A House committee report details Medicare and Medicaid fraud draining taxpayer dollars nationwide, including charges that a Colorado provider billed roughly $165,000 for rides after a patient had already died.
State and local prosecutors in Colorado charged Wesam Yassin in February 2026 over fraudulent non-emergency medical transportation billing tied to his company, Sama Limo, according to a Fox News Digital account of a House Energy and Commerce Committee report.
Investigators say the scheme did not stop at padded invoices. It kept billing after the patient was gone. And it sits inside a much larger picture of Medicare and Medicaid vulnerabilities that House Republicans say cost American taxpayers billions every year.
Rep. Jodey Arrington has warned that Medicare and Medicaid fraud is costing taxpayers $1 million every minute. The committee report frames the problem as coast-to-coast, hitting programs meant for the elderly, the disabled, children, and pregnant women.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie put the stakes in plain terms.
"Every instance of fraud we uncover represents money stolen from taxpayers and care taken away from the patients who depend on it most,"
Guthrie told Fox News Digital. He also said combating fraud is a coast-to-coast battle.
The report itself did not soft-pedal the damage.
"Medicare and Medicaid fraud occurs nationwide and costs American taxpayers billions of dollars a year. Fraud is prevalent in all sectors of health care and is especially egregious in taxpayer-funded health care programs that are intended to serve vulnerable populations, including the elderly, disabled, children, and pregnant women,"
the committee wrote. It added that patients are suffering from identity theft, long waiting lists, substandard care, and, in some cases, a lack of services because of fraudulent claims.
Yassin is accused of charging Colorado Medicaid $3.3 million in questionable bills under Sama Limo. One piece of that case stands out even in a field full of ugly numbers.
Prosecutors say he charged $283,000 for 64 rides for a single person, more than $4,000 per ride. Roughly $165,000 of those charges came after the patient had died.
A federal release announcing charges said the money did not vanish into thin air.
"Proceeds from this scheme were allegedly used for personal gain, including the purchase of a home, furnishings, luxury vehicles, jewelry, and cosmetic surgery,"
the release stated.
Ashley Marie Stevens faces separate allegations in the same Colorado non-emergency transport space. She is accused of trying to bilk the state for more than $1 million, including some $400,000 billed for non-medical rides for herself and her family, plus “ghost rides” that never happened.
These are not paperwork mistakes. They are alleged theft from programs built for people who cannot drive themselves to care, and, in the dead-patient billing claim, from a ledger that should have closed when the patient did. Cases like these sit alongside other Medicare and Medicaid fraud prosecutions that keep surfacing in city after city.
The committee report also zeroed in on hospice concentration in Los Angeles County, where the numbers alone demand an explanation.
Investigators observed nearly 500 hospices operating in a three-mile radius in L.A. County. They counted 137 hospices on Van Nuys Boulevard alone. And they found 89 companies registered to a single address in Van Nuys.
"The Committees were concerned about data from a March 2022 California State Auditor’s Report and HHS hospice ownership data, showing that L.A. County had more than 31 percent of the hospice agencies in the U.S. in 2022,"
the report stated.
California’s Department of Public Health froze new hospice licenses in January 2022. That freeze did not stop the pipeline completely. Fifteen new hospices in a single Los Angeles County building still obtained Medicare certification in 2023.
House lawmakers earlier this year raised concerns with the Department of Health and Human Services about the surge in home health and hospice providers and possible fraud tied to foreign criminal groups. Taxpayers fund these programs. When certifications keep flowing into dense clusters of shell-heavy operators, the people who lose first are patients waiting for real care.
That is why lawmakers have pressed to stop healthcare fraud draining hundreds of billions from federal programs before the losses become permanent.
The report highlighted 2024 allegations of large-scale schemes targeting as much as $3 billion through fake urinary catheter billing.
Members of Russian organized crime groups allegedly bought 30 small medical supply companies already receiving federal dollars and billed Medicare nearly $11 billion for urinary catheters. More than 99% of those funds never went out the door.
Similar medical equipment fraud schemes, the report said, ensnared bad actors tied to Estonia, Pakistan, Georgia, and Hong Kong.
This is not a back-office glitch in one county. It is alleged industrial-scale billing against Medicare, run through purchased supply firms, aimed at money that was supposed to buy equipment for patients. When foreign networks can buy their way into the claims stream, program integrity is not a side issue. It is the whole ballgame.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been part of the broader crackdown conversation in Washington, including a July 21, 2026, announcement at HHS headquarters. Oversight fights over staffing and enforcement capacity matter here, including past claims that Biden-era HHS left fraud teams weakened while billions sat unguarded.
In Minnesota, Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf pleaded guilty to trying to defraud $6 million from an autism therapy program paid for with state Medicaid dollars.
Prosecutors accused him and co-defendants of hiring unqualified people as behavior counselors and bribing parents to enroll children. During his plea hearing, Yussuf admitted he did not actually know anyone with autism.
A Medicaid therapy program for children with autism is supposed to deliver specialized help. Instead, the allegation is a recruitment machine built on bribes and unqualified staff, then a guilty plea that underlines how far the scheme sat from real care.
Federal prosecutors have brought wave after wave of healthcare cases in other regions as well, including multi-state fraud actions totaling hundreds of millions. The pattern is consistent: bill the public program, pocket the money, leave patients and taxpayers holding the loss.
Recoveries and task-force actions have pulled back large sums in related healthcare crackdowns, including efforts that recovered billions from subsidy abuse and warned that fraud drives costs higher for everyone else. Enforcement after the fact is necessary. Prevention and tighter gates on who can bill in the first place are what keep the next $165,000 ghost-ride invoice from clearing.
The committee’s core finding is blunt. Medicare and Medicaid are ripe for exploitation at the local, state, and federal levels. Fraud shows up in transport vans, hospice storefronts, medical supply catalogs, and therapy programs.
Patients get identity theft, waiting lists, and thinner care. Fraudsters get houses, cars, jewelry, and cosmetic surgery, or try to. Prosecutors charge some. Others keep testing the same weak points until someone notices.
Guthrie’s point holds: every dollar stolen is a dollar not spent on the person the program was written to help. Arrington’s $1-million-a-minute warning is the scale. The Colorado dead-patient rides, the Van Nuys hospice pile-up, the catheter billing spree, and the Minnesota autism plea are the method.
Secure the gates, prosecute the thieves, and quit treating open-ended billing as compassion. Taxpayers should not have to bankroll fraud dressed up as care.
