Salman Ahmed Elmi, 30, of St. Paul, Minnesota, has been charged with eight felony counts: three of aiding and abetting theft by swindle and five of aiding and abetting theft by false representation. Prosecutors allege he co-owned Reva Health, a Golden Valley company providing autism and adult rehabilitative mental health services, and billed Medicaid for more than $1 million in services that were never provided or weren’t eligible for reimbursement.
Abused women
According to the criminal complaint, the scheme’s alleged mechanics were especially ugly: co-conspirators recruited young women who were homeless or struggling with addiction and housing, then used their identities to file fraudulent Medicaid claims in their names. Elmi allegedly transferred roughly $150,000 from the business accounts to himself. Two of his co-defendants, former Anoka County prosecutor Andrea Sampson and Frank Devone Reeves, face separate charges in Hennepin County tied to a sex-trafficking operation — meaning the trafficking charges belong to Elmi’s associates, not to Elmi directly, though prosecutors say some of the same victims were used across both schemes.
Civic Award
The detail fueling the “you can’t make this up” reaction is that in 2021, Minnesota’s Department of Human Services — the same state agency responsible for Medicaid oversight — gave Elmi its “Outstanding Refugee” award and an Entrepreneurship Award. A DHS spokesperson has since said his alleged conduct “do[es] not reflect the goal of the Outstanding Refugee Awards” and doesn’t represent the state’s refugee community; the award program has ended.
"Outstanding Refugee" winner Salman Elmi was just arrested for $1 million in Medicaid fraud, 8 felonies, and a sex trafficking ring pic.twitter.com/t07e1p6uTr
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 18, 2026
This case isn’t an isolated failure — it’s the latest entry in a Medicaid oversight crisis that’s been unfolding in Minnesota for years. The number of autism providers in the state grew 700% over five years, with payments rising from $6 million to nearly $192 million, and Minnesota doesn’t even license autism centers, though DHS verifies credentials for reimbursement. The U.S. Attorney’s office has said fraud likely exceeds $9 billion in Minnesota-run Medicaid services, much of it traced to the same networks as the pandemic-era Feeding Our Future scandal. DHS eventually hired Optum, a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary, to spend a year reviewing 14 Medicaid-funded programs identified as vulnerable to fraud, and the agency’s deputy commissioner has acknowledged it could take years to rebuild the state’s social service programs to prevent further wrongdoing. Legislative auditors examining Feeding Our Future blamed “inadequate oversight” and found the state Department of Education failed to act on warning signs of fraud — a pattern critics say recurs across DHS’s Medicaid programs.
Elmi was arrested, briefly held, and released after surrendering his passport, with a next court date set for October 4.