EXCLUSIVE: Medicaid "loophole" crosses state lines
Uplifting Journey-affiliated company enticed Oregon homeless, had them apply for Washington Medicaid using fake address, kicked them out when they asked questions
Julius Maximo is involved with an array of Medicaid-funded businesses in Oregon, including Uplifting Journey, which lost Medicaid funding after Oregon Roundup Foundation reporting. Photo by Damian Fagerlie.
Damian Fagerlie, 31, found himself without a place to live in October 2025. His mother-in-law asked Fagerlie and his spouse, Morgan Sanders, to move out of her house. Fagerlie and Sanders, who had long struggled to find a place to live in the Portland, Oregon area, were out of options. Then, Fagerlie’s online acquaintance told him about a house on Tippitt Place, where Portland and Tigard meet, that provided housing and counseling for people without a place to live.
Fagerlie moved into the house, located on a usually quiet cul de sac of single family homes in early October. Andre, the house manager, told Fagerlie Andre’s employer, Versa Force, LLC, had identified a “loophole” that would allow Versa Force to receive Medicaid reimbursement for providing online counseling to residents of the house.
Versa Force’s “loophole” consisted of requiring residents to apply for Washington’s Medicaid program, called Apple Health, even though the residents were living in Oregon. Many of the residents, including Fagerlie, were already members of Oregon’s Medicaid program, called the Oregon Health Plan. Fagerlie told ORF he has lived in Oregon for five years.
People residents of states other than Washington are ineligible for Apple Health. It is illegal to receive benefits from Medicaid programs in multiple states at the same time. Fagerlie and Sanders told ORF Versa Force instructed them to enter a home address of a homeless shelter in Vancouver, WA, where neither of them lived or had lived, and a mailing address on Tippitt Place when they applied for Apple Health. Fagerlie provided ORF a photo of his Apple Health card, showing an effective date of October 15, 2026, which coincides with his moving into the Tippitt Place house.
Fagerlie didn’t know that his new landlord and health care provider’s “loophole” was likely illegal Medicaid fraud, or that he and the other previously homeless residents - many referred by Portland’s Transition Projects, Inc. and other homeless service connectors - of the house would be tolerated only so long as they helped Versa Force obtain Medicaid payments.
Unknown to Fagerlie and Sanders, Versa Force is part of a web of Medicaid-funded companies with a man going by “Julius Maximo” at its center. One Maximo-affiliated company, Uplifting Journey, does business in Oregon with an Arizona pastor indicted for laundering money from a sweeping Medicaid fraud scheme and lost its right to receive Medicaid reimbursements from Oregon following reporting on the company by ORF.
“It was a free-for-all”
Residents were free to do as they pleased each day until 6 pm, when they were required to attend four hours of group counseling performed via Zoom by someone known to Fagerlie as Miss Yvonne, who told the Oregonians she was located in Texas. Miss Yvonne’s counseling focused on “the depression and anxiety that comes along with being homeless” according to Fagerlie. “The class was helpful, but the other stuff negated it,” Fagerlie told Oregon Roundup Foundation.
The “other stuff” was chaos in the house caused by the only episodic and secretive management of the house by Versa Foce. According to Fagerlie, and confirmed by Sanders, Versa Force’s house manager bought alcohol for residents of the house, and told residents “we never care about weed,” while discouraging hard drug use. Supervision was sparse. After house manager Andre left midway through Fagerlie’s time living in the house, a house resident named Jack was promoted to house manager, but lacked the knowledge and authority to keep order. The one Versa Force representative with whom Fagerlie and Sanders interacted, a man named “White” or “Wyatt,” who refused to clarify his first name or to provide his last name to residents, was on premises only occasionally. Fagerlie, himself new to the program, often felt like he was stuck with managing the house.
After Sanders moved into the house in late October or early November 2025, Fagerlie said a resident named Dan became upset at Fagerlie for disinterest in a romantic relationship with him, and threatened Damian with a knife. Damian called the police, who removed Dan from the house. Fagerlie said White/Wyatt later told residents to stop calling police because neighbors were complaining about frequent police visits.
