Attorney General Keith Ellison during a legislative hearing. A three-year review by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General released in 2022 said Minnesota’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit had the most fraud convictions among similarly sized operations in other states. Photo by House Information Services.
Some Twin Cities health providers — chiropractors, acupuncturists, physical therapists, dermatologists and dentists — found a curious pipeline of customers in recent years: Faribault residents.
Prosecutors say that for years, interpreters and drivers recruited hundreds of residents from the city about 60 miles south of the metro to specialty clinics in the Twin Cities as part of a huge Medicaid fraud case.
Not all of the claimed trips were even real: some were what prosecutors call phantom claims, meaning made up — the interpreter and transportation claims had no corresponding provider claim.
Investigators interviewed people who said they’d never been to the mental health clinic called Mercy Wellness Services, for example, even though over 250 claims associated with provider, interpreter and transportation services had been scheduled for just one woman, according to court documents.