Maine Ends Payments To Charity That Serves Immigrants After “Credible Allegations Of Fraud”
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The Maine Department of Health and Human Services stopped payments to Gateway Community Services, a Portland company that serves immigrants.
Gateway Community Services received a notice of violation due to an investigation into “credible allegations of fraud.”
GOP Rep James Comer recently flagged Gateway as a potential target of a welfare fraud investigation.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services moved Tuesday to halt MaineCare payments to a Portland company that serves immigrants by asserting it had improperly billed for interpreting services and seeking to claw back more than $1 million.
The company, Gateway Community Services, received a notice of violation Tuesday from the department along with a notification that it was suspending payments while investigating “credible allegations of fraud.” The department’s unit reviewed 15,000 claims made to Gateway between March 2021 and December 2022 and is seeking to recoup nearly $1.1 million.
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It came a day after U.S. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the House oversight committee, sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury that flagged Gateway along with a host of current and former employees as potential targets of a broader welfare fraud investigation being conducted by the panel.
Comer’s letter directly tied for the first time Gateway to the committee’s investigation that has largely been focused on Minnesota. Among those listed from Gateway include founder Abdullahi Ali and state Rep. Deqa Dhalac, D-South Portland, a former Gateway employee.
Somali migrant Abdullahi Ali founded Gateway in 2015.
Gateway was founded in 2015 by Somali migrant Abdullahi Ali who became the subject of scrutiny for launching a 2024 bid to run for president of Jubaland, an autonomous region in the southern part of Somalia, at the same time his Gateway Services charity was defrauding the state of a million in improperly billed services.
Gateway was not only staffed and run by Somali migrants, though. The agency also has connections to a number of prominent Democrats in Maine, including Democrat State Senator Chloe Maxmin, and Democrat strategists Joanne D’Arcangelo and B.J. McCollister, the latter of whom served in the Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign for the White House and a chief of staff to Maine Democrat Senate President Troy Jackson.
