Federal prosecutors charged a Minnesota woman with wire fraud on Wednesday over her alleged role in a $14 million scheme to defraud the state’s Medicaid autism treatment program.
Asha Farhan Hassan, 28, has been accused by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota of stealing from the state’s Early Intensive Developmental Behavioral Intervention services program. She was also allegedly involved in defrauding Feeding Our Future, the largest known COVID-19-related fraud scheme.
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“Today’s charges mark the first in the ongoing investigation into fraud in the EIDBI Autism Program,” said acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson. “To be clear, this is not an isolated scheme. From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Each case we bring exposes another strand of this network. The challenge is immense, but our work continues.”
Her attorney, Ryan Pacyga, said she will plead guilty to the charge.
“Ms. Hassan is someone who genuinely wanted to help people in the community with programs, and I do believe that she got into business for the right reasons in her heart. But at some point, the billing got out of control, the fraud started to happen and it snowballed quickly,” Pacyga told the Minnesota Reformer.
She and several others created Smart Therapy in 2019 to supposedly provide one-on-one therapy to children with autism.
The fraud scheme involved recruiting children from Minnesota’s Somali community for autism services, oftentimes giving them fake diagnoses and treatment plans. Smart Therapy quickly became one of the state’s biggest autism treatment providers. It employed 18 to 29-year-olds with no education beyond a high school diploma and no certifications to treat children with autism.
Prosecutors said Hassan paid kickbacks to parents ranging from $300 to $1,500 per child to enroll them in Smart Therapy.
“Often, parents threatened to leave Smart Therapy and take their children to other autism centers if they did not get paid higher kickbacks. Several larger families left Smart Therapy for higher kickbacks at other autism centers. Hassan understands that most autism providers in the Somali community pay kickbacks. Smart Therapy paid their kickbacks in cash,” prosecutors said.
Between 2019 and 2024, Smart Therapy received more than $14 million from Medicaid through the Minnesota Department of Human Services and U Care.
MINNESOTA NONPROFIT LEADER CONVICTED IN LARGEST KNOWN COVID-19 FRAUD SCHEME
While defrauding the autism program, Hassan also used Smart Therapy to submit fraudulent claims to Feeding Our Future, a pandemic-era food assistance program. Between 2020 and 2021, Hassan claimed to serve nearly 200,000 meals to children in Smart Therapy and was reimbursed about $465,000, according to court documents.
Hassan shared her fraudulent money with her partners and sent hundreds of thousands of dollars abroad, even using some to purchase real estate in Kenya.