Fraud, fraud, and more fraud: How Maine became a Somalian scammer’s paradise

PORTLAND, MAINE — If you didn’t know any better, you would think Maine was the sickest state in the union.

Home health care LLCs, some with Minnesota area codes, fill entire office buildings throughout the city centers, suburbs, and exurbs of that once-sleepy New England state. They’re supposedly open from 9:00 to 5:00 every day, but no one is ever working.

‘The legislature needs to conduct a serious investigation of MaineCare’s provider system.’

What follows is the story of how Maine got robbed.

Somali refugees began flooding into Maine in 2001. Previously resettled elsewhere, the Somalis later gathered in Portland, then Lewiston, drawn by cheap housing. Catholic Charities Maine relocated the waves that followed, bringing as many as it could to Vacationland.

Catholic Charities was Maine’s primary federal refugee resettlement