Somalis and Bhutanese immigrants are running massive Medicaid kickback schemes in Ohio, bilking American taxpayers out of billions while the government looks the other way. That’s the explosive charge from Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak, who presented his findings Thursday at a Republican Study Committee roundtable on Capitol Hill.
“It’s just unbelievable, and the only piece we needed to see how corrupt this was, was to see who was getting paid by Medicaid,” Rosiak told the gathered lawmakers.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) is now leading a congressional task force investigating what he calls a perfect storm of immigration policy failures and welfare state abuse. The fraud investigations come amid a wave of discoveries since President Donald Trump’s return to office, including waste exposed by DOGE and Somali childcare fraud in Minnesota uncovered by citizen journalist Nick Shirley.
Gill didn’t mince words about the source of the problem.
“A lot of this is being done by foreigners,” Gill said at the Thursday event. “We’ve got two different issues here, an immigration issue, and the welfare state issue. We’re focusing on the latter here on waste, fraud, and abuse. But when you bring in infinity Third Worlders into American society, from low trust countries, you kind of expect low trust behavior.”
Rosiak described his Ohio investigation as exposing an “ethnic scam” operating within tight-knit immigrant communities.
“It’s in Ohio with almost entirely the Somalians and the Bhutanese, people from Bhutan, and they operate within those ethnic communities where a lot of people live in intergenerational houses and they don’t speak English, and they’re all on Medicaid,” Rosiak explained.
The reporter detailed how these networks exploit a program meant for seriously ill Americans. “There’s kickback schemes and all kinds of corrupt stuff, criminals. But at the core of it is a lot of Somalis and Bhutanese, who aren’t that sick, on this government program, which is very, very expensive, which was intended for Americans who are very seriously ill.”
Gill praised Rosiak’s work, noting the journalist used only publicly available data to expose the corruption. No special access required. Just someone willing to look.
Seven Republican congressmen joined Gill and Rosiak at the roundtable: Reps. Ben Cline of Virginia, Michael Cloud of Texas, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Laurel Lee of Florida, Abe Hamadeh of Arizona, and Mike Kennedy of Utah.
Cloud pointed to a broken incentive structure in Washington that has allowed the fraud to flourish. “Politicians in Washington have gotten away with measuring our self-worth and personal value by how much of other people’s money we give away,” he said. “Because of this, we measure effectiveness too often by how much money goes out the door, as opposed to is it going to where it was intended.”
But exposing the fraud is only half the battle. Congressional investigators face a hard limit on their power.
“We don’t have the ability to prosecute anybody,” Gill acknowledged.
Burchett echoed the frustration, calling for Department of Justice action. “We need action, and I just hope we got the guts to do it,” he said. “We can pass tough laws, but I don’t have the ability to put anybody in handcuffs.”
Rosiak said fixing the problem will require both criminal prosecutions and major policy changes to the programs being exploited.
Gill launched a formal investigation into the Ohio Medicaid scandal last week, making clear the goal isn’t just headlines. It’s ending the fraud for good.
