PORTLAND, MAINE — Maine's chief financial watchdog wants a promotion.
Matt Dunlap, the Democrat running against Republican former Gov. Paul LePage in Maine's 2nd Congressional District, has spent nearly five years as state auditor. During that time, Somali-run home-care agencies have drawn tens of millions of dollars from MaineCare out of offices where nobody seemed to work.
Dunlap didn't tackle the issue until a major scandal forced his hand.
'Mainers can't trust him with their tax dollars, and they won't trust him with their vote.'
When Dunlap sought the auditor job in 2020, after more than a decade as secretary of state, he admitted he was "utterly unqualified" for it. Maine law gave Dunlap nine months to earn a professional auditing credential.
He failed the test.
Dunlap had to forfeit the office as a result, though then-state Senate President Troy Jackson (D), now running against Republican Sen. Susan Collins for U.S. Senate, gave him the job back in November 2022 after he finally passed.
Dunlap's office is responsible for annual single audits, a federally required review of all Maine spending that uses national dollars. That includes evaluating whether Maine's Department of Health and Human Services has effectively safeguarded against improper billing for Medicaid, called MaineCare in Maine.
MaineCare’s payments to providers, including home health care companies, are part of the federal spending Dunlap’s office audits.
In September, Blaze News found dozens of home-care offices in Portland, Westbrook, and Lewiston that were empty during posted business hours. Some had Minnesota phone numbers, and calls made to them either routed to voicemail or to dead lines.
Many of those apparent ghost companies successfully billed the state on Dunlap's watch.
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Benjamin Roberts/Blaze News
The Maine DHHS polices MaineCare’s providers. It is the agency responsible for actually reviewing providers' bills, auditing them, and clawing back overpayments. Dunlap’s office is responsible for auditing the DHHS, testing whether the department’s safeguards actually work and reporting when they don’t.
Yet while Gateway and other suspicious providers billed tens of millions to MaineCare, and state health officials identified numerous overpayments, Dunlap never flagged a problem with how MaineCare reviews bills. His office only spoke up in March 2026, three months after the Gateway scandal broke.
Gateway Community Services took $28.8 million from MaineCare between 2019 and 2024, overlapping with Dunlap’s stint as state auditor.
It was state health officials, not Dunlap’s office, who caught Gateway after a review of 15,000 claims dating back to March 2021 apparently turned up nearly $1.1 million in overpayments.
Maine cut off Gateway’s payments in December 2025. Dunlap’s office didn’t flag MaineCare’s oversight of its providers until an audit in March 2026, three months later.
Federal investigators, not Dunlap’s office, were the ones who found that Maine made at least $45.6 million in improper MaineCare payments for autism services.
A former Gateway employee told the Maine Wire in May 2025 that he witnessed records being falsified, and his whistleblower claims went nationwide that December.
The state did cut off Gateway’s payments soon after, and in May, the DHHS affirmed “credible allegations of fraud” against the company, upholding the suspension. The suspension isn't a criminal finding but a freeze on Medicaid disbursements that allows investigators to review the case.
The overbilling, however, is confirmed. State health officials reviewed 15,000 Gateway claims from March 2021 to December 2022, a stretch that began on Dunlap’s watch, and are seeking to recoup nearly $1.1 million. Earlier reviews found the company was overpaid about $660,000 from 2015 to 2018.
Gateway missed its deadline to appeal the ruling in July.
And Gateway is not the only company facing scrutiny.
Community Home Health Care in South Portland pulled in $47,986,855 between 2019 and 2025 before its payments were suspended this year, months after the Maine Wire paid its office a visit. Five agencies operating out of 203 Anderson Street in Portland, a building they share with a Somali money-transfer branch, took in $13,774,554. Another three at 640 Brighton Avenue collected more than $11.6 million.
That’s over $100 million to 10 companies, much of it paid out while Dunlap was the state’s top auditor.
Golden Home Care was ordered to repay $1,676,126 after a 2024 audit, but the repayment order was later canceled. Luna Home Care never paid back its $262,120 and has billed MaineCare another $1.69 million since. Even when the state did catch overbilling on its own initiative, it seemingly couldn’t hold onto the money.
Dunlap’s office didn’t flag MaineCare’s oversight of its providers until March, three months after Gateway’s payments were halted.
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Benjamin Roberts/Blaze News
In its 2025 single audit, Dunlap's office found that MaineCare’s Program Integrity Unit, which is supposed to review Medicaid payments after they go out the door, “could not provide documentation of the methodology” it uses to verify claims. Maine paid $3.2 billion to roughly 10,600 Medicaid providers that year, and auditors said they “could not determine the completeness” of the unit’s oversight.
The audit warned that the unit’s program “may not provide adequate monitoring of all Medicaid services, resulting in potential noncompliance with Federal regulations.”
The report also notes that there were no “Prior Year Findings,” meaning Dunlap’s office did not previously raise the issue. The office considered this a “significant deficiency” in MaineCare monitoring.
That same report doesn’t estimate how much improper billing may have slipped through, and it never mentions Gateway.
The clearest evidence of the auditor’s issues came from the agency he was auditing. In its written response, the health department, which runs MaineCare, said the auditor’s office hadn’t raised concerns since 2015 about how the unit chooses which payments to check. It called the criticism a “newly found position.”
The department was trying to wave off the audit.
Instead, it confirmed that the auditor’s office had never raised this concern before, including in the years Gateway was billing the state.
“Matt Dunlap’s record tells Mainers everything they need to know: He is an incompetent bureaucrat who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near taxpayer dollars,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Maureen O’Toole told Blaze News. “Mainers can’t trust him with their tax dollars, and they won’t trust him with their vote.”
Dunlap is neck and neck with LePage in their congressional race, Blaze News' Poll Watch platform shows. Dunlap had a 3.3-point lead over LePage as of Friday.
Dunlap, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and the office of Attorney General Aaron Frey did not immediately respond to Blaze News' requests for comment.
This story was reported in collaboration with the Maine Wire’s Jon Fetherston.
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