One building in Columbus, Ohio billed taxpayers $66 million for "companionship and conversation."
Now DOGE has cracked open the program that paid it – and Ohio's numbers just left investigators speechless.
What's inside that building shouldn't exist in any state – let alone one run by Republicans.
Ohio Home Health Fraud Hid 94 Shell Companies in One Columbus Building
The building at 6161 Busch Boulevard has no windows.
It also has almost no employees.
What it does have is 94 separate home health LLCs – each with a tiny office marked by a sheet of paper, each holding an NPI billing number, each submitting Medicaid claims for services nobody can prove were ever delivered.
Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak spent two months analyzing the DOGE Medicaid data release from February – the first time the public has ever seen itemized breakdowns of what companies actually bill Medicaid for.
Ohio alone paid $1 billion in home health care claims in 2024.
Drive down Cleveland Avenue in northeast Columbus – a city with the second largest Somali population in the country – and you see the economy that replaced everything else: Capital Home Health, Continental Home Health, Dynamic Home Healthcare, Ohio Senior Home Healthcare, block after block, building after building, where Walgreens signs now mark dialysis clinics and every storefront ends in "Home Health LLC."
How Ohio Medicaid Paid Billions for Services Nobody Can Prove Were Delivered
Home health care was supposed to be cheaper for taxpayers than a nursing home.
The problem is that plenty of people will claim to need help at home if the government sends checks with no questions asked.
The fraud runs on a simple engine.
A Medicaid recipient's family member signs up as a home health "employee," collects government checks for spending time with a relative, and no one verifies whether any service was ever performed – because the only witness is the family member receiving the care.
A home health LLC sits in the middle, holds the NPI billing number, takes a cut, and submits the paperwork.
The program has no monetary cap.
Its scope isn't decided by Congress – it's decided by any doctor willing to sign a form saying a patient could use some help around the house.
Find one cooperative doctor and you can generate enough paperwork to drain a state.
Rosiak pulled public records on Columbus home health company owners and found the same pattern repeated: years of unpaid taxes, criminal records, and stacks of LLCs across unrelated industries – as if the Medicaid millions were a side gig.
One woman converted her janitorial LLC into a "health" provider and billed Medicaid nearly $100,000 in her first month.
One man went to prison for Medicaid fraud, told the court he was too broke to pay restitution, and his associates now run a poverty-program empire.
A landlord who rented space to hundreds of these operations bought airplanes after his tenants billed taxpayers a quarter of a billion dollars.
JD Vance Is the Fraud Czar – and This Is His Home State
This isn't happening in a Democrat-run state where anyone can shrug.
It's happening in Ohio – where Republican Governor Mike DeWine runs the show, within miles of the state capitol, and federal taxpayers foot more than half the bill.
In March, Trump signed an executive order establishing a federal fraud task force led by FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Vice President JD Vance – the same JD Vance who told reporters he would make sure benefits "go to American citizens, and not to fraudsters."
Vance said the agencies weren't talking to each other – Treasury had evidence of financial fraud but wasn't sharing it with Justice, HHS had Medicaid fraud evidence but wasn't sharing it with Treasury.
The DOGE data release – 227 million rows covering 2018 through 2024 – was designed to fix exactly that.
For years, the left's argument was that entitlement spending is "non-discretionary," untouchable, and that cutting it just hurts the poor.
DOGE called that bluff.
The people getting rich off these poverty programs were never the recipients.
They were the middlemen – windowless buildings full of shell companies, million-dollar checks with no verification, a billion-dollar black box that nobody bothered to open until now.
Ferguson and Vance have the data, the task force, and the mandate.
Ohio is waiting to see if they use it.
Sources:
- Luke Rosiak, "Medicaid Millionaires: How The Feds Pay Immigrants Billions To Hang Out With Their Families," The Daily Wire, May 4, 2026.
- Axios, "Elon Musk Declares Victory with Medicaid Data Release," Axios, February 14, 2026.
- Federal News Network, "Trump Brings 'War on Fraud' Into Focus with Task Force of Benefits-Paying Agencies," Federal News Network, March 31, 2026.
- Heritage Foundation, "Somali Welfare Fraud in Minnesota Has Cost American Taxpayers Billions," The Heritage Foundation, February 2, 2026.
