← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Guaranteed Human I understand why you're frustrated. Healthcare costs keep rising, but paychecks aren't keeping up. Maybe it's time for the big drug companies and hospital monopolies to look in the mirror. They set health care prices and they're why your care is too expensive. When prices keep rising, someone has to step in and negotiate for families. America's health insurance providers are fighting every day to bring health care costs down, paying paid for by the Affordable Health Care Initiative.
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It is illegal. It is against the war. We've been talking about this in Iran. Obviously, to bomb the infrastructure of any country that is against international law. This is essentially doing the same thing. It is bombing the infrastructure of Cuba with economic sanctions that essentially ensure that the infrastructure collapses.
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You're listening to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson. Good Saturday morning. Nice to have you with us on the 47 Morning Update. And we've got one big story for you. Massive fraud, but this time not in a liberal area of the country, in Ohio. And it's costing you millions and millions of dollars. Senator Cruz joins me to break down exactly how bad the fraud could be nationwide and it's not just in liberal cities. Yes, Democrats have learned exactly how to take advantage no matter where they live. And we're going to expose it all. I want you to pause what you're doing for just one minute and I want you to hear about Alejandra. She lives in a remote community with very few resources and little to no health care. So when Alejandra gets sick, her parents have no real options, no doctors in their community and no money for real medical care. By the third day, her body was shutting down. She woke up and just long enough to tell her mom, I can't take the pain anymore. I can't keep going. Her parents drove hours to find a doctor who tried everything, but she needed a private hospital and that was impossible for her family to afford. And that is when Compassion International stepped in. Now, through Compassion, Alejandra was treated. And against all odds, she survived. She lived because someone just like you took action. Right now, unfortunately, there are children just like Alejandra who won't survive unless someone like you steps in. Compassion International partners with local churches providing children with the support that they need. Critical medical care plus food, education and the hope of the gospel, all in Jesus name. So help a child just like Alejandra. Today you can visit compassion.com that's compassion.com it's the 47 Morning Update and it starts right now. Story number one, center just since we started this show and we have this Somali fraud that we're going to talk about in Ohio. But, but there's a new article that just came out. I'm just going to read the headline because it just shows how fast the fraud is being exposed. Somalis reportedly filled an Ohio strip mall with potential fraudulent child care centers this coming from the AB6 Investigators there in Columbus saying several Somali owned daycare facilities including a cluster located in strip mall which by the way don't exist. They've now been uncovered. And then that is on top of another local station that just exposed a massive trucking company fraud. All of these trucking companies, like dozens and dozens, all at the same exact address in these suites. So now we've got new fraud on top of fraud, on top of the fraud we're going to talk about on this show today.
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Yeah, it's a stunning pattern and it's clear the fraudsters believe they would never face any scrutiny. That no politician would hold them to account, that no prosecutor would hold them to account, that nobody in the media would ever report as they were stealing millions and millions of dollars from the taxpayers. And I gotta say that tide is starting to turn. There's a blockbuster story, the Daily Wire by Luke Rosiak, who is the same lawyer who broke the Loudoun county story that the in Virginia that ended up electing Glenn Youngkin as the governor of Virginia. So, so he's demonstrated that he can do real, real news work in a way that cnn, abc, NBC, they don't do anymore. But, but this story, I want to read a good chunk of this story because if you haven't read it, you need to know what's in it. It's entitled Daily Wire Investigation Reveals one of the Biggest Government Waste Scandals Hiding in Plain sight. I've been investigating federal waste and fraud for 20 years. This is the biggest scandal I've ever found. Columbus, Ohio. Just before the Department of Government Efficiency closed its doors, it made a quiet move that may end up being its most lasting impact on the federal deficit. DOGE published a massive trove of data in February that for the first time let the public see what companies are billing Medicaid for. For decades, the payouts have been shrouded in secrecy. One of the largest government programs was a black box. I've spent the past two months diving into the numbers. What I found was the most blatant waste of federal dollars that I've encountered in my two decades as an investigative reporter. I've set my sights at Ohio, which like Minnesota has been granted waivers to expand Medicaid well beyond its original purpose. Under the guise of health care. Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries homes to perform, quote, homemaking and quote, chores like cooking and cleaning. The people performing these, quote, personal services tasks don't even have to be health care workers. And in many Cases are actually relatives of the Medicaid recipient. According to a Daily Wire data analysis, Ohio spent a billion dollars. Billion with a B on home health care in 2024, the last year for which data is available. Since the services are performed inside private residences, there's no way to know whether the workers went at all or what they're actually doing in exchange for taxpayer funds. An infinite number of small black boxes. Inside a black box, multiple signs said the service provided and billed to the government was sometimes just, quote, companionship and conversation. So understand, you can talk to your relatives. You can hang out with your relatives and talk to them, and the federal government will pay you just for talking to grandpa.
