Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) is taking aim at what she calls a glaring loophole in government contracting: fraudsters who simply shift their businesses into the names of spouses, children, or other relatives to keep the federal money flowing. The Iowa Republican, who chairs the Senate DOGE Caucus, unveiled a bill this week designed to shut that door, according to a report from The Daily Wire.
The proposal, dubbed the “No Cash for Cohabitating Kins of Crooks Act,” would bar anyone living with a convicted government contractor or service provider from entering into new federal contracts, grants, loans, or other financial transactions paid for by the government. The bill targets the common scheme where a business owner caught defrauding the government simply reopens under a family member’s name — even if they share an address and bank accounts — and continues to collect taxpayer dollars.
“Only the government would be naive enough to allow this,” Ernst said, according to the outlet.
Ernst’s legislation follows a series of investigative reports by The Daily Wire’s Medicaid Millions series, which documented how scammers across the country — and especially in Ohio — have used relatives to obscure ownership of companies billing Medicaid for home health care services. The series highlighted cases where husbands and wives operated as one economic unit, sharing both homes and bank accounts, yet the government treated them as separate, independent contractors.
A Pattern of ‘Scam-ilies’
The Daily Wire’s reporting spotlighted several examples. In Columbus, Ohio, Robert Acheampong, a Ghanaian man, pleaded guilty to defrauding the government by billing for non-existent elder care. After his conviction, his wife, Esther Acheampong, launched a Medicaid elder-care business, Omega Healthcare Services, which received $5.7 million in government payments. The business operated from the same office suite Robert had used. Robert served time but never paid his restitution, and a lien was issued against him — yet his wife continued to receive millions, and the couple lives together in an upscale home.
In another case, Medicaid records listed Mamusu Kanu as the owner of True Home Healthcare LLC, but her husband, Alieu Conteh, was a convicted con man with multiple convictions for providing false names to the government and a suspended nursing license. Kanu billed the government up to $100,000 a month. When approached by The Daily Wire, Conteh acknowledged his role: “Yes, I do have a lot of records. My role, I sit in the office.”
Ernst said her own oversight work uncovered additional “scam-ilies” and “criminal clans” across the country who were living off fraudulently obtained public funds. “The No Cash for Cohabitating Kins of Crooks Act is the direct result of Luke Rosiak’s investigation that exposed family fraudsters milking Medicaid in Ohio, which I invited him to share with the Senate committee I chair,” she said, referring to the journalist who wrote the series.
“This bill will close the fraudsters’ family businesses by prohibiting hooligans living in the same house from getting their hands on taxpayer money,” Ernst added.
Beyond Medicaid
While the examples come from Medicaid, Ernst’s bill would apply across all federal government contracting — including defense contractors. The proposed law states that if an owner of a government contractor or service provider has their eligibility terminated due to fraud or a criminal conviction, that owner’s spouse and any cohabitants “may not enter into a contract with the Federal Government, receive a grant, loan, subaward, or reimbursement from the Federal Government, or enter into any other financial transaction for goods or services paid for in part or full by the Federal Government.”
The Daily Wire series also exposed Roberta Acheampong (relation to the above Acheampongs not specified in the source) who renamed her janitorial company “One Community Mental Health” and billed the government $8 million. After the story ran, government prosecutors indicted her and her husband, recognizing the couple acted as one entity. They fled to Africa and are now wanted.
In June, Ohio’s governor signed a comprehensive Medicaid reform package designed specifically to address the Daily Wire’s findings, but since Medicaid is a joint state-federal program, vulnerabilities remain nationwide.
Ernst, a former auditor who has spent her career digging into government waste, is retiring in January. The bill represents one of her final pushes to close what she sees as a persistent gap in anti-fraud protections.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/doge-chair-sets-sights-on-scam-ilies-the-obvious-loophole-making-it-impossible-to-stop-fraud