State and federal agents searched Iska Inc. and Bright Horizon Therapy Center, which together drew about $34 million in Medicaid funds. Neither has been charged.
Key Takeaways
- Two EIDBI providers were searched, not charged. Minnesota’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the FBI, and HHS-OIG executed warrants at Iska Inc. and Bright Horizon Therapy Center, and DHS told Acuity it is withholding payments to both.
- State data puts their EIDBI revenue near $34 million. DHS payment data, current as of March 2026, show Iska received more than $16.7 million in EIDBI payments from 2018 to 2025 and Bright Horizon nearly $17.7 million from 2020 to 2025.
- The searches follow April warrants and a May takedown. The fraud unit searched five sites tied to four EIDBI businesses on April 28, and the Justice Department charged a $46.6 million EIDBI scheme on May 21.
- Federal officials announced new EIDBI charges a day later. At an October 30 news conference in St. Cloud, officials highlighted three newly charged EIDBI cases the Justice Department valued at about $35 million; none involves Iska or Bright Horizon.
At about 7 a.m. on Thursday, before the doors opened at Iska Inc., employees watched agents move in and out of the company’s autism center in St. Louis Park. Shortly before 8 a.m., a worker in a nearby office saw a second team enter Bright Horizon Therapy Center, at the rear of a strip mall in Edina, and begin carrying out records. By evening, FOX 9 reported that both centers were closed, the St. Louis Park site partly boarded where the glass at its entrance had broken.
The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office identified the two businesses that afternoon. Agents from Attorney General Keith Ellison’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU), working with the FBI and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), executed search warrants at both locations, the office said in a statement. Both companies provide services through the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) benefit, Minnesota’s Medicaid autism program, along with other Medicaid-funded services, and the MFCU is investigating both for Medicaid fraud.
No arrests or charges have been announced. A search warrant requires a judge’s sign-off, but it is an investigative step rather than a finding, and neither company has been accused of a specific offense in any public filing. Calls and emails to Iska and Bright Horizon were not returned, FOX 9 reported.
What Agents Searched in St. Louis Park, Edina, and Rochester
The operation reached beyond the two autism centers. FBI Minneapolis Spokesperson Matt Vogel told MPR News that federal and state agencies were conducting court-authorized activity at several sites in Rochester and the Twin Cities metro, and that HHS-OIG, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were taking part. Vogel said “no further details are available at this time.” FOX 9 reported that U.S. Postal Inspectors were also involved. Rochester police said they provided mutual aid to the FBI at multiple Rochester locations as part of fraud investigations, KARE 11 reported; authorities have not identified those sites or said whether any of them provide autism services.
Employees told FOX 9 that Iska operated seven days a week and served 10 to 15 children a day. The station later saw agents removing boxes and files from the company’s corporate office. State Department of Human Services (DHS) records show that Iska failed a site visit in 2024 and received a correction order, according to FOX 9.
Ellison cast the searches as part of his office’s continuing work. “We will keep holding fraudsters accountable without fear or favor,” he said, adding that the aim was to protect public dollars and the Minnesotans who rely on Medicaid. DHS, which administers EIDBI, said through a Spokesperson that it shuts off money when it sees evidence of fraud and refers suspected criminals to law enforcement. In a statement to Acuity, DHS said it is withholding payments to Iska and Bright Horizon. Both agencies applied for provisional licensure, the department said, and neither is currently provisionally licensed.
The Medicaid Dollars Behind the Two EIDBI Providers
The dollar figures attached to the two providers come from DHS payment data first reported by the Minnesota Star Tribune. Iska received more than $16.7 million in Medicaid funds for autism services between 2018 and 2025, the paper reported, and Bright Horizon received nearly $17.7 million from 2020 to 2025. DHS told Acuity the data was current as of March 2026 and provided the underlying quarterly file, which covers fee-for-service and managed care payments in the 14 programs the department has designated high risk. Acuity’s review of the file found that both totals reflect EIDBI payments alone. The same file lists nearly $7 million more in payments to Iska from four other high-risk programs, including about $2.6 million from Housing Stabilization Services, which Minnesota closed on October 31, 2025, over fraud concerns. Bright Horizon appears in the file’s adult rehabilitative mental health services data for 2021 through 2023, without payment amounts listed.
Payment totals alone do not establish wrongdoing; an EIDBI agency that grows and serves more children will bill more. They do place the two providers inside a program whose growth has drawn sustained federal attention. When the Justice Department announced its Minnesota Health Care Fraud Takedown on May 21, it said EIDBI claims had risen from just over $600,000 in 2018 to more than $400 million by 2025. That announcement charged two defendants in an alleged $46.6 million EIDBI scheme, which the department described as the largest Medicaid autism fraud case it had ever brought, along with 13 others in schemes involving housing, home supports, community supports, and child care programs.
