Attorney general’s office charges 9 people with Medicaid fraud totaling $3M
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Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Medicaid fraud charges against nine people on Tuesday, including a therapist who allegedly bilked Minnesota’s medical assistance program out of more than $2 million.
The Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, a 50-person division within the attorney general’s office, worked with local law enforcement to investigate the cases. Since 2019, the MFCU has convicted over 350 people for Medicaid fraud.
The fraud charges announced Tuesday totaled $3 million. More than $2 million of that is connected to Peter Meilahn, a Duluth resident who investigators say ran his own psychotherapy practice and worked as an independent contracted therapist for Franklin Family Services. Investigators found nearly 30,000 false claims for services he did not provide, and, on multiple occasions, he continued to bill Medicaid for months after he stopped seeing a patient, according to a criminal complaint.
“This is a high-dollar case, particularly where just one individual is involved,” Ellison said. “Even one dollar stolen from these programs is just too many.”
Other charges include four people involved in personal care agency called Always on Time, who allegedly billed Medicaid $675,000 for services they did not provide. Investigators opened an investigation into the agency’s owner, Awo Mohamed, due to connections between Always on Time and companies involved in other MFCU investigations. Another woman charged with Medicaid fraud allegedly financially exploited the vulnerable adult she was supposed to be taking care of out of $11,000.
Attempts to reach Meilahn and Mohamed Tuesday were not immediately successful.
Ellison, a DFLer, is running for reelection in an attorney general race dominated by conversations about fraud in social service programs and the Trump administration’s impact on Minnesota. The bulk of the attorney general office’s work deals with civil matters, like consumer protection, and is limited in its criminal authority. The office has specific authority to prosecute Medicaid fraud. Ellison’s Republican opponent, trial lawyer Ron Schutz, argues Ellison hasn’t done enough to prevent fraud as attorney general. Ellison says Republicans are using fraud as a political weapon.
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