The Nigerian chief who made millions from Medi-Cal
Last December, Chief Nathan Ogbatue arrived in a motorcade outside the grand entrance of a newly built palace in Abatete, Nigeria. A videographer shouted praises in Igbo, calling him “half man, half god” and commending him for building the palace “free of charge” for the Abatete community.
Ogbatue is hailed on social media as a philanthropist who has built roads and housing, sponsors annual medical clinics, and provides food for the needy in Abatete.
He is also, it turns out, CEO of California Home Health Agency (CHHA), a lucrative taxpayer-funded company that provides in-home medical care and a range of specialty treatments.
How did Ogbatue make his money? Between 2018 and 2021, CHHA made less than $2 million from Medicaid. Then, over the next three years, the company raked in more than $34 million — a massive increase, which coincided with a series of high-dollar real estate transactions. Experts we spoke with said that CHHA’s billing numbers raised major red flags.
CHHA’s website makes no mention of Nathan or Agnes Ogbatue. When we called the number on the site, a woman picked up, but declined to answer our questions, saying it was a customer service line only.
We drove to California Home Health Agency’s location in a strip mall in Riverside. The blinds were shut tight as we knocked on the door. After a while, a woman answered, and directed us to call Nathan.
We showed her a photo of Chief Nathan Ogbatue in Abatete standing in front of golden statues of himself and Agnes. She confirmed that Nathan Ogbatue was the man in the photo.
Next, we drove to the Ogbatues’ six-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion, but the gates were closed. We called and asked to talk, but Nathan himself brushed us off, saying he didn’t have the time. In a previous conversation over the phone, he denied that he was the “Owelle” (roughly translating to “chief”) of Abatete and said our investigation wouldn’t get anywhere.
“We worked really hard, to be honest with you. If we were doing anything funny we wouldn’t talk to you,” he said. “I’m talking to you because I have nothing to fear. What I’m telling you is that we worked hard.”
We spoke to Ogbatue over the phone three times. During two of those calls, we asked how many people he employed, but he would not give us an estimate.
Nathan Ogbatue was crowned chief of Abatete, a southern Nigerian farming town, in a boisterous ceremony in 2012. A YouTube video shows his acceptance speech, during which he pledged “to place the interests of Abatete first in all my private and official transactions . . . so help me God.”
Ogbatue has apparently delivered on that promise. He reportedly paid for a palace, roads, and renovations to the town’s civic center, which hosts multiple painted murals of the Ogbatues and sits beside two golden statues of the couple.
Villagers are grateful for his generosity. Two years ago, an outlet released a compilation of beneficiaries of Ogbatue’s philanthropy. Over the past 12 months, Ogbatue has sponsored a children’s Christmas party and distributed sacks of food to the needy.
As these projects took shape in Nigeria, we hoped to answer one remaining question: How did Chief Nathan Ogbatue make so much money through the Medicaid program?
California is riddled with Medicaid fraud. As City Journal previously reported, the state’s largest home health program is particularly vulnerable to scams. One expert estimated that up to 40 percent of all spending on that program is lost to fraud.
No officials have publicly accused CHHA of wrongdoing. Two experts we spoke with, however, suggested that the company’s billing patterns raise serious questions. Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government, reviewed CHHA’s Medicaid data and noted several potential issues.
“What jumps off the page is not the amount being charged for each service—it is the extraordinary volume of services being billed,” he said. “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.”
Mark Haskins, a fraud expert and former investigator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 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,” he said.
We sent Ogbatue a list of questions and assertions, including the reported Medicaid billing totals, before publication.
A lawyer from King & Spalding sent a long response. She argued that CHHA provides professionally ordered and medically necessary home health care via a “network of more than one hundred contracted registered nurses, licensed vocational nurses, and home health aides.” She suggested that the pandemic drove demand for CHHA’s services and claimed that the company’s revenue increase in 2022 “coincides with a health plan contracting for additional home health nursing services.”
While we were in Riverside, we spoke to Ogbatue on the phone outside of his home. During that conversation, he implied that we were racist for asking how California Home Health Agency made its money.
“All the white people that made more money than me, have you ever chased them?” he asked. “I don’t care if you’re white or orange or polka dot. A snake is a snake, whether it’s black, white, or orange.”
Ogbatue told us to contact his lawyer, Wilfred Aka. Aka was disbarred by the federal U.S. Tax Court and the federal Board of Immigration Appeals, was suspended by the California state bar in 2019 and 2020, and faced disciplinary charges with the state bar in 2025. He did not return our calls.
Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution. Madeleine Rowley is a researcher at City Journal. This article first appeared in City Journal.
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