Author name: LifeZette

Chief Nathan Ogbatue arrived by motorcade outside a newly built palace in Abatete, Nigeria, last December as a videographer praised him in Igbo, calling him “half man, half god” and crediting him with building the palace “free of charge” for the community.

Ogbatue has been celebrated on social media for philanthropy in Abatete, including building roads and housing, sponsoring annual medical clinics and providing food to people in need.

He is also CEO of California Home Health Agency, or CHHA, a taxpayer-funded company providing in-home medical care and specialty treatments.

CHHA received less than $2 million from Medicaid between 2018 and 2021.

Over the following three years, the company received more than $34 million.

The increase coincided with millions of dollars in real estate purchases by Ogbatue and his wife, Agnes.

Between 2023 and 2024, the couple acquired more than $7 million in property, including a $2.7 million Riverside mansion featuring a sports court, putting green, archery range, and pool.

They also purchased a $1.9 million beach house and another $1.4 million in Riverside properties.

CHHA dates back at least to 2013, when Agnes submitted the company’s first publicly listed utilization report.

She appears to have filed the required report annually through 2019.

California’s Health Care Access and Information department said it has not received one since then “despite continued requests.”

During that same general period, CHHA’s Medicaid revenue increased significantly.

The agency received $89,570 in 2018 and nearly $4 million in 2022.

It received more than $17 million in 2023 and more than $13 million in 2024.

Ogbatue’s real estate holdings followed their own upward trajectory.

He purchased a Riverside home for $330,000 in 2000 before the multimillion-dollar purchases made with his wife in 2023 and 2024.

The couple’s Redondo Beach property previously belonged to another Nigerian family and had been used as collateral for the bail bond of Tamara Motley before Ogbatue acquired it.

Motley was sentenced to prison in December 2023 for submitting $24 million in fraudulent Medicare claims.

As of 2023, Motley was married to former Nigerian Sen. Ahmed Ogembe, whom the Ogbatues later named as a defendant in litigation involving the Redondo Beach property.

CHHA’s website does not identify Nathan or Agnes Ogbatue.

A woman who answered the telephone number listed on the website declined to answer questions, saying the number was for customer service.

WATCH:

At CHHA’s location in a Riverside strip mall, the blinds were closed. After someone knocked on the door, a woman eventually answered and directed questions to Nathan.

When shown a photograph of Ogbatue in Abatete standing near golden statues depicting himself and Agnes, she confirmed that he was the man pictured.

Attempts were also made to speak with Ogbatue at his six-bedroom, six-bathroom Riverside mansion, but its gates were closed. Ogbatue declined to meet, saying he did not have time.

In an earlier telephone conversation, he denied being the “Owelle,” roughly translated as “chief,” of Abatete and said the investigation would not get anywhere.

“We worked really hard, to be honest with you. If we were doing anything funny we wouldn’t talk to you,” Ogbatue said.

“I’m talking to you because I have nothing to fear. What I’m telling you is that we worked hard.”

Ogbatue was contacted by telephone three times.

During two conversations, he was asked how many people he employed but did not provide an estimate.

Ogbatue was crowned chief of Abatete, a farming town in southern Nigeria, during a 2012 ceremony.

In an acceptance speech captured on video, he pledged “to place the interests of Abatete first in all my private and official transactions . . . so help me God.”

His projects in Abatete reportedly include the palace, roads and renovations to the town civic center.

The center contains painted murals depicting the Ogbatues and is located beside two golden statues of the couple.

A compilation released two years ago featured beneficiaries of Ogbatue’s philanthropy. During the past year, he has also sponsored a children’s Christmas party and distributed sacks of food to people in need.

Questions remain about how CHHA’s Medicaid revenue increased so substantially.

Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said earlier this year that California’s number of home health agencies nearly doubled between 2019 and 2024.

“In 2024 alone, spending for home health care in California increased by more than 21 percent,” Oz said, “representing the largest growth rate for any major health category nationwide.”

No officials have publicly accused CHHA of wrongdoing. Two fraud experts who examined aspects of the company’s operations and billing, however, raised questions about its patterns.

Haywood Talcove, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government, reviewed CHHA’s Medicaid data and focused on the volume of services billed.

“What jumps off the page is not the amount being charged for each service—it is the extraordinary volume of services being billed,” Talcove 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 U.S. Department of Agriculture investigator, pointed to CHHA’s billing totals, its office and the missing utilization reports.

“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,” Haskins said.

Talcove said CHHA’s missing utilization reports highlighted what he viewed as a broader oversight problem.

“California appears to have had a significant oversight gap: one part of the state was responsible for collecting the reports, another for licensing the provider, and another for paying the Medi-Cal claims,” he said.

“The failure to file mandatory reports apparently did not stop the provider from billing or receiving millions of dollars.”

Before publication, Ogbatue was sent questions and assertions that included the reported Medicaid billing figures.

An attorney from King & Spalding responded that CHHA provides professionally ordered, medically necessary home health care using a “network of more than one hundred contracted registered nurses, licensed vocational nurses, and home health aides.”

She said pandemic-era demand contributed to the growth and that CHHA’s 2022 revenue increase “coincides with a health plan contracting for additional home health nursing services.”

Haskins questioned that explanation and again focused on the absence of utilization reports and the identities of those providing services.

“If the CHHA claims over 100 clinicians on 1099s, submitting an accurate HCAI report would create a permanent, public audit trail showing an impossible ratio of visits to payroll, massive contract labor line items, or billing volume that contradicts their CDPH staffing ratios,” Haskins said.

“However, by skipping the filing, they keep their aggregate utilization numbers out of public oversight data sets.”

During another telephone conversation outside Ogbatue’s Riverside home, he suggested questions about CHHA’s finances were racially motivated.

“All the white people that made more money than me, have you ever chased them?” Ogbatue 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 directed further questions to his lawyer, Wilfred Aka.

Aka was disbarred by the federal U.S. Tax Court and federal Board of Immigration Appeals, suspended by the California state bar in 2019 and 2020, and faced disciplinary charges from the state bar in 2025. He did not return calls.