Nick Shirley has done well in exposing the nationwide fraud system. It’s gaining exposure, but I feel like the actual scale is comparable to Brazil's GDP at this point. The daycare centers operated by Somalis and some East Asians are a bizarre racket. In New York City, Shirley found a center with nearly 7,000 members, each billed $1,600. Daycare and senior centers seem to be a gold mine.
Post reporter confronts senior daycare centers in Flushing, Queens after accusations of rampant fraud https://t.co/lJ592DYVom pic.twitter.com/TK1FQcqjBX
— New York Post (@nypost) August 4, 2026
🚨 Here is the full 53 minutes of my crew and I exposing New York fraud, we uncovered over $190,000,000 in fraud as these fraudsters use the elderly and needy to commit fraud through adult and personal home care scams in NYC. Your tax dollars are paying for elderly Koreans and… pic.twitter.com/9OiTL5p9zx
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) July 10, 2026
Now, NewsNation found that drug rehab and addiction treatment centers are another gold mine. Some of it you cannot make up: in Arizona, Native Americans are being kidnapped, held captive, and billed $8,000 day:
I heard about rehab centers essentially abducting Native Americans in Arizona, holding them hostage, and billing medicaid $8000 a day. I went there to look into it - and it was so much worse than I expected.
— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) August 3, 2026
My full story is tonight on @NewsNation at 11pm. pic.twitter.com/FZIaW7Jy6X
The vans frequent Indian reservations and circle the Phoenix Indian Medical Center. They’re sent by sober homes, promising to help struggling Native Americans but are actually doing the opposite.
Stewart says the facility operators would take people and give them more drugs.
“To keep you there. Keep you in the house. They want you to stay addicted because then you will think I get to stay for free and you get to just be there,” she said.
Stewart said the sober houses locked the Native Americans inside, like a prison. Some even had barbed wire to keep people from getting out. Then, the homes started billing Medicaid through the state agency “Access.”
The network press release has more—this will be a three-part series.
In a new three-part exclusive report presented on NewsNation, senior national correspondent Brian Entin investigates sober living facilities in Arizona, where thousands of Native Americans seeking treatment for addiction using their American Indian health care plans became victims of alleged Medicaid fraud. Scammers discovered a loophole in the American Indian Health Program (AHIP), which is part of the Medicaid system, and learned that registered providers can bill Medicaid directly for services, such as therapy sessions, addiction services, or behavioral health treatment. Once a scam provider was able to get an eligible patient into their fraudulent sober living homes, they’d start billing Medicaid for treatments the person would never receive. As they brought in more people, they were able to make more money. Some facilities were charging upwards of $8,000 a day. As part of the scheme, scammers were allegedly recruiting, and in some cases kidnapping, vulnerable people with promises of free addiction treatment. According to advocates, Native American elders who had no prior drug or alcohol addictions were also brought into these homes.
Reva Stewart, whose cousin vanished at the hands of a fraudulent sober living home, tells NewsNation that Native Americans are locked inside of these homes—some even with barbed wire—where scammers begin to bill Medicaid through a state agency. Ms. Stewart claims that the fraudsters were mostly Nigerians, Somalians, and Rwandans who managed the homes, adding that, “A couple of our women were impregnated by the managers of the house…We know of one woman who they took the baby from her, and we don’t know where the baby is to this day.” Angel Cruz, whose daughter was a victim of the state’s sober home crisis, believes that her daughter was being held against her will, saying, “She told a friend she was trying to get away from there. Trying leave.”
Attorneys John Brewer and Dane Wood, who are representing thousands of victims in a class action lawsuit accusing Arizona of ignoring warning signs and failing to stop fake sober living homes, say the fraud totals $3 billion. Mr. Brewer told NewsNation, “It was kidnapping, and it became so prevalent that everyone in the Native American communities would call it white van syndrome. These white vans were in parks, convenient stores, everywhere picking people up. They needed the bodies in these sober living programs. And they fed them alcohol and drugs to keep them under control, and the state knew this back to 2019. They kept them addicted to keep billing longer, and these victims wouldn’t even know where they were at. Let alone the name of a provider.”
Wild stuff.
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