The U.S. Attorney’s office has charged a 28-year-old Minnesota woman with fraudulently billing $14 million to Medicaid for a kickback-laden children’s autism program.
Her claims for reimbursement, which authorities say funded real estate purchases in Kenya, were submitted through the state Department of Human Services and UCare, according to charges.
Asha Farhan Hassan is charged with federal wire fraud. In the criminal complaint, federal prosecutors allege that Hassan and her partners recruited parents to her Smart Therapy Center, purportedly for children with autism, and offered them monthly kickbacks of $300 to $1,500 per child if they agreed to participate. She then charged Medicaid for the costs.
She also is charged with participating in the Feeding Our Future fraud case, in which dozens of defendants have been accused of enriching themselves with $250 million in Federal Child Nutrition Program dollars through a summer food service program administered by the Minnesota Department of Education.
Hassan allegedly received $465,000 through the program after claiming she was feeding as many as 1,200 meals per day to impoverished children, seven days per week.
‘First in the ongoing investigation’
Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson called the charges “the first in the ongoing investigation” into fraud in the state’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention benefit, a publicly-funded health program providing medically necessary services for individuals with autism spectrum disorder who are under the age of 21.
“To be clear, this is not an isolated scheme,” said Thompson, in a statement. “From Feeding Our Future to housing stabilization services and now autism services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network. The challenge is immense, but our work continues.”
An attorney for Hassan could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Among its benefits, the state EIDBI program funded Applied Behavior Analysis, or “ABA” therapy, a type of one-on-one behavioral therapy designed to help children on the autism spectrum develop social and emotional skills. The services were required to be delivered under the supervision of a qualified supervising professional, and clients had to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or a related condition and enrolled in a qualifying healthcare program such as Medicaid.
The charges
From November 2019 through December 2024, Hassan and others allegedly carried out a scheme to defraud the state program by registering Smart Therapy LLC with the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, listing herself as the sole owner. Others who had stakes in the program were not listed on Department of Human Services documents, according to charges, because one of the owners had been excluded from DHS programs for three years based on her conduct running an adult daycare center.
While claiming to be providing necessary one-on-one ABA therapy to children with autism, Smart Therapy allegedly employed unqualified individuals as “behavioral technicians,” including several of her 18- and 19-year-old relatives who had no formal education beyond high school and no certification in autism treatment.
Using monthly kickbacks to drive up enrollment, Hassan and her partners allegedly recruited parents in the Somali community to enroll their children even if they did not have an autism diagnosis and treatment plan.
Some parents threatened to take their children to other autism centers if they did not get bigger kickbacks, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office, and some of the larger families made good on that threat by finding autism centers that would pay them more.
Medicaid claims
Hassan and her partners allegedly submitted millions of dollars in claims for Medicaid reimbursement on behalf of Smart Therapy. Many of the claims were “fraudulently inflated, were billed without providers’ knowledge, and were for services that were not actually provided,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Some claims featured fraudulent signatures and approvals from providers that did not work with Smart Therapy or were out of the country on the day services were listed, according to charges. Some of the drivers dropping off children in the morning and picking them up in the evening also were on Smart Therapy’s payroll and offered transportation services billed to DHS.
Hassan also enrolled Smart Therapy in the Federal Child Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future in July 2020, claiming at first that Smart Therapy was serving breakfast and lunch to 300 children per day, seven days per week, and later claiming to serve 1,200 meals per day.
MN Department of Human Services statement
The Department of Human Services issued a statement Wednesday saying it took steps in the fall of 2024 to do onsite compliance visits to autism providers and took other actions — involving licensure and billing — to improve oversight.
DHS officials said they opened an investigation into Smart Therapy in August 2024. “As soon as law enforcement served search warrants in December 2024, DHS stopped payments,” reads the statement.
In a statement on the charges, Shireen Gandhi, temporary Human Services commissioner, said: “The sophisticated, coordinated web of fraud schemes we are uncovering requires an equally sophisticated, coordinated response from DHS and our law enforcement partners. The U.S. Attorney’s Office indictment today is a critical part of our fight against fraud, and it serves as another crystal-clear warning to criminals.
“Increased investigatory oversight from the DHS Office of Inspector General has been and continues to be an essential factor in the discovery of complex fraud schemes. DHS is taking multiple actions to stop fraud, including stopping payments, designating services as high-risk, bolstering data analytics and establishing licensure.”
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