St. Cloud Autism Center Owner Pleads Guilty to $6 Million Medicaid Fraud Scheme

(KNSI) — The owner of Star Autism Center LLC in St. Cloud has pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in federal court.

The U.S. Department of Justice said 27-year-old Abdinajib Hassan Yussuf was the center’s President and CEO and was at the center of a years-long scheme to defraud a Minnesota Medicaid program designed to help children with autism.

According to prosecutors, from late 2020 through December of 2024, Star Autism purported to provide one-on-one therapy to children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder through Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention program – a publicly funded benefit offering medically necessary services to people under 21 with ASD. Instead, the company employed unqualified workers, often 18 or 19-year-old relatives of company insiders with no formal education beyond a high school diploma, and no training or certifications related to autism treatment as behavioral technicians.

To keep the scheme running, Star Autism needed a steady pipeline of clients, so Yussuf and his partners recruited children from the Somali community and, in some cases, worked to get them qualified for autism services if they did not already have a diagnosis. He also paid monthly cash kickbacks to parents who enrolled their children, with payment amounts tied directly to the state-authorized amount for a child’s care.

Star Autism submitted millions of dollars in fraudulent Medicaid claims. Many of them were artificially inflated, some were billed without providers’ knowledge, and others were for services never actually provided. The kickback payments to parents were financed through those fraudulent billings to Medicaid, which then paid the claims.

In all, Star Autism obtained more than $6 million in EIDBI reimbursement funds from the Minnesota Department of Human Services and UCare. Yussuf shared proceeds with other owners and investors in the company. He personally used more than $100,000 in fraud proceeds to purchase a Freightliner semi-truck and wired more than $200,000 to Kenya.

Citing fraud, the state revoked the center’s license in January. The business was listed as closed as of December 31st, 2025.

Sentencing has not yet been set.

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