Niece of Somali leader convicted in HMO billing scam
Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 4:06 pm
Balo kugu dhacday.
Jurors found that Omar, 44, of Eden Prairie, participated in a scheme that bilked more than $1.5 million in medical assistance payments between 2001 and 2004, ostensibly for interpreting services that were never provided.
By DAN BROWNING
Friday, December 14, 2007
Indadeeq Omar, the niece of a former Somali president and a prominent member of the Twin Cities Somali community, was convicted Thursday of a wide-ranging health care fraud and money laundering conspiracy after a six-day federal court trial in Minneapolis.
Jurors found that Omar, 44, of Eden Prairie, participated in a scheme that bilked more than $1.5 million in medical assistance payments between 2001 and 2004, ostensibly for interpreting services that were never provided. The indictment says that Omar, her husband, Mohamed Essa, and a former Medica employee named Tou Chaiker Vang conspired to submit phony bills for the services.
Vang, 39, of Maplewood, pleaded guilty in the case and testified against Omar. Essa, 51, has fled and remains a fugitive. That left just Omar to stand trial.
With her three young daughters looking on, Omar testified Tuesday that she knew nothing about the alleged crimes and merely did what her late brother, Ahmed Omar, had told her to do when she submitted claims for the phantom interpreting services.
But assistant U.S. attorneys John Marti and William Otteson put on overwhelming evidence demonstrating that she was president and secretary of Global Interpreters Services Inc., and had overseen the filing of "tens of thousands" of bogus claims to Medica, which processed the Medicaid payments for the government.
Marti told jurors in his closing arguments that Omar and her husband had spent the money they got from the scheme lavishly. They spent $18,000 to whiten Omar's teeth. They paid $205,985 in cash for a down-payment on their $600,000 house. They paid $43,000 for a custom Chrysler 300 C sedan. And they paid about $45,000 a year in tuition for their three daughters, ages 9, 15 and 17, to attend the International School, he said.
Omar, who in 2002 received an award for her work with Somali refugees, now faces decades in prison.
"These guilty verdicts today send a message about the seriousness of this type of financial fraud," the IRS said in a statement after the verdict. "Health Care Fraud is an emphasis area for our agency and our role in multi-agency task force investigations includes documenting the flow of the money to show how the perpetrators of these schemes financially benefit from their fraudulent activities."
Omar is from a prominent family in Somalia. She testified that her father had been the nation's education minister, and her uncle, Ali Scermarke Abdirascid, served as prime minister of Somalia when it gained its independence in 1960. Her maternal uncle was elected to parliament in 1964 and became president in 1967 but was assassinated just over two years later.
Source: Star Tribune, Dec 14, 2007
http://www.hiiraan.com/news2/2007/Dec/n ... _scam.aspx
Jurors found that Omar, 44, of Eden Prairie, participated in a scheme that bilked more than $1.5 million in medical assistance payments between 2001 and 2004, ostensibly for interpreting services that were never provided.
By DAN BROWNING
Friday, December 14, 2007
Indadeeq Omar, the niece of a former Somali president and a prominent member of the Twin Cities Somali community, was convicted Thursday of a wide-ranging health care fraud and money laundering conspiracy after a six-day federal court trial in Minneapolis.
Jurors found that Omar, 44, of Eden Prairie, participated in a scheme that bilked more than $1.5 million in medical assistance payments between 2001 and 2004, ostensibly for interpreting services that were never provided. The indictment says that Omar, her husband, Mohamed Essa, and a former Medica employee named Tou Chaiker Vang conspired to submit phony bills for the services.
Vang, 39, of Maplewood, pleaded guilty in the case and testified against Omar. Essa, 51, has fled and remains a fugitive. That left just Omar to stand trial.
With her three young daughters looking on, Omar testified Tuesday that she knew nothing about the alleged crimes and merely did what her late brother, Ahmed Omar, had told her to do when she submitted claims for the phantom interpreting services.
But assistant U.S. attorneys John Marti and William Otteson put on overwhelming evidence demonstrating that she was president and secretary of Global Interpreters Services Inc., and had overseen the filing of "tens of thousands" of bogus claims to Medica, which processed the Medicaid payments for the government.
Marti told jurors in his closing arguments that Omar and her husband had spent the money they got from the scheme lavishly. They spent $18,000 to whiten Omar's teeth. They paid $205,985 in cash for a down-payment on their $600,000 house. They paid $43,000 for a custom Chrysler 300 C sedan. And they paid about $45,000 a year in tuition for their three daughters, ages 9, 15 and 17, to attend the International School, he said.
Omar, who in 2002 received an award for her work with Somali refugees, now faces decades in prison.
"These guilty verdicts today send a message about the seriousness of this type of financial fraud," the IRS said in a statement after the verdict. "Health Care Fraud is an emphasis area for our agency and our role in multi-agency task force investigations includes documenting the flow of the money to show how the perpetrators of these schemes financially benefit from their fraudulent activities."
Omar is from a prominent family in Somalia. She testified that her father had been the nation's education minister, and her uncle, Ali Scermarke Abdirascid, served as prime minister of Somalia when it gained its independence in 1960. Her maternal uncle was elected to parliament in 1964 and became president in 1967 but was assassinated just over two years later.
Source: Star Tribune, Dec 14, 2007
http://www.hiiraan.com/news2/2007/Dec/n ... _scam.aspx
