by Frank Holmes, reporter
You may think you’ve heard everything about the Somali welfare fraud scandal: How a Democratic state let a group of welfare-dependent “migrants” allegedly defraud Medicaid while sending the millions back home to Islamic terrorist organizations — but you haven’t heard the half of it yet.
According to well-placed sources, the great scam isn’t just happening in Minnesota. Yet another blue state is reportedly being fleeced to finance Somali warlords, according to two whistleblowers with first-hand knowledge of the matter, The Horn has learned.
The company involved, Gateway Community Services, reportedly received a total of $28.8 million in funding from the Maine’s Medicaid program, MaineCare. But the whistleblowers claim many of those bills were pure fraud.
“I thought we were helping people; I thought this was all on the up-and-up,” said Christopher Bernardini, who said he worked at the company for almost seven years. But pretty soon, things didn’t add up.
“I had clients calling me to tell me their staff hadn’t shown up, and I was told to bill those hours anyway,” he said… and he wasn’t alone.
“I saw many things happening that shouldn’t have been,” a second source, who wanted to remain anonymous, told NewsNation, including “timecards being manipulated to show services being provided they were not.”
Some of the exploits ran into thousands of dollars at Maine taxpayers’ expense, said Bernardini, who filled out employees’ time cards.
“No hours worked. I’d put in their training hours,” Bernardini said. “I started seeing bonuses, $2,000 bonuses, going to these staff that had only been with us for two weeks.”
The recipients “never worked a shift with a client and yet (when) the PPP loan comes” in, the employer starts “giving $2,000 (bonuses) away like they’re lollipops at a doctor’s office. And I’m like, ‘Where the hell’s my $2,000 bonus, I’ve been here six, seven years.’”
“I was horrified,” he said.
To top matters off, while all this was underway the company’s CEO, Abdullahi Ali, actually ran for president of Jubaland, a state in Somalia… and allegedly bragged about funding a militia in Somalia.
“When I was away and abroad, the financial contributions I was sending back were being used to support the forces for buying bullets,” Ali said in a video posted to his presidential social media account.
All this resembles the vast welfare fraud allegedly committed in Minnesota, where, The Horn reported, “Millions of taxpayer dollars stolen from Minnesota welfare programs have been sent to Somalia, where the funds landed in the hands of the radical Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab.”
That number has subsequently ballooned to an estimated $1 billion in fraud. The scandal was so huge, even The New York Times couldn’t help but report on it.
Minnesota’s fraud scandal has inspired President Donald Trump to rush ICE agents and other border enforcement officials to the Land of 10,000 Lakes, supercharging deportations, and fulfill a 2016 campaign promise to ban immigration from nations with government ties to terrorism.
Somalis may be next in line, according to Border czar Tom Homan.
A whistleblower has come forward accusing his former boss, the founder of a publicly-funded Somali health services contractor, of massive fraud in Maine. The founder ran for office in Somalia last year & discussed providing funds to support a paramilitary.pic.twitter.com/qq3FzcFVsy
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) December 10, 2025
“When they come here under (a) legal program, they’re required to be self-sufficient,” Homan told Newsmax. But with “a lot of them, the first thing they do when they get here is get on the public dole.”
The newest scandal has left Democrats tight-lipped—probably to keep from swallowing all the egg on their faces. Democratic Governor Janet Mills was too busy suing the Trump administration for trying to keep men out of girls’ sports to comment.
Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services had nothing to say.
Ali reportedly bragged about his actions on social media.
“I make no apologies for building a successful business in Maine, working hard to earn a living, earning my PhD, giving back to my Maine community, and running for office in Jubaland,” wrote in a post on X. He’s since protected all his posts. “I am proud to contribute my hard-earned $ to support my people back home.”
One person who has not held his tongue is Republican candidate for governor, Bobby Charles, who had called attention to the problem for some time.
Democrats are “calling me racist because one of, if not more than one of the nonprofits” in the “Somali community” are “accused of taking money and overbilling” the state Medicaid program, said Charles. In fact, Democrats said he encouraged people to start “burning down communities” of Somali immigrants.
He’s not the only person tiring of the Democrats’ politics of personal destruction.
Maine Dems vs Bobby Charles.
GOP candidate Bobby Charles has been calling out Somali welfare fraud in Maine on social media, so the Democrat machine has naturally resorted to calling him a racist.
Here's the Maine Dems' official statement, and Bobby's response pic.twitter.com/DkCtqnowna
— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) December 6, 2025
“I’m so tired of them pulling the race card all the time,” said Homan, adding that ICE agents have busted people from “180 different countries” from around the globe.
“There’s one thing that matters to us: Do they follow the immigration law? Are they here legally? Did they break the law once they came here?”
While the matter remains under investigation, most Republicans believe these two states are just the tip of the iceberg.
“It does appear that this is a very organized scheme in multiple states with groups of Somalis,” said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. “I would go out on a limb and say that I would say this is happening in other states, with other social programs, with other groups.”
The welfare fraud scandal may impact the state’s three Somali-American lawmakers: State Reps. Deqa Dhalac, Yusuf Yusuf, and Mana Abdi, “two of whom maintained direct professional ties to the organization,” according to The Maine Wire. Dhalac served as Gateway’s assistant executive director, and Yusuf’s biography says he “works closely” with Gateway.
That raises big questions about other Democratic officials. Is it possible Ilhan Omar is involved in Minnesota’s alleged Somali Medicaid fraud, or financially benefited from it?
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz actually requested the first Trump administration send more Somali refugees to his state in 2019; did he know about the money laundering?
What other Democrats are involved? Where did all the money go? And are any of these Democrats tied to financing an al-Qaeda affiliate?
The Horn will keep you posted on the latest developments.