Staff Reports
Ohio taxpayers are being shaken down by a fraud scheme that an Ohio attorney and whistleblower says mirrors the brazen theft recently exposed in Minnesota. Mehek Cooke, a former federal prosecutor and conservative commentator, is sounding the alarm that criminals have learned to exploit Ohio’s Medicaid waiver rules and are siphoning off taxpayer dollars meant for the vulnerable.
The scam, according to Cooke and whistleblowers, leverages a loophole that pays thousands of dollars for in-home care — reportedly as much as $91,000 per person per year — by having relatives or sham providers claim to give care while doctors rubber-stamp approvals and collect kickbacks. Officials and providers who try to resist say they’ve been pressured or threatened to go along with the racket, while beneficiaries turn up on social media doing things that don’t match their alleged conditions.
This isn’t a small-time swipe; investigators in Minnesota have already uncovered staggering losses and dozens of indictments, and whistleblowers in Ohio warn the problem has been running for years and could rival those totals if left unchecked. The pattern is ugly and systematic: coordinated paperwork, payoffs to medical professionals, and a bureaucracy so loose that it becomes an invitation for organized corruption.
Cooke has urged federal investigators to widen the probe to Ohio and called for regular, meaningful audits of Medicaid waiver programs so hard-working Americans aren’t footing the bill for fraudsters. She also stresses the important distinction that the issue is criminal enterprise within a community, not the community itself, and that victims of coercion deserve protection and justice.
Conservatives should be furious but focused: this is precisely the kind of government program abuse that proves we need tighter oversight, stronger penalties, and a return to accountability instead of rubber-stamped checks. Every dollar stolen from Medicaid is a dollar denied to genuinely sick seniors and struggling families — and the political establishment responsible for sloppy rules must be called out and replaced.
Ohio leaders and federal prosecutors must move swiftly to criminally pursue the ring leaders, cut the funding tap for fraudulent providers, and overhaul eligibility verification so the system serves citizens, not con artists. Mehek Cooke’s background as a prosecutor and public servant gives weight to this warning, and patriots who care about honest government should demand immediate action to protect taxpayers and the truly vulnerable.
