Minnesota Medicaid Fraud Kills A Man

Minnesota has become Ground Zero in American social program fraud.  A contractor for the Minnesota Medicaid-funded program called Integrated Community Supports (ICS) provided no services to a homebound patient despite billing $ 462 per diem.  That patient, 39-year-old Rick Clemmer, was found dead on March 7, 2025 after having been dead for some time:

https://www.kare11.com/article/news/investigations/kare-11-investigates-unattended-death-raises-new-fraud-allegations-minnesota-medicaid-funded-ics-program/89-61240443-b8c1-4a60-969b-0b601c5fbd5d

KARE 11 Investigates: Death raises new fraud allegations in Minnesota’s Medicaid-funded ICS program
As costs soar and audits expand, one mother says her son’s death reveals the real-world price of neglect and alleged fraud.
By A.J. Lagoe, Kelly Dietz, Steven Eckert, Gary Knox - November 20, 2025

In an Eastside St. Paul apartment, 39-year-old Rick Clemmer was found dead on March 7, 2025. Police body-camera video from the scene captures a paramedic stating, “He’s got rigor and lividity - so he’s been deceased for a long amount of time.”

Clemmer’s death was ruled natural. The medical examiner cited an enlarged heart, but his mother, Mickey Clemmer, believes what’s written on the autopsy report tells only part of the story.

“If they were really providing him the services they should have been,” she told KARE 11, “he would be here with me.”

The Promise of Independence and Support

Rick battled serious mental illness for most of his adult life and struggled with addiction when off his court-ordered medication.

His past included civil commitments, incarceration, and living in supervised settings such as group homes. His family says he’d never lived on his own.

That changed in the summer of 2024, when he moved into his own apartment supported by a Medicaid-funded program called Integrated Community Supports or ICS.

Overseen by the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), ICS is designed to help adults with disabilities live independently with daily one-to-one assistance - help with health, safety, and household tasks so people can maintain stability and independence in their own homes and communities.

For that individualized support, private ICS companies can bill hundreds of dollars a day.

But for Rick, “that’s where I think things went downhill,” his mom said.

The Provider and the Paper Trail

Records obtained by KARE 11 show Rick’s ICS provider, Ultimate Home Health Services LLC, billed taxpayers $461.94 every single day, claiming to provide, on average, 12 hours of service daily.

“Fraud,” Mickey said bluntly. “They’re billing for something that never happened.”

She says she visited weekly, usually spending whole days at his apartment. “I can definitely confirm that those days there was nobody there,” she said, “I was there; there was nobody there.”

When Rick was found dead, St. Paul Police questioned an employee of Ultimate Home Health Services at the scene, his answers sharply undercut the company’s Medicaid billing:

Officer Rodriguez: When is the last time you guys know, seen him, or known that he was alive?

Abdul Ibrahim: Yesterday.

Officer Rodriguez: Around what time?

Abdul Ibrahim: It was yesterday morning…He is the most, one of the most independent, you know, residents here. So, we don’t got to do that much checking on him.

When asked if Rick was currently using drugs, the ICS worker responded, “I mean, to be honest, I do my daily check-ins, I have no idea what he does.”

That once-a-day “check-in” stands in stark contrast to the 12 hours of one-to-one care Ultimate Home claimed to provide each day.

Mickey believes if Ultimate Home Health Services had actually been seeing her son one-to-one for multiple hours every day (as they claimed), they could have called an ambulance in time to save him during a medical emergency.

Ibrahim did not respond to KARE 11’s multiple interview requests.

Hard to Find, Harder to Reach

Ultimate Home Health Services’ bare-bones webpage appears to still be in development with just placeholder text and images: the “Contact Us” button doesn’t work, and its address reads simply “Main Street, Anytown, MN.”

The business’s physical location, Minnesota Secretary of State records show, is a small suite in the back of a Bloomington strip mall - locked and empty when KARE 11 visited during business hours.

The listed manager is Othman Mohamed, who has multiple healthcare-related businesses registered in his name. Mohamed’s LinkedIn says he’s also a registered nurse working full-time at Hennepin Healthcare.

No one from Ultimate Home Health Services responded to KARE 11’s numerous interview requests to discuss the allegations of fraud.

According to DHS payment data reviewed by KARE 11, Ultimate Home Health Services billed the ICS program for the first time in 2024 and was paid more than $421,000 that year. 2025 data is not yet available.

Exploding Cost, Care Denied

Federal prosecutor Joe Thompson recently cited concerns about the ICS program while announcing indictments tied to KARE 11’s earlier fraud exposés of fly-by-night companies plundering the state’s Medicaid system.

“The level of fraud in these programs is staggering,” Thompson said.

KARE 11’s analysis of state billing data revealed a staggering explosion in ICS program growth. ICS spending grew from $26 million in 2022 to $168 million by 2024 - a six-fold increase in just two years.

In September, an ICS client named Cain Pence walked with his cane into a Capitol fraud hearing and offered blistering testimony of how he was being denied ICS services by his provider while taxpayers footed the bill. “$276 a day in my case and they don’t do jack,” he said, his voice rising in frustration. “They do nothing!”

He accused DHS of ignoring his repeated phone calls and, “Not doing a damn thing.”

Just weeks later, DHS told the Legislature it had suspended payments to 11 ICS providers due to credible allegations of fraud. The fraud allegations uncovered, according to DHS, primarily involved ICS providers billing for services that were not provided.

DHS now tells KARE 11, the number of ICS providers suspended has jumped to 17.

Editor’s Note: After the initial publication of this report, DHS informed KARE 11 they have suspended payment to Ultimate Home Health Services LLC. It does not go into effect until December 2nd in order to create a safe transition period for current clients. The Department issued the following statement:

“DHS issued a payment withhold to Ultimate Home Health Services LLC because our investigation uncovered credible allegations of fraud involving the provider billing DHS for services that were not provided. We are working with county case managers so they can ensure continuity of care for impacted clients. We promptly followed up on reports that we received about Ultimate Home Health, investigated and decided to shut off the money. When we suspect fraud, we refer providers to law enforcement.”

In October, Governor Tim Walz ordered third-party pre-payment billing audits for 14 “high-risk” Medicaid programs - ICS among them.

"These Vulnerable People Need Help"

For Mickey Clemmer, those policy moves come too late.

Rick’s case, she believes, is the human cost of alleged fraud in a system designed to support the vulnerable, which instead left her son to die alone.

“These vulnerable people need help,” she said. “You’re billing for them - then give them the help. And if you’re not, that’s fraud.”