Dukuly In US$36M Fraud?

In 2024, at a ceremony in Monrovia, an emcee praised Sekou Dukuly, as then newly installed director of the government-owned national port system.

Dukuly had been “delivering multimillion-dollar profit increases everywhere he worked,” the emcee said.

He didn’t make his money in international shipping, however. He cashed in on Minnesota’s booming group home industry.

Minnesota companies linked to Dukuly collected at least US$36 million in taxpayer funds over the past 10 years, according to Minnesota Open Checkbook, a state website that provides transparency in government spending.

Dukuly has had a hand in businesses that have run at least two dozen group homes, almost all in the northwestern suburbs of Minnesota.

The state issued licenses, and paid Medicaid dollars for those businesses to provide care, and supervision to Minnesotans, typically those with mental illnesses, or physical disabilities.

But an investigation by MPR News, and its national investigative unit, APM Reports, shows that Dukuly’s financial success has come at a human cost, with multiple instances of residents being neglected, and even dying in group homes linked to him. And the money has gone into bank accounts tied to alleged financial schemes in Minnesota, and abroad, raising questions about the state’s oversight of the group home industry, and the billions of dollars that have flowed into it.

Dukuly’s involvement in the group homes linked to him varies. In most cases, he set up the companies behind the group homes, and often he declared an ownership stake in those companies. Some of the group homes have operated out of houses he owns, or has owned. And until a reporter contacted him last week, he was also the director in charge of day-to-day operations at three of them.

The state has found Dukuly-linked group homes, or their employees neglected residents in 10 cases. It investigated suspected maltreatment in those group homes on at least 22 occasions, four of which involved the death of a resident. The state found a fifth resident died after he was improperly discharged. Dukuly-linked group homes make up a small fraction of the approximately 1,600 licensed facilities statewide, but they account for a disproportionate share of the state investigations into group home deaths documented in a previous MPR News/APM Reports investigation.

Police officers say, they know some of those group home addresses by heart, because 911 calls from neighbors, staff, and residents come in so frequently. One frustrated suburban city council unanimously voted to shut down two Dukuly-linked group homes, “because they’d created so much neighborhood chaos.”

Despite living in Liberia, Dukuly was still running at least three Minnesota group homes until last week, according to a state licensing board.

Following a phone call from a reporter seeking comment for this story, Dukuly abruptly removed himself as the licensed assisted living director at two facilities.

The company, which Dukuly confirmed he owns, has 30 days to appoint his replacement. As of the close of business on Friday, August 14, he was still listed as the director of one Golden Touch Health Care group home in the state’s licensing database.

Being an assisted living director demands regular, on-site presence, according to the head of the licensing board. But it appears the board did not enforce that expectation for Dukuly.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said, it recently became aware through its own research that Dukuly was living overseas. But the department downplayed the significance of that discovery in a written statement, asserting: “nothing in statute prohibits a person from living out of state.”

The assisted living director, the position Dukuly held, is “not required to be onsite,” the statement added.

But Ezra Golberstein, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, who studies state health policy, and funding, described running group homes from overseas as “really messed up.”

“I don’t know where in the licensure, and inspection process this is falling through the cracks.”

Public records also show some of Dukuly’s financial practices may have crossed legal lines.

Dukuly Court’s Misrepresentation

Dukuly misrepresented his finances in two separate court proceedings, pleading poverty while controlling large amounts of cash, and real estate. A family court magistrate in one of those cases found money from his group home business accounts had been spent on what appeared to be personal expenses.

Though Dukuly studied accounting, and once worked as a tax preparer, three businesses linked to him collectively withheld more than US$45,000 in taxes from employee paychecks, but they didn’t pass that money on to the state, liens filed against group home properties show.

In Liberia

And in Liberia, a former business partner is currently suing Dukuly over control of a water bottling business.

The business partner provided receipts showing how he wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to bank accounts belonging to Dukuly’s group home businesses in Minnesota.

Minnesota’s social services sector has been under intense scrutiny in recent years. The state has designated 14 programs as highly susceptible to fraud.

Federal prosecutors have filed numerous charges as they’ve gone after “industrial-scale” Medicaid fraud in the state.