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I mean, you. You listen to that story, and it doesn't even make sense until you understand that that's exactly what they're doing. They're like, hey, we're gonna pay you to hang out. Not take care, hang out with a relative. They're also, how would they get all the patients for the fraud to work? You put it on a billboard, right? Like you put up billboards. You recruit family members to defraud the government by hanging out and spending time with your own mom or dad or aunt or uncle or brother or sister. And we will pay you to do that. And, I mean, it's just. If that's not the definition of fraud, I don't know what is.
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Well, it gets worse as people have realized the United States government will pay them to hang out with their own families.
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There it is.
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Northeast Columbus has seen its economy replaced by businesses that bill Medicaid and Columbus, a city with the second largest Somali population in the country. Did you know that? Columbus, Ohio. No, I didn't either.
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And. And that's shocking. But now it explains why the fraud's so high.
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Well, Columbus has become, on the surface, the most unhealthy city on the planet.
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Now, to be clear what we mean by that, because, like, usually in the past you hear unhealthy city. You usually hear that it's like a city that's overweight, where the people aren't
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active here, they're just flooding.
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Cage.
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Yeah, like, this is. This is the unhealthy, as in how much money is it taking to take care of people through Medicare? That is what's making it the most unhealthy city in America. It's not that it's like overweight population, food deserts and things like that. This is how bad the fraud is.
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Well, here's what one person said, quote, well, if the government is going to pay you to do it. One home health operator told me. People see it as lucrative, so they just jump on it. The new welfare queens aren't the recipients whose low incomes qualify them for poverty programs. They're the companies getting rich off them. Now listen to these companies driving down Cleveland Avenue in less than 40 seconds, you come across endless home health companies. Capital Home Health, Continental Home Health, Dynamic Home Health Care Ohio Senior Home Health Care. Entire buildings throughout the city are filled entirely with what appear to be identical businesses. The enormous complex pictured below, and there's a picture in the article, is 6161 Bush Blvd. Its lack of windows would be a problem for most office buildings, but there is almost no one in this one. What's inside is 94. 94 different companies signed up to bill Medicaid, each with a tiny office often marked with a sheet of paper proclaiming some generic company name ending in Home Health llc. And sometimes this is particularly funny. Another piece of paper claiming the employees had just stepped out for a break. Mind you, they've all stepped out for a break and they never come back. Yeah. This building alone billed taxpayers 66 million in the span of a few years, the records show. Pick the owner of a Columbus home health care company at random and look them up on public records. You're likely to go down an endless rabbit hole. Years of unpaid taxes and debts, sometimes criminal records, and an astonishing number of LLC created in other industries. As if the millions they make from Medicaid are just a side gig. We went down several of those rabbit holes. In the coming days you'll meet and I'm going to give you several of these examples. Every one of these is going to you off. These are real people, or at least real fake people in Ohio. Number one, a politician who founded an $11 million home health care company that he appeared to run part time without even mentioning it in his political biography, who then funded his campaign. He funded his campaign with donations from other home healthcare owners. So this is a guy robbing a million dollars, $11 million. He's hiding it because obviously he's embarrassed about it and he's relying on other fraudsters to fund his political operation. This is the shameless grift, the cycle of thievery that we're seeing over and over again. All right, here's another one. Number two, a woman who reinvented her Janitorial llc. So she had a janitorial company as a, quote, health provider, then she billed Medicaid. What do you think she billed Medicaid the very first month she Went from being a janitorial company to health provider. What do you think? She build Medicaid.
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Good Somali mentor. And you go from the toilet cleaning, you know, job to then and. Sorry, I got the hiccups now, but if you go from a toilet cleaning job to then, you go to home health care, like, surely your first month and startup would be, I don't know, five grand, eight grand maybe? I know I'm wrong, right?
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Nearly a hundred grand.
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Yeah, 100 grand. First month. First month. Like that is one heck of a startup right there, folks.
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All right, here's another one. Number three, by the way, you've got the hiccups. We're going to send a home health care provider. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Can I make 100 grand? I'll take it.
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That would be your children. And they're going to go punch you in the stomach till you stop hiccupping.
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I like this. I like this plan. As long as I get paid, it's fine. I want to kick back here.
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Or at least golf sponsorships.
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There you go.
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Number three, a landlord who bought airplanes after renting space to hundreds of home health care companies that build Medicaid. A quarter of a billion dollars. Quarter of a billion. 250 million. Number four, a man who went to prison for Medicaid fraud but told the government he was too broke to pay restitution while his neighbors and associates provide over a poverty program empire. And number five, an accountant who has lost his license for stealing public funds, then opened a $7 million home health care company using the address of a convicted money launderer's teenage son. Now, I gotta say, Ben, if you're listening to this, if you're not pissed off, that's impressive. You're not paying attention.
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I mean, Sarah, this story really brings us back to even a bigger point, and that is this is prop. Probably nationwide. Like what we're witnessing, what we're seeing. This is going to end up being fraud at different levels, probably in every state in America, because you're still dealing with fraud through the federal government. So you can set up shop anywhere because it's not like it's a lot of state oversight here.
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Well, listen, this is brazen. These are fraudsters who believe no politician will ever call them to account. No government employee will ever examine the facts. No prosecutor will look at it, and they're quite confident that the press will never examine it. These are not geniuses. Let me read a little more from the story. These are not. In fact, here's the point. I was just Making These are not business geniuses, nor even people with any training or specialty in the health field. They have often failed at a variety of businesses before suddenly becoming millionaires in home health care. Sometimes a company will have a full roster of clients in his very first month, making one wonder where the clients come from. The companies don't have websites or appear to advertise. They can't stand out from their thousands of rivals based on price unless they pay kickbacks because the government pays the same to everyone. Nearly every owner of a health care company in Columbus appears to be foreign. Let me repeat that because that's a stunning statement. Nearly every owner of a home health care company in Columbus appears to be foreign. They live in a parallel society where every associate in public records also has a foreign name and all their business transactions are conducted with other foreigners. When we asked one what home health care companies did, one man threatened journalists. Who cares? Do you guys pay my bills? I'm going to tell everybody you guys are racists. The government cannot meaningfully monitor all the people it writes million dollar checks to in Columbus. They all share combinations of just a few names like Ahmed Mohammed and Mohammed Ahmed. How is this not satire? By the way, I'm reading actual news documents reviewed by the Daily Wire show individuals will spell their own name multiple different ways within a single document. Let me repeat that again. Someone spells the name Bean Ferguson. Yeah. Ban Fergie. Fergie son. Like how many. How do you misspell your name multiple times in a document and backwards Sometimes
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it was Ben Ferguson. It was Ferguson Ben. Like it was Ted Cruz and then
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Cruise Ted, you know, Penelope Cruz. Tom Cruise. Cruise Control. Like, like every variant you can come with. And many of them list their birthdays as January 1st because their birthdays are unknown. The business model is simple. A 40 year old Somali immigrant gets paid for spending time with and maybe cooking for his own 65 year old mother. The middleman is one of thousands of home health firms that have the NPI number necessary to bill Medicaid. The 40 year old becomes a quote employee of that company but has no clients other than his mother. There is no way to verify whether he actually provided the quote services unless his own mother is willing to testify against him. This poverty program is different from things like food stamps because it has no monetary cap and its extent is decided not by politicians but by any doctor willing to sign a form saying you could use some help around the house. It only takes one doctor who will say yes to churn out enough forms to bankrupt a state to bankrupt a state.
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Let's, let's, let's be clear about what, like they're saying, this is why they're the most unhealthy city in America. America because of this fraud. This is why all your tax hours are going there. And all it takes a doctor with apparently no checks and balances. But it's like doctor shopping. Like, we know doctors that do this. They, they abuse their power. They write scripts. For example, there's one arrest arrested in Houston this week that was writing massive amounts of opioid scripts. Why? Because he's getting massive paydays from patients. You could have the same, same exact thing happening there.
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For years, efforts to rein in waste have nibbled around the edges, shaving off a million here and a million there. While skeptics and liberals argued that the cost cutting exercise was pointless because the lion's share of federal spending was locked up in, quote, non discretionary spending like health care. The implication was that there was no waste in that category and nothing that could be done about it. Even as the nation careened towards insolvency, that premise couldn't be more wrong. This blatant waste happened within miles of the Ohio state Capitol, where Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, and his appointees run the state. In an era of artificial intelligence, the Medicaid system has seemed disinterested in even the most obvious red flags. Perhaps that's because it's largely run by states, but with half or more of the bill being footed by the federal taxpayers, the Trump administration is now turning its sights to Medicaid fraud with a task force led by the Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Vice President J.D. vance. They may want to start with Vance's home state. I gotta say, look, this is stunning and it is a pattern. It's not confined to Minnesota, it's not confined to Ohio. This is a pattern of theft across the country and we need to have vigorous efforts. I want to commend the Trump administration. The Department of Justice is going after this fraud. HHS is going after this fraud. We're beginning to see accountability. And I want to thank the Daily Wire for doing some reporting. Let me ask, where the hell is cnn? Abc, NBC? CBS is doing a little bit, but Washington Post, New York Times, are there actual quarters?
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The hardcore investigative journalists are not doing any of this journalism. This is like the conservative advocates out there that are doing this job. The Nick Shirley's are doing this job. No one in the mainstream media is breaking this story.
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Look, we covered previously on this podcast how CNN when the story broke in Minnesota, they decided to check it. So they called these, quote, childcare agencies and they said, hi, this is CNN calling. Are you engaged in fraud? And they said, no. And they said, oh, okay, thank you, and hung up. That's what they called reporting. Yeah, the last I checked, if you call criminals and ask them if they're committing crimes, most of them are going to tell you no. And by the way, CNN knows that the reporters know that, the producer knows that, the executive producer knows that. Everyone up and down the line knows that they know how to actually investigate a story. It's just that the media doesn't care about this story. I commend the Daily Wire. We're gonna keep covering this. And I think this is just the tip of the iceberg on what's happening. Thank you for listening to the 47
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Morning Update with Ben Ferguson.
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Please make sure you hit subscribe wherever
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you're listening to this podcast right now. And for more in depth news, also
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subscribe to the Ben Ferguson Podcast and
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we will see you back here on Monday morning. I understand why you're frustrated. Health care costs keep rising, but paychecks aren't keeping up. Maybe it's time for the big drug companies and hospital monopolies to look in the mirror. They said health care prices and they're why your care is too expensive. When prices keep rising, someone has to step in and negotiate for families. America's health insurance providers are fighting every day to bring health care costs down. Paid for by the Affordable Health Care Initiative.
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Most Mother's Day gifts end up in a drawer, but a song lives in the heart forever. This year, tryjoybox.com is giving away 1 million free custom songs to celebrate 1 million incredible moms. Just share a few memories and joy. Box produces an original track and greeting card just for her Instantly. It's the most personal gift you'll ever give. And right now, it's completely free. Make mom the star of her own song@tryjoybox.com 1,000,000 songs $0 only@tryjoybox.com this is
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