With little supervision, dishes went undone and the house lacked toiletpaper for weeks, according to Fagerlie. Versa Force’s lone concern, it seemed to Fagerlie, was for the residents to attend the nightly Miss Yvonne sessions, so Versa Force could bill Apple Health for care provided to Oregonians, in Oregon.
Versa Force is part of the Julius Maximo network Medicaid-funded businesses
As Fagerlie became increasingly curious about the tight-lipped and, it seemed to him, haphazard management of the house on Tippitt Place, he began taking photos of documents left around the house. In so doing, Fagerlie memorialized connections between Versa Force and Uplifting Journey, the subject of a months-long investigation by Oregon Roundup Foundation, and its putative owner, a man going by the name “Julius Maximo.”
Photo by Damian Fagerlie in Tippitt Place house
Maximo is at the center of an array of Oregon limited liability companies that were in various stages of operating houses providing Medicaid-funded counseling to residents prior to Oregon Roundup Foundation’s exclusive reporting on the company. Uplifting Journey operated a house in Lake Oswego from approximately February 2024 to June 2025. The Oregon Health Plan paid the company $2.3 million from April 2024 to March 2025, according to records obtained by ORF. King County, WA prosecutors allege two men living in Uplifting Journey’s Lake Oswego house traveled to the Seattle area in January 2025, kidnapped, robbed and tortured a woman before shooting her and leaving her for dead near the summit of Snoqualmie Pass.
On September 24, 2025, the State of Oregon terminated Uplifting Journey’s right to receive Medicaid reimbursements, following ORF’s reporting on Uplifting Journey and a letter from State Rep. Ed Diehl (R-Scio) to state officials demanding an investigation based on that reporting.
Photo by Damian Fagerlie
The Tippitt Place address that Fagerlie and Sanders briefly called home is related to another Maximo-affiliated business, Refreshing Run LLC, according to Secretary of State records. One of the owners of Refreshing Run, Anisha Bukenya, was included in an Oregon Health Plan enrollment form provided by yet another Maximo business, Life Restoration Missions, LLC doing business as Restorative Journey. Restorative Journey received $159 in Oregon Health Plan reimbursements in January 2025, according to Oregon Health Authority records. Sums paid by Oregon Health Authority directly to Uplifting Journey and Life Restoration Missions likely represent a fraction of the total Medicaid payments to the entities; much of Medicaid spending in Oregon is via nonprofit Community Care Organizations, which are exempt from public records requests laws.
Photo by Damian Fagerlie
The Tippitt Road house’s connection to Uplifting Journey and Maximo led your correspondent to visit the house September 28, 2025, as it turns out just weeks prior to Fagerlie moved into the house. There, a man who introduced himself as the house manager, named Andre, told ORF there were approximately six people living in the house at the time, and Andre answered to Julius Maximo, but Maximo answered to people “above him.” According to Fagerlie, Andre was still the house manager when Fagerlie moved in October 2025. Photos taken by Fagerlie and shared with ORF show an Andrew Williams received mail at the house.
Uplifting Journey operates with the assistance of an Arizona pastor indicted for allegedly laundering $5 million in fraudulant Medicaid payments
Versa Force’s “loophole” of urging Oregonians to apply for Washington Medicaid benefits echoes Uplifting Journey’s business relationship with an indicted Medicaid fraud money launderer. Sister company Uplifting Journey entered into a lease for residential real property in Gresham, Oregon, in November 2024, presumably to establish another house for people receiving Medicaid-funded counseling. The lease is signed by Maximo on behalf of Uplifting Journey, and co-signed by a Theodore Mucuranyana
In April 2025, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) charged Mucuranyana, pastor of Hope of Life International Church of Phoenix, Arizona of multiple counts of Money Laundering for allegedly receiving payments via the church in amounts up to $5 million from Medicaid provider Happy House Behavioral Health LLC. In the same indictment, Mayes charged Happy House Behavioral Health and its owners of defrauding Arizona’s Medicaid agency of $60 million by obtaining reimbursements for deceased clients, incarcerated clients and on other fraudulent bases.
