A Twin Cities woman is charged with defrauding both a state program that helps young people with autism and the Feeding Our Future federal nutrition program.
The U.S. Attorney's Office says 28-year old Asha Hassan ran a sham business called Smart Therapy that purported to provide one-on-one therapy to children with autism, often employing 18 or 19-year old relatives with no formal education or training.
Hassan is the first person to be formally charged in the autism fraud investigation. In December, FBI agents searched at least two Minnesota autism centers as part of an investigation into alleged Medicaid fraud.
"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.”
The charges in the $14 million scheme allege Hassan provided kickbacks to parents as an incentive to enroll their children, and was reimbursed millions of dollars in claims from Medicaid, the Minnesota Department of Human Services and UCare.
Authorities say Hassan also submitted nearly a $500,000 in fraudulent claims to Feeding Our Future, claiming to serve 300 children breakfast and lunch seven days a week. Between 2020 and 2021, Hassan claimed to have served nearly 200,000 meals to children at the Smart Therapy site, racking up the near half-a-million in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, beginning in April 2020, Aimee Bock, the founder and executive director of Feeding Our Future, oversaw a massive scheme to defraud the Federal Child Nutrition Program carried out by sites under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future.
Bock and Feeding Our Future sponsored entities that submitted fraudulent reimbursement claims and fake documentation while purporting to serve hundreds and, in many instances, thousands of children per day.
Bock and her company sponsored the opening of nearly 200 Federal Child Nutrition Program sites despite knowing that the sites intended to and did submit fraudulent claims.
So far, there has been $250 million in fraud attached to Feeding Our Future. Bock and a co-defendant, Salim Ahmed Said, were charged and found guilty of 28 criminal accounts, accused of orchestrating the scheme to defraud the federal government. Over 70 people have now been charged in the sprawling case.
Eight people also now face federal charges related to a multi-million dollar Housing Stabilization Fraud scheme in Minnesota.