Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit charged Salman Ahmed Elmi, a state-honored “Outstanding Refugee” award recipient, with eight felony theft counts Monday over more than $1 million in fraudulent Medicaid billing.
Elmi, 30, of St. Paul, operated Reva Health in Golden Valley from 2024 through 2026, a company that claimed to provide adult rehabilitative mental health services to Medicaid recipients, Ellison’s office said in a Monday release. The attorney general said the company billed for services that were never provided or were ineligible for reimbursement.
“Medicaid fraud steals money meant to provide healthcare to our low-income friends and neighbors,” Ellison said. “It is illegal and it makes my blood boil.”
The Minnesota Department of Human Services honored Elmi with its “Outstanding Refugee Award for Entrepreneurship” in 2021, according to state records cited by CBS News.
Prosecutors allege Elmi and other co-conspirators at Reva falsified documentation, paid recipients illegal kickbacks in exchange for their personal information, and used ineligible providers to deliver services. The complaint says the operation billed more than $1 million to the state Medicaid program.
Several of Elmi’s associates at Reva ran separate criminal enterprises and face charges filed by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the release said. Former Anoka County prosecutor Andrea Sampson and Frank Reeves were charged in connection with a sex-trafficking ring, Fox 9 Minneapolis reported. Prosecutors allege Elmi was aware of the illegal activities.
Elmi was held on $100,000 bail after his first appearance in Ramsey County District Court on Monday, the Star Tribune reported.
Conservative commentators seized on the case. Podcaster Benny Johnson claimed the agency that gave Elmi the award is the same one that administers Medicaid payments.
“You can’t make this up,” Johnson wrote on X.
FTC public affairs director Joe Gabriel Simonson, who also works on anti-fraud efforts at the White House, posted that Vice President JD Vance had criticized Gov. Tim Walz’s administration for doing little with its federally funded fraud unit, claiming the arrests followed pressure over lost federal money.
The charges follow months of conflict between the Trump administration and Minnesota over fraud in the state’s social programs. Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz paused $259 million in Medicaid funding to the state in February as part of what the administration called a “war on fraud.”
Vance referred Walz and Ellison to the Justice Department in June for a criminal fraud investigation after a Republican-led House Oversight Committee report alleged the two Democrats were aware of widespread fraud for years and failed to stop it. Ellison called the referral a “political stunt.”
A The Minnesota Department of Human Services spokesperson said Elmi’s alleged actions do not reflect the goal of the Outstanding Refugee Awards or Minnesota’s refugee community.
