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Nigerian chieftain allegedly scams California out of $34 million to live the high life

September 11, 2026 | | Print Article

While hard-working Americans struggle every spring to cover their tax bills, the rest of the world seemingly treats their hard-earned cash as a free-for-all.

We’ve heard the stories of large-scale government benefit fraud in Minnesota involving individuals of Somali descent, robbing taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars, and a national of Azerbaijan just pleaded guilty in federal court this week to three counts of health care fraud in connection with a $137 million scheme targeting Medicare Advantage Programs.

And now there’s a report of a Nigerian chieftain billing Medicaid more than $36 million, before allegedly using the money to “snap up” luxury properties in California and build a magnificent palace in Abatete, Nigeria. He even built a golden statue of himself, according to independent journalist Christopher Rufo.

Revenue from Chief Nathan Ogbatue’s California Home Health Agency, a taxpayer-funded company providing in-home medical care and specialty treatments, jumped from under $2 million from 2018-2021 to more than $34 million over the next three years, coming as he dropped over $7 million in California real estate buys, including a $2.7 million Riverside mansion.

Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government, spoke with the New York Post after reviewing CHHA’s Medicaid data.

“What jumps off the page isn’t the amount being charged for each service; it’s the extraordinary volume of services being billed,” he explained. “This agency went from roughly half a million dollars in annual Medi-Cal payments to $17 million in 2023, while reaching the very top of the statewide distribution for the frequency of certain nursing and home-health-aide claims.”

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Mark Haskins, a fraud expert and former investigator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told the newspaper he was alarmed by CHHA’s billing totals, small office, and failure to file mandatory disclosure forms.

“In my experience, companies with unidentifiable employees, billing for a large number of services, and failing to supply a utilization report to the state for more than six years that would easily verify much of the information in question have all the earmarks of a fraudulent shell company that fabricates stolen patient and even NPI numbers to submit fabricated billings,” Haskins said.

Ogbatue has not been charged for any wrongdoing.

“You’re working hard and sending half your paycheck to Uncle Sam, while Nigerian chieftains are pulling millions out of Medicaid and building golden palaces in the deepest jungles of Africa,” Rufo posted on X. “America is being looted.”

Yes, it seems the American taxpayer is forced to play the role of sucker to the rest of the world, courtesy of hometown governments and politicians who can’t be bothered enough to ensure a fraud-free process — of course, in too many cases, the stolen money seems to strangely find it’s way into their coffers.

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Here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story, as seen on X:

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Tom Tillison
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