caught giving customers cash and liquor in exchange for their bodegas charging the customer’s SNAP cards for nonexistent food.

Bonheur was also caught reselling donated food meant for starving children overseas for a profit instead of buying or making merchandise to sell himself. Bonheur and Alisme are both immigrants from Haiti, the lowest income nation in the Americas.

June 2026 (Pennsylvania)

In June 2026 the Department of Justice’s Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced a string of indictments, including two that allege preposterous fraud schemes.

Albert Coccia Jr. and his son Santino of Philadelphia were accused of more than $200,000 in Medicaid fraud. According to the government, Santino allegedly billed Medicaid for “caring” for his father while working instead as a food delivery driver. In one case, the government alleges Santino was making his food deliveries while his father “was participating in a sentencing hearing in a different case, outside of the presence of purported caregiver…”

Similarly, Ashely Griffin of Philadelphia and Yolanda Wright of Olyphant (near Scranton) were accused of a combined $1.4 million in Medicaid fraud. Investigators allege Griffin claims to have provided more than 24 hours of homecare per day on more than 1,100 occasions from January 2020 through September 2023. According to the indictment, the “hours Griffin submitted greater than 24 hours in a single day totaled approximately 64,525 hours for services that could not possibly have been rendered.” If true, this would mean Griffen had worked every single second of every single day for more than seven years. The government alleges Griffen once claimed to have worked 126 hours in a single day.

July 2026 (Ohio)

Roberta Acheampong and her husband Godfred Owusu-Sekyere were indicted in Ohio on charges of fraud, theft, forgery, Medicaid fraud, money laundering and identity fraud for allegedly stealing $9.3 million from Medicaid through a “behavioral health clinic.” The couple has reportedly fled the country and is “believed to now be living in Kenya or Ghana,” according to the Ohio Attorney General. In those two African nations, the $9.3 million would go a long way as it is 3,339 times the annual GDP per person in Kenya and 2,579 times that of Ghana.

July 2026 (Minnesota)

Fahima Egeh Mahamud, owner of Future Leaders Early Learning Center, pleaded guilty to stealing more than $4 million from Minnesota’s childcare program. Mahamud was also charged for her involvement in the massive Feeding Our Future scandal, where her daycare allegedly falsely claimed to provide thousands of meals to hungry children per day on behalf of Feeding Our Future. (Mahamud’s childcare facility was one of those featured in Nick Shirely’s video investigation of suspicious Minneapolis daycare providers.)

July 2026 (Minnesota)

Moktar Hassan Aden, Mustafa Dayib Ali, Khalid Ahmed Dayib, and Abdifitah Mohamud Mohamed pleaded guilty to wire fraud for using their company, Brilliant Minds Services, to steal $2.2 million from the Minnesota Medicaid housing stabilization program. The group signed up and billed the program for roughly 350 nonexistent patients. Then, when they were asked to provide evidence of real patients, the nominally “brilliant minds” tried to use Chat GPT to generate fake records to cover up their crime.

August 2026 (Nevada)

A federal grand jury indicted Stephen Dubin of Nevada for an alleged $95 million Medicare fraud scheme. Dubin is accused of routinely billing for absurdly expensive and unnecessary “amniotic allografts” for wound care that he applied to patients for no valid medical reason. Dubin allegedly used the proceeds of this fraud to purchase multiple custom yachts.

August 2026 (Minnesota)

Salman Ahmed Elmi was charged for allegedly facilitating a Medicaid fraud and sex trafficking operation. Elmi and his associates “allegedly recruited homeless and drug-addicted young women in a pay-for-sex scheme” and then stole their identities to allow Elmi’s mental health services company to bill Medicaid more than $1 million. A refugee from Somalia, Elmi is the 2021 winner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services Outstanding Refugee Award for Entrepreneurship.

September 2026 (Virginia)

A pair of twin sisters named E’mon and Armone’ Ambers had their matching pair of Mercedes G Wagons seized after they were convicted in an $11 million Medicaid fraud scheme. The wonder twins falsely claimed to be providing counselling services to patients in tandem when only one and sometimes neither of them was present. The pair also paid out kickbacks in the form of hotel room stays to patients so the patients would continue allowing the sisters to bill Medicaid for counseling sessions.

September 2026 (California)

A dozen immigrants from Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq in San Diego were charged with wire fraud and money laundering in an alleged $10 million daycare fraud scheme. Investigators allege that one day care recorded zero children entering or leaving the building except on the day state inspectors arrived for an “unannounced” inspection.

October 2026 (Minnesota)

Yet another conviction involving the Minnesota Medicaid housing stabilization program occurred. Sharmaine Meadows of Lake Elmo, Minnesota was convicted of defrauding the program of $3.6 million. Investigators discovered she had allowed employees to bill for “in person” work that was allegedly performed by employees who were in the Philippines at the time.

October 2026 (Washington)

Manjit Bedi was extradited back to the United States from India where he fled earlier this year after pleading not guilty in April to food stamp fraud in the state of Washington. Bedi was added to the FBI’s “Most Wanted Fraudster” list for his alleged role in a group the government has accused of committing $2 billion in total fraud. As an individual, Bedi is accused of defrauding at least $600,000 from the SNAP program using his small Tacoma food market.

October 2026 (California)

Nathan Young, also known as Pablo, and David Young, also known as Sancho Lopez, were charged with allegedly operating a $1.6 billion scam in Los Angeles through “dozens” of rehab facilities they owned or controlled. According to the criminal complaint, the pair allegedly acted as “body brokers,” funneling addicts into Los Angeles to make money off them by billing Medicaid and other programs for addiction “treatments.” The defendants allegedly advised employees to fill as many beds as possible through schemes such as: encouraging patients to qualify for detox by taking drugs; preventing patients from leaving detox by getting doctors to prescribe them sedatives; encouraging patients to stay in detox by offering money, cigarettes, marijuana, cars, and gift cards; and offering addicts from around the nation free flights and relaxing stays on the beach if they would enroll in the detox program.

October 2026 (California)

Federal authorities launched a pre-dawn raid on the California mansion of Dr. Hany Malek, described by the California Post as an “allegedly armed-and-dangerous chiropractor accused of keeping an arsenal in his $2 million Tarzana mansion.” The government alleges Malek pretended to be a medical doctor while working with Dr. Harold Tabaie, a cardiothoracic surgeon. Malek is accused of a scheme to steal more than $130 million from Medicare by repeatedly billing for unnecessary atherectomy procedures. (An atherectomy is an arterial plaque removal procedure in which a catheter is inserted through the groin or upper thigh.)

The California Post reported that Malek (again, still presumed innocent until proven guilty) is as popular with neighbors as he is with his government accusers. “Neighbors said Malek was known as a crook, and used his cash to fund a high-flying lifestyle, including a fleet of luxury cars and boats he parked in trailers on the street,” the newspaper claimed.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/highlights-from-a-year-in-federal-welfare-fraud/