Portland Man Sentenced to Two Months in Jail for Stealing $46,585 in Welfare Benefits

PORTLAND, ME—United States Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty, II announced today that Dafle Abdullahi Ali, age 46, of Portland, Maine, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Portland by Judge D. Brock Hornby to two months in jail and two years of supervised release for making false statements to obtain Medicaid and food stamps benefits and theft of federal housing assistance funds. Ali pled guilty to these charges on May 2, 2013.

According to court records, in 2008 and 2009, Ali was an owner of and the director of finance for Home Health Care Solutions, a Portland company that provided home based personal care services to the elderly and disabled under the Maine Medicaid (MaineCare) program. During that period, Ali also received MaineCare benefits and food stamps. On February 19, 2009, Ali signed a form that he submitted to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) certifying that his joint income was only $1,382.50, paid bi-weekly (about $36,000 per year), and that he only owned one bank account with a $1 balance. In fact, Ali received more than $100,000 per year in income and had $48,000 in four bank accounts.

Between August 2006 to November 2008, Ali and his family resided in a public housing unit administered by the Portland Housing Authority (PHA). The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) paid a portion of Ali’s rent based on a formula that considered the amount of income and assets reported by Ali to PHA. Over that period, Ali underreported his income and assets to PHA and illegally received over $22,000 in rent subsidies.

According to U.S. Attorney Delahanty, as part of the defendant’s sentence, the court ordered the defendant to pay restitution and other payments as a special condition of supervised release totaling $46,585, which represents the total losses suffered by MaineCare, the federal food stamp program, and PHA. In imposing sentence, Judge Hornby noted that these crimes were not victimless. As a result of the defendant’s actions, other individuals who were truly needy were denied services.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; HUD; the U.S. Department of Agriculture; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; MDHHS’s Fraud, Investigation, and Recovery Unit; and the Healthcare Crimes Unit of the Maine Attorney General’s Office.