Three hours into an operation looking for Native Americans who were lured to behavioral health residential facilities in Arizona by scammers seeking Medicaid benefits, officers had already found one person who was reported missing out of Gallup.
Harland Cleveland, the special operations coordinator for the Navajo Nation Police Department, said Friday that officers had “made contact with 23 Navajos that were displaced” and they were able to “locate a missing person out of New Mexico and clear that individual.”
During the hour-and-a-half-long press conference officers on the streets contacted four more people, Cleveland said.
The Gallup Police Department told the Journal last week that 32 people from the border town were believed to be at the fraudulent facilities. Of those, 14 were still missing at that time.
The scammers, often driving a van, find Native Americans on reservations or in the streets in Arizona, New Mexico and other nearby states and ask if they want to get treatment for substance abuse issues. However, once transported to Phoenix the victims are made to sign up for Medicaid benefits or provide food stamps for food. They are not provided any treatment and then are either turned out on the street or leave on their own.
The FBI has been investigating the homes for health care fraud. Arizona officials said it should be looked at as “human trafficking” as well.
Operation Rainbow Bridge, announced on Friday, is a reference to a Navajo story where “hero twins use a rainbow to move from place to place — so we’re using that symbolism of our people moving from the problematic facilities into a safe place,” said Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch.
She said the Navajo Nation president established an incident command team last week to find people who are in fraudulent facilities and get them home or to reputable centers.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said that among the entities where there has been a credible allegation of fraud, there could be as many as 8,000 victims. However, some of those on their lists could be just names and dates of birth that the scammers put down — not actual people.
“Our agency thinks anywhere in the 5,000 to 8,000 range, of real human beings but again, that’s an estimate,” Mayes said.
She said over the past three years agents have paid visits to the homes, arrested suspects, made more than 45 indictments, and seized over $75 million but it has been “a game of Whac-A-Mole.” She expects many more indictments to come.
Over the past month Arizona’s Medicaid system has started implementing more controls and procedures and the state is “taking aggressive actions to stop fraudulent Medicaid billing practices by scam artists and criminals masquerading as legitimate behavioral health providers,” Mayes said.
She lay the blame on the previous administration, saying that “what this state has allowed to happen is unconscionable.” Mayes, and the current Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, were elected in 2022.
“I am sorry that the previous administration did not take aggressive action to stop this fraud and to stop this human trafficking in its tracks much sooner than we were able to do this week,” Mayes said. “It is unacceptable that it took this long. … This was a stunning failure of government. There is no other way to put it but it ends now.”
