Anambra businessman Nathan Ogbatue faces scrutiny over $36 million Medicaid earnings

Anambra-born entrepreneur Nathan Ogbatue is facing scrutiny over $36 million he received from the United States healthcare system after failing to file mandatory utilisation reports for his company, according to Peoples Gazette.

Ogbatue is chief executive of California Home Health Agency (CHHA), a taxpayer-funded firm providing home health aide, skilled nursing and therapy services. He filed utilisation reports between 2018 and 2021, earning $2 million over that period, but stopped filing them just as CHHA’s Medicaid revenue surged to $34 million over the following three years.

Revenue rose from $89,570 in 2018 to nearly $4 million in 2022, then $17 million in 2023 and $13 million in 2024. Ogbatue, celebrated as “half man, half god” in his hometown of Abatete for funding a palace, roads and houses, denied wrongdoing, insisting he “worked really hard.” Fraud experts cited by the report, including Mark Haskins and Haywood Talcove, flagged the unfiled reports and unusually high billing volumes as red flags typical of fraudulent shell operations.

Ogbatue has not been formally accused of wrongdoing and referred further questions to his lawyer, Wilfred Aka, who was previously disbarred and suspended by disciplinary bodies.