Officials in Maine have suspended state Medicaid payments to a Somali-run charity after more than a million dollars in possible fraud was discovered in several audits of the charity’s services.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has cancelled MaineCare payments to Gateway Community Services after the audits found that the charity over billed the state for $1,068,598 from March 2021 through December 2022. The cash was supposedly to cover the costs of “interpreting services” to Somali migrants, the Bangor Daily News reported.
This same organization has been under investigation before. Gateway reportedly overbilled for more than $600,000 between 2015 and 2018, and is still under a cloud of suspicion for other violations found during a third state audit completed in 2024.