Gallup Mayor Louis Bonaguidi is bringing attention to what he calls a health care scam for Arizona and a human trafficking scheme in New Mexico.
“It’s not only happening in Gallup, it’s happening in Farmington,” Bonaguidi said during a recent gathering of law enforcement agencies, covered by KOB 4. “It’s happening in Albuquerque, it’s happening all over.”
A TikTok video was used to highlight how older Native Americans are falling for the scam. The video recorded in Gallup and posted last week shows a man preventing an older gentleman from getting inside a scammer’s truck.
The scammer waves a business card and tells the older man that they are taking him to a care home in Phoenix. The older man gets in the truck, not realizing something is wrong until the man behind the camera speaks to him in Navajo. Then the older man gets out of the truck.
Gallup Police Chief Erin Toadlena-Pablo said her department has looked into 32 reports of missing persons suspected of being taken to the Phoenix area.
“Eighteen of those cases have been closed, while 14 are still active,” Toadlena-Pablo told the gathering.
Scammers allegedly target vulnerable Native Americans who do not speak English, promising to take them off the reservation and give them food, shelter and treatment in Arizona. The scammers then utilize the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS)— or Arizona’s Medicaid benefits—which pays a substantial amount to those fake treatment centers.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs estimated that AHCCCS paid out $53 million in 2019 to the fake centers, KOB 4 said. This year, she said the amount has increased to $668 million.
Toadlena-Pablo commented that saving people from being uprooted and manipulated is a race against time.
“We really do only have one shot to gather as much information as we can on these missing person cases,” she told the gathering. “Time is essential.”