The death of an anti-ICE agitator in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this past weekend occurred right near an “autism clinic” at the center of an alleged multi-million-dollar Somali fraud scheme. The incident comes amid increased scrutiny of the state’s broken and shady welfare operations.
Leftist demonstrator and Department of Veterans Affairs nurse Alex Pretti, 37, was purportedly shot and killed by a federal agent on Saturday after seemingly impeding federal officials’ immigration enforcement efforts in the city. According to local officials and local and national reporting, the incident took place on or near Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis.
For those outside Minneapolis, the street name likely doesn’t ring a bell. But local residents may recall that Nicollet Avenue also happens to be the same road that’s the registered street address for Smart Therapy LLC, a supposed autism care center whose Somali leadership was recently charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly partaking in a major fraud scandal.
In September, the Department of Justice charged Asha Farhan Hassan, 28, with “wire fraud for her role in a $14 million autism fraud scheme.” She was also “charged with participating in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, for which she received $465,000.”
Hassan is of Somali descent, according to The New York Times.
Per the DOJ, Hassan and her partners’ allegedly illegal activities centered around the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI), a state health care program that provides medical services to individuals under the age of 21 who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In order to qualify for the program, an individual must fall within the noted age requirement; “be diagnosed with ASD or a related condition; have had a comprehensive multi-disciplinary evaluation (CMDE) that establishes their medical need for EIDBI services; and be enrolled in a qualifying healthcare program, such as Medicaid.”
The Justice Department alleged that Hassan registered Smart Therapy LLC with the Minnesota secretary of state’s office in November 2019. While Hassan purportedly listed herself as the sole owner, federal prosecutors claimed that “other individuals also had ownership stakes in Smart Therapy but were not listed on [Minnesota Department of Human Services] DHS documents, including because one of the owners previously owned an adult daycare and was excluded by DHS for three years due to her conduct running the adult daycare center.”
“Shortly after forming the company, Hassan enrolled Smart Therapy as a provider agency in the EIDBI program. As discussed below, Hassan also enrolled Smart Therapy in the Federal Child Nutrition Program under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future,” the DOJ press release reads.
The DOJ contended that, despite claiming to “be providing necessary one-on-one [Applied Behavior Analysis] ABA therapy to children with autism,” Smart Therapy was actually employing “unqualified individuals as ‘behavioral technicians’” who were “often 18- or 19-year-old relatives with no formal education beyond high school and no training or certifications related to the treatment of autism.”
“To run their fraud scheme, Hassan and her partners needed children who had an autism diagnosis and an individual treatment plan. Hassan and her partners approached parents in the Somali community to recruit their children into Smart Therapy. Where a child did not have an autism diagnosis and an individual treatment plan, Hassan and her partners worked with a [Qualified Supervising Professional] QSP to get the recruited child qualified for autism services. There was no child that Smart Therapy was not able to get qualified for autism services,” according to the DOJ.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Hassan and her team shelled out “monthly cash kickback payments” to parents of children enrolled at Smart Therapy to boost the organization’s enrollment, which purportedly ranged from $300-1,500 “per month, per child.” They further claimed that competition for parents’ business often led to bidding wars among Smart Therapy and similarly fraudulent autism clinics, in which parents threatened to leave Smart Therapy if they could get a better kickback at another center.
These kickback payments allegedly made by Hassan and her team at Smart Therapy were covered by making “fraudulent billings to Medicaid” that totaled millions of dollars, according to the Justice Department. Many of these claims, the agency noted, “were fraudulently inflated, were billed without providers’ knowledge, and were for services that were not actually provided.”
“Hassan submitted claims seeking reimbursement for the maximum number of hours permitted by Medicaid for a given treatment or service given to a particular client, when the client only received a fraction of those treatment hours, if any treatment was provided at all on that day. These claims were then repeated for numerous other providers,” the DOJ presser reads. “Hassan submitted claims for reimbursement to Medicaid that included fraudulent signatures or approvals from the required medical providers or supervising QSPs. In reality, the providers and QSPs either did not work for Smart Therapy, were out of the country on the day the services were provided or had not participated in or signed off on the services listed in the claims.”
Prosecutors contended that Hassan and her partners split the $14 million in EIDBI reimbursement funds they received from the state — several “hundreds of thousands” of which Hassan allegedly sent abroad. As previously noted, federal prosecutors also charged Hassan over her and Smart Therapy’s role in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme.
Smart Therapy has since had its license revoked by the state earlier this month, with Hassan having pled guilty to the allegations in December, according to a local Fox affiliate.
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