A federal jury in St. Paul has convicted a 45-year-old Lake Elmo woman of running a scheme that stole over $3.6 million from a state program designed to assist homeless people in finding and maintaining secure housing.
Sharmaine Meadows was found guilty on three counts of health-care fraud on Wednesday. The allegations result from false billing made to Minnesota’s now-defunct Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) program between 2020 and 2025.
According to the guidelines of the Medicaid-funded HSS program, service providers could bill up to 150 hours for housing transition support and another 150 hours for sustaining services per qualifying client. Meadows directed her staff to bill every customer up to the maximum 150-hour limit, regardless of whether any actual assistance was delivered.
Prosecutors claimed that Meadows billed the state for in-person help allegedly provided by remote workers in Illinois and the Philippines, where overseas workers were paid $6 per hour without benefits. Records also indicated claims filed for clients who were hospitalized at the time, as well as logs indicating that individual staff members were billing more than 20 hours per day, every day, for weeks on end.
Several Medicaid recipients testified at trial that Meadows’ company gave them little to no genuine support. When consumers inquired for assistance, employees informed them that they had already used their allotted program hours.
The state paid more than $3.6 million directly into Meadows’ bank accounts. Rising expenditures from widespread fraud schemes finally caused total expenses in the HSS program to surpass initial forecasts by 4,000 percent, prompting state officials to shut the program.
“The Fraud Division has arrived in Minnesota—and we are here to stay,” stated Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “The jury’s guilty finding in this case sends a strong message that those who steal from programs designed to benefit the most disadvantaged will face consequences. Meadows, as revealed at trial, fabricated documents to benefit herself while blocking crucial assistance from reaching those in need.”
According to U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen for the District of Minnesota, the prosecution focused on the misuse of taxpayer funding intended for low-income citizens.
“The defendant chose to defraud millions from a program meant to help vulnerable Minnesotans,” Rosen stated. “My office is committed to prosecuting those who steal from the American taxpayer.”
The FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, and the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit worked together to conduct the investigation.
Meadows faces up to ten years in federal prison for each fraud charge. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
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