This is the third part of “Medicaid Millions,” a Daily Wire series exposing billions of dollars in dubious “personal services” payments where people are paid to spend time with their own family.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — After the federal government approved a waiver allowing Ohio to expand Medicaid by paying housekeepers to spend time at elderly people’s houses to help with tasks like “homemaking” and “chore services,” taxpayers across the country footed a shocking $2.5 billion worth of bills between 2018 and 2024, according to a trove of Medicaid data released for the first time by the Trump administration.

The demand for free home care was so high in Ohio that taxpayers spent more on that “personal services” category, Medicaid’s term for non-medical in-home help, than any other outpatient service. The program allows for people who aren’t medical professionals to get paid by the government for work done inside private residences, where what was performed, and even whether anything was done, is essentially unverifiable.

The state’s largest outpatient Medicaid category therefore relies on trust. So who’s facilitating payments from the government?

The Daily Wire spent weeks analyzing the Medicaid data released by the Trump administration as part of its effort to weed out wasteful government spending. I went to Ohio, and found clusters of home healthcare providers that bill the government millions of dollars in desolate buildings filled with empty offices.

At 1415 East Dublin Granville Road, one of the Columbus buildings we visited in our investigation, we found True Home Healthcare LLC.

All that appeared on its door was a tattered piece of printer paper that read, “SORRY WE MISSED YOU, OUT FOR A QUICK BREAK.”

In Medicaid records, the owner is listed Mamusu Kanu. According to a review of public records, Kanu has had a slew of criminal convictions, including for theft, assault, and DUI, as well as several civil judgments and tax liens. Kanu was charged with felony aggravated assault in Virginia, and convicted of theft in Columbus in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

The company True Home Healthcare LLC received $100,000 in December 2023 alone off just 15 patients, according to our analysis of federal spending data.

In a phone interview, Mamusu Kanu, who goes by “Sue,” denied that she had a criminal record, before declaring: “Even if I do, it doesn’t have anything to do with nobody. They [Medicaid] certify you before you do anything.”

Incorporation documents for True Home Healthcare don’t list Kanu, but rather a man named Alieu Conteh. The couple are married and have been partners in crime for decades. On December 12, 2004, both Kanu and Conteh were charged with theft in Columbus. They previously lived in Alexandria, Virginia, where they stiffed multiple landlords. Court records show the couple faced foreclosure in Columbus immediately before opening their Medicaid business.

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In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, court records show Conteh has faced 25 charges. He’s had additional convictions elsewhere, including for endangering children.

Conteh acknowledged his criminal history, but said it didn’t interfere with his ability to do business with Medicaid.

“Yes, I do have a lot of records,” Conteh told The Daily Wire. “I was just too dumb I didn’t even know what is law.”

“We came up to do business. I put in my application with the government, Medicaid, Medicare, they check. They see all my history … and they approved the business to operate,” Conteh said. “Do you want to tell me I don’t have rights to own a business?”

Conteh had a roster of aliases that he would give to the police, such as Osman Kanu and Gbssay Gbla, leading to multiple fraud convictions. “That way I cannot be arrested when I knew I was driving with a suspended license,” he told The Daily Wire.

Records confirm that Conteh’s criminal past was not a problem with licensing. In 2012, Ohio’s Board of Nursing permitted Conteh to become a nurse under a probationary agreement that acknowledged his repeated fraud and violent tendencies:

“In 2007, Mr. Conteh was convicted of one (1) amended misdemeanor count of Disorderly Conduct that stemmed from him grabbing and striking an adult female family member,” the government document states, also referencing “retail theft,” “falsification,” and “providing a false name/information to a police officer.”

The probationary license was contingent on his meeting certain terms, including being honest, disclosing his employers to the nursing board, and refraining from crimes. He did none of those things.

He was convicted of DUIs in September 2014 and November 2014. When he submitted an application to renew his nursing license in 2016, he falsely said he had not been convicted of any crimes, and that he was unemployed, even though he was in fact working as a nurse. His license was suspended in July 2017.

“I was just too dumb I didn’t even know what is law… I put in my application with the government, Medicaid, Medicare, they check. They see all my history … and they approved.”

In September 2017, Conteh told the nursing board he “intended to seek alcohol dependency treatment and regretted his actions.” Just eight days later, he was arrested for DUI yet again. Conteh also “reported having a prior history of Cocaine use,” a January 2018 deal with the nursing board said.

The deal said his license would be suspended through at least January 2019, and required him to submit to drug and alcohol tests — which he then failed, claiming it was a “momentary relapse.” In January 2020, he was reinstated as a nurse, subject to permanent limits.

“Unless otherwise approved in advance by the Board or its designee, Mr. Conteh shall not practice nursing as a licensed practical nurse (1) for agencies providing home care in the patient’s residence” or “where the job duties or requirements involve financial activity.”

Nonetheless, Conteh and his wife created their own company, one that would involve unsupervised and unverifiable home visits, and rely on their honesty to accurately bill the government.

True Home Healthcare was certified as a Medicaid provider in April 2021; between May 2021 and October 2024, it billed taxpayers $936,000. It had 12 customers when it opened its doors, and 12 customers in October 2024, the last month for which data is available, according to the HHS data.

Monthly Medicaid payments to True Home Healthcare

Conteh suggested he had not notified the nursing board that he was working in home health, and said he doesn’t think he has to.

“I don’t work for home healthcare,” Conteh said. “I own one.”

He said he neither dealt with finances or patients. “My role, I sit in the office,” he told The Daily Wire.

Asked how he finds the clients and whether he advertises, Conteh said that’s unnecessary.

“That is a very unnecessary question,” he said. “The patient just comes.”

“How do we as taxpayers know that they’re real? The database says you got $100,000 in a single month,” I asked.

“I don’t have an answer for you,” he said. He then issued vague threats, saying, “You still asking some questions that are very irrelevant and unnecessary. I already know who you are, your parents, and so forth.”

After I asked why Alieu Conteh said he mentioned my parents, he hung up, then called back and said he had not said that, but instead said the word “apparently.” Moments later, a woman who would not identify herself called from a different number and made clear that was a lie. “I’m gonna have to handle you a different way … let me tell you what will happen,” she said, before rattling off names of the reporter’s loved ones.

Kanu then called back and said, despite Medicaid records showing it using the billing code for “personal services” like homemaking, the company actually provided nursing service, installing intensive medical equipment like ventilators, and had closer to 40 Medicaid patients, significantly more than are shown in records.

The Daily Wire asked the Ohio Department of Medicaid about any possible discrepancy in the data. After nine days, the department pointed The Daily Wire to the federal government — which simply gathers the information from the states.

The couple that has repeatedly harmed people’s physical health and committed fraud is getting rich off of your money.

Owners of Medicaid companies that share True Home Healthcare’s building

This is just what unfurled behind a single door in the seemingly endless labyrinth of home healthcare companies billing Medicaid millions in Columbus.

Conteh is not even the only person with his last name, one of the most common in the Western African nation of Sierra Leone, taking advantage of the industry in Columbus.

Shortly before Alieu Conteh’s True Home Healthcare began billing Medicaid, a man named Alfred Conteh was busted for Medicaid fraud in Columbus and banned from the program.

In May 2020, Alfred was caught “submitting false documentation of home health services provided to Medicaid beneficiaries on dates when video surveillance confirmed he was not physically present at the homes of the beneficiaries in question,” the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general said.

He was charged in Franklin County Municipal Court in April 2022, and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in August 2022.

The punishment for Medicaid fraud is so lenient that it provides little deterrent. Alfred Conteh was only required to reimburse for charges that video conclusively proved he could not have provided ($607) while taking his word for the rest. His criminal case no longer appears in Ohio court records, which a court clerk said suggests it was expunged. The Ohio nursing board let him keep his license.

The only significant punishment is being placed on Medicaid’s Exclusions list for five years, preventing him from billing more.

Is Alfred Conteh related to Allieu Conteh, or is bilking Medicaid simply that common among immigrants from Sierra Leone? It’s hard for the government, or anyone else, to know for sure.

But with thousands of home health care companies, constantly being created and decommissioned, and whose LLC partners are not always public or seem to be placed in relatives’ names, that’s easy enough to get around.

Alfred Conteh has now moved to Alexandria, Virginia, the same city where Sue and Alieu lived, records show. He also shared a home with someone with the last name of Gbla — one of Alieu’s aliases. Allieu denied any relation.

Following earlier installments in this Daily Wire series,  Vice President JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy, now Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, both vowed to investigate potential fraud in the state.

Ohio’s current Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has said he has no reason to believe there’s any unaddressed fraud in the state, and stated in response to this investigation that “Ohio has extensive oversight mechanisms in place.”

Parker Thayer, an investigator for the Capital Research Center, contributed reporting.