Excerpt of lease for a residential treatment facility in Gresham, Oregon, executed by Uplifting Journey LLC and co-signed by alleged Arizona money launderer Theodore Mucuranyana.
Uplifting Journey’s co-owner Espoir Ntezeyombi’s LinkedIn page says he works as a behavioral health technician for Uplifting Care LLC of Arizona. According to Arizona business records, Uplifting Care LLC’s statutory agent - the person designated by the company to receive service of process on behalf of the company - is Desire Rusingizwa, who is the indicted co-owner of indicted Happy House Behavioral Health in Arizona.
On its website, Mucuryana’s Hope of Life International Church in Phoenix, Arizona describes its mission “to bring hope for lost souls, especially to those of East African descent.” Attorney General Mayes’ indictment alleges the fraudulent behavioral health company laundered its misbegotten millions via a $5 million and other payments to the church, $2 million of which the church allegedly wired to “an entity in Rwanda” in December 2023. Rwanda is a small, war-torn country in central eastern Africa.
Next door to Rwanda lies Uganda. Among the photographs taken by Fagerlie in the Tippitt Place house are partially completed U.S. immigration documents in which Julius Maximo, who claims U.S. citizenship in the documents, represents he can support a Sarah Nabbaale of Entebbe, Uganda if she were allowed to emigrate to the U.S.
Photo by Damian Fagerlie
Photo by Damian Fagerlie
Maximo listed his employers, including Uplifting Journey, on the form. It is unknown what relation Nabbaale is to Maximo, and whether Maximo ever submitted an affidavit of support for her.
Failure of Oregon’s “strong” Medicaid fraud prevention system
Last month, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent a letter to Oregon Governor Tina Kotek (D) inquiring about the state’s efforts to combat Medicaid fraud in light of ORF’s reporting on Uplifting Journey, Rep. Diehl’s letter regarding same, and other publicly reported instances of possible fraud.
In response to a letter from the congressional committee, Kotek issued a press release in which she lamented “unsupported allegations of the Trump Administration suggesting sidespread fraud in the Oregon Health Plan.” In the press release, Kotek explained, “We work hard to protect the integrity of the Oregon Health Plan, which provides care for 1 in 4 Oregonians. We have built strong systems to detect abuse early, investigate thoroughly, and hold bad actors accountable.” The press release and a letter from the Oregon Health Authority to the committee provided information about the mechanisms the state uses to detect and stop Medicaid fraud. Neither the press release or the letter addressed Uplifting Journey or affiliated companies, nor the fact the state terminated Uplifting Journey’s Medicaid eligibility only after the company was exposed via public reporting.
The state’s anti-fraud mechanisms appear to have failed in the case of Uplifting Journey and its affiliated companies. In May 2025, an Oregon Health Authority contracts manager emailed colleagues expressing concerns about Uplifting Journey, Life Restoration Mission and other affiliated companies, calling them “shell game-like entities” he found “confusing, circuitous and worthy of scrutiny.” Despite the plea, OHA appears not to have taken enforcement action until it stopped Medicaid payments to Uplifting Journey September 24, 2025, after ORF’s reporting and Diehl’s letter. OHA did not provide the email in response to ORF’s serial public records requests for documents related to Uplifting Journey.
A swift and forceful return to homelessness
Meanwhile, Versa Force appears to continue to employ the “loophole” of requiring Oregonians to apply for Washington Medicaid benefits. Fagerlie and Sanders’ time living in the Tippitt Place house came to an abrupt end less than a month ago, on March 7. On that date, according to Fagerlie and Sanders, a group of armed men wearing what appeared to be bulletproof vests emