NewsNation has helped to uncover what may be one of the most brazen taxpayer-funded fraud operations outside of Minnesota — a sprawling scheme in Maine that allegedly siphoned U.S. Medicaid dollars into Somali politics and even paramilitary groups.
At the center of it all is Gateway Community Services, a health contractor paid by the state to serve vulnerable Mainers.
But according to whistleblower Chris Bernardini, what Gateway actually ran was something closer to a shadow operation — one that began with falsified paperwork and ended thousands of miles away on another continent.
Bernardini says Gateway oversaw a system where visit logs were fabricated to make it appear that staff were checking in on low-income and disabled clients.
The electronic monitoring system meant to verify those visits, he alleges, was deliberately manipulated so it looked like employees were traveling to homes they never came within miles of.
Once the digital trail was forged, the organization allegedly billed …