For two decades, Mohammed Siad Barre ruled Somalia with an iron fist, leading a regime that killed hundreds of thousands. Today, the communist dictator’s children live in Ohio, where they are connected to multiple “home health” businesses that have been paid millions of dollars.
Ayanle Siad Barre, his father’s “right-hand man” in the murderous regime, incorporated Somal Global Services, which registered with Medicaid as a home health care company in 2011.
The dictator’s daughter, Deka Mohamed Siad, incorporated Vanguard Home Health Care in 2007, listing her husband, former Somali ambassador Abdikarim Ali Omar, as administrator. Medicaid records show that it was paid $1.8 million between 2018 and 2022, taking in as much as $60,000 a month by ostensibly providing personal aides to poor people.
The New York Post reported last week that it was well-known among Somalis in Columbus that the dictator’s children were living there.
“Siad Barre and his men committed so many war crimes so I was shocked to see his son [Ayanle] in the mosque enjoying his freedom,” one refugee, Ali-Guban Mohamed, told the paper. “My family were rounded up in a small township called Agabur and executed. Their bodies were put into a well and that was happening across the board.”
“The American immigration system is broken,” he added. “ICE is rounding up and deporting people but the children of a known dictator with serious allegations of murder are living here.”
Ayanle did not respond to requests for comment.
Each company raked in millions, but it is unclear if they ever provided the services they were supposed to.
Somal Global Services was based at 2700 East Dublin Granville Road, which The Daily Wire’s Medicaid Millions series reported had 80 companies billing $73 million to Medicaid and $23 million to the state of Ohio. When this reporter visited the building, Somal Global Services wasn’t listed in the directory. No payments to the firm are listed in a Medicaid payments database beginning in 2018, suggesting it stopped operating before that time.
Both of the dictator’s children, now in their 60s, live in the suburb of Westerville. They fled to the United States in the early 1990s after the fall of their father’s regime, first settling in Virginia.
When The Daily Wire called Vanguard’s phone number, the man who answered said Deka’s husband had passed away. He hung up when this reporter asked to speak with Deka. A voicemail left at a number listed for Deka was not returned.
Public records show that Ayanle additionally incorporated Somali Immigrants Achieving Democracy (whose acronym is the dictator’s name), as well as the Somoli [sic] Culture and Research Institute. Both of the dictator’s children are registered voters in the United States.
The New York Post reports that Somal Global Services was a translation company, but it is also registered as a Medicaid home health firm. The paper also reported that the $1.8 million had come from Medicare, a program for retirees who had paid taxes, but it was actually Medicaid, a federal- and state-funded medical insurance for the poor.
Somalis have figured out how to get rich off the poverty program by having other Somalis start companies and get rich by billing for services to the rest of them, who are on the dole.
That’s illustrated, to an almost comical extent, by how many prominent Somalis are tied to Medicaid businesses. Somalia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abukar Dahir Osman, who served as president of the UN Security Council, was tied to Progressive Health Care Services, a home health agency in Cincinnati.
The presence of Siad Barre’s children suggests that the United States is unable to differentiate between victim and perpetrator when granting refugee status. Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D), perhaps the most prominent Somali in Washington, often describes herself as a refugee. But Omar’s family fled Somalia in 1991 after the fall of Barre’s regime, in which Omar’s father was a colonel in the Somali National Army.
Omar’s sister registered a $20 million U.S. Agency for International Development consulting company using the home of Ister Ahmed Afree, who is tied to a slew of Medicaid companies, including Sunshine Care Center MN. Afree was business partners with multiple convicts in the Feeding Our Future scam.
The Trump administration in February released a trove of data that show how frequently Medicaid fraud occurs. Around the same time, Ohio lawmakers voted to change state law to crack down on the home health industry as a result of The Daily Wire’s reporting.
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