A whistleblower recently accused Gateway Community Services, a health services contractor, of defrauding the Medicaid program in Maine.
Christopher Bernardini, who worked as the program coordinator for Gateway Community Services from May of 2018 to April of 2025, told NewsNation that the health services contractor managed an electronic monitoring system that filed false records of visits to disabled and low-income clients that never happened.
Gateway Community Services’ website describes the organization as a “trusted resource for immigrant, refugee, and asylee communities across Greater Portland and Lewiston-Auburn.” The Post Millennial reported that the locations served by Gateway Community Services have large numbers of Somali migrants.
Bernardini told NewsNation that Maine taxpayers were charged for services that were allegedly provided by Gateway Community Services but were manipulated by the organization as part of a fraud scheme.
“I just couldn’t fathom it — I thought we were helping people; I thought this was all on the up-and-up. I have a passion for helping people and I thought that we were doing the right thing this whole time,” Bernardini said.
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The whistleblower added that he became disillusioned “when I saw how they were swindling people. When I had clients calling me to tell me their staff hadn’t shown up and I was told to bill those hours anyway. It just got worse and worse until I started really putting up a stink.”
An anonymous former Gateway employee also gave whistleblower testimony to NewsNation. The whistleblower claimed they witnessed “many things happening that shouldn’t have been,” such as “timecards being manipulated to show services being provided they were not — and times also being manipulated.”
According to Maine Wire, Gateway Community Services CEO Abdullah Ali came from Somalia to Maine as a refugee. The outlet noted that Ali ran for president of the Somali state of Jubaland in 2024 and admitted in an interview, “When I was in the U.S., I contributed to the financial support for the Jubaland-Somali army. To help the troops buy weapons, bullets and food.”
NewsNation reported that the MaineCare Services Program Integrity Unit discovered in 2022 that Maine’s Medicaid program overpaid Gateway Community Services by $776,000.
In response to the allegations claiming that Gateway Community Services defrauded Maine’s Medicaid program, MaineCare, State Senator Matt Harrington (R-York) issued a statement on Facebook, saying, “I demanded a full investigation when I heard initial reporting about this welfare fraud scandal last May. The Mills Administration has neglected obvious and credible reports of Somali-linked systemic fraud in the MaineCare system. This is an outrageous betrayal of Maine taxpayers.”