Fraud, both real and unsubstantiated, also led the Trump administration to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funds from Minnesota.

Neither federal nor state authorities have made such allegations against Dukuly, or his business partners. But the director who ran six group homes linked to Dukuly was stripped of his license this year after pleading guilty to Medicaid fraud at a prior employer.

Oversight of group homes in Minnesota is shared between the Department of Health, which licenses the facilities linked to Dukuly, and the Department of Human Services, which funds them through Medicaid.

“The allegations outlined in your reporting are deeply concerning,” a spokesperson for the Human Services Department wrote in response to questions about Dukuly’s activities in the group home industry. The department would not confirm whether it has open investigations into any businesses linked to him.

“We can say that an owner of a Medicaid program moving abroad would raise concerns for our investigators, even if it is not prohibited by law,” the statement from the department added.

But the Health Department did not express those same concerns.

Dukuly declined an interview request

“I simply don’t believe an interview is the appropriate avenue for addressing these topics, particularly the ones touching on family, and legal matters,” he wrote in a text message. “I believe the public record speaks for itself on the operational, and licensing questions.”

Dukuly also declined to answer questions when called by a reporter last week, and refused to say whether he was in Minnesota, or Liberia at the time. But a post on his Facebook page indicated he was meeting with shipping industry representatives in Congo Town, on the outskirts of Monrovia.

Dukuly, 46, immigrated to the United States in the 2000s, when he was in his mid-20s. His passport indicates that he currently has U.S. citizenship.

During his first decade in the United States, he struggled financially. In the early 2010s, while working as a loan processor in Minneapolis, Dukuly bought a house in Elk River, but within four years, he lost it to foreclosure. Debt collectors came after him in court for an additional $12,000 in unpaid bills.

But Dukuly appeared determined to turn his fortunes around. He worked as a tax preparer in Fargo while studying accounting at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. His first wife, Lucy Sheriff, wrote in an affidavit that he was “always on the go, and hustling.” Even when his daughter was born in early 2016, Dukuly stayed in Minnesota for just a week, and then headed back to work driving a taxi in Philadelphia, Sheriff explained.

But that same year, Dukuly finally got a break. He teamed up with Emmanuel Williams, his boss at the tax-prep service, to start a new business operating group homes in Minnesota: Golden Touch Health Care. Williams and Dukuly split the ownership 50-50, according to court records.

The business quickly took off, and Dukuly soon set up three more group home companies: Ashton Homes, Berkeley Heights Homes, and Unique Homes.

By August 2020, companies linked to Dukuly were authorized to run at least 11 group homes. Two of those companies collectively reported employing more than 60 people, according to data from the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program. The companies received loans totaling more than US$500,000 that were later forgiven.

With business booming, Dukuly developed a taste for luxury vehicles, including a Mercedes-Benz, a BMW SUV, and a Range Rover, parking and traffic tickets showed.

But by 2024, Dukuly said, he was ready for a change. “I spent 19 years in the states; I got tired and bored,” he said at the ceremony celebrating his appointment as the National Port Authority’s (NPA) managing director. “I achieved a lot in America. But I love Liberia.”

Dukuly has sold off much of his group home portfolio, but he maintains a hand in the industry. Last year, one of Dukuly’s appointed assisted living directors pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud at a previous job. Michael Nornie was stripped of his license, and banned from running group homes in the state. But rather than hiring a replacement, Dukuly became the sole assisted living director in charge of three facilities licensed to Golden Touch Health Care.

Life and death inside a group home with an absentee director.

About three years ago, Stacy Muchko moved into one of those Golden Touch group homes. Two years later, paramedics carried her body out under a white sheet, dead at 46.

Muchko had spent most of her turbulent life in institutions and group homes, once under court order. She’d been diagnosed as bipolar, and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as well as other lung conditions.

“She’s been sick most of my life, which is why she was in the group home so young,” said her adult child, Alex Muchko. “The best way that I could put it is that she is someone who tried her best with what was given to her in life.”
Dukuly is yet to address the situation, but investigation continues.

Source: www.mprnews.org