Earlier EIDBI cases have already produced guilty pleas. As Acuity reported in May, the operators of Smart Therapy LLC and Star Autism Center LLC, whose centers the FBI searched in December 2024, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in schemes that prosecutors said relied on cash payments to parents and on billing for services that were never delivered.
A Second Coordinated EIDBI Search in Six Months
Thursday’s operation was the second time this year that investigators moved against several EIDBI businesses on a single day. On April 28, the MFCU joined the FBI and HHS-OIG in executing warrants at five sites belonging to four businesses that accepted Medicaid funds through the program. Those searches were part of a larger sweep; 22 federal search warrants were served in Minnesota that day, KSTP reported, including at child care centers.
The timing of the October searches drew notice for a separate reason. On Thursday morning, the White House announced that Vice President JD Vance, who chairs the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, would hold a news conference in St. Cloud the next day to announce new steps in the administration’s anti-fraud campaign. Late Thursday night, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota confirmed that Vance had canceled, without giving a reason, the Star Tribune reported. The office said the event would proceed without him at 1 p.m. CT on Friday, closed to the public, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, FBI Director Kash Patel, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson scheduled to speak.
At the news conference, Patel said agents had executed 17 search warrants on Thursday, KNSI reported. A Justice Department release issued the same day listed cases charged since September 30, three of them tied to EIDBI and valued at about $35 million combined: Feisal Mohamed Elmi, charged with 11 counts of health care fraud in an alleged $8.2 million scheme; Habiba Mohamed, charged with conspiracy in a $19.1 million scheme that prosecutors say involved kickbacks to parents; and Emily Marice Ravits, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker accused of serving as Qualified Supervising Professional for autism providers without performing the role. The release does not mention Iska or Bright Horizon
How Minnesota Has Rebuilt EIDBI Oversight Since 2025
The searches land on a program the state has spent the past year restructuring. DHS designated EIDBI one of 14 Medicaid programs at high risk for fraud, paused enrollment of new EIDBI agencies on November 1, 2025, and required existing agencies to apply for provisional licensure by May 31, 2026, with comprehensive licensing standards due to the Legislature by January 1, 2027. A 1:16 supervision ratio for behavioral aides took effect January 1 of this year. The enrollment pause was scheduled to run through October 31, 2026, according to a July DHS program integrity bulletin; DHS told Acuity that, following approval from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, it has extended the moratorium through April 30, 2027.
Enforcement has run alongside the rulemaking. Since October 2024, DHS says, it has completed 444 onsite visits to EIDBI providers, opened 73 investigations, made 25 referrals to law enforcement, and imposed 35 administrative sanctions. The state’s Revalidate 2026 review of nearly 5,600 high-risk Medicaid providers, which covered EIDBI, ended with 3,411 disenrollments, as Acuity reported this month in its coverage of proposed private equity rules for ABA providers.
The Attorney General’s Office has gained tools of its own. In May, the Legislature passed and Governor Tim Walz signed the Medical Assistance Protection Act, which the office says gives the MFCU new resources and stronger legal authority. The unit reports 358 Medicaid fraud convictions since 2019 and about $90 million in judgments and recoveries.
For EIDBI agencies with no connection to the investigations, those layers have meant more documentation, more site visits, and, for the past year, a pause on new competitors entering the program. They have not yet produced a public accounting of how much of EIDBI’s growth reflects fraud and how much reflects rising diagnosis rates and expanded access, a distinction provider associations pressed during this year’s legislative debate over billing limits. Other states have pursued ABA program integrity mainly through rate cuts and utilization limits; Minnesota’s approach has leaned more heavily on licensure and law enforcement.
Open Questions After the October 29 EIDBI Searches
Several questions remain unanswered. Investigators have not said what they were looking for, whether the Rochester activity involved EIDBI providers, or whether the searches at Iska and Bright Horizon connect to any of the cases announced in St. Cloud. For the children the two centers served, DHS said it is helping families move to other enrolled EIDBI agencies by pointing them to provider directories, encouraging them to request copies of their child’s Comprehensive Multi-Disciplinary Evaluation and Individual Treatment Plan so a new provider can begin care without delay, and connecting them with support networks including the Minnesota Autism Portal and PACER Center.
The state’s calendar is crowded through the winter. DHS has said it will notify provisional licensure applicants of its decisions by December 31, comprehensive licensing standards are due to lawmakers by January 1, 2027, and the extended enrollment pause runs through April 30, 2027. On the federal side, the White House fraud task force and the Justice Department’s Midwest Health Care Fraud Strike Force, which it extended to the District of Minnesota in May, give prosecutors more capacity in the state than they have had before. Whether Thursday’s searches lead to charges, and how quickly, will turn on what investigators carried out of the two centers.
Acuity requested comment from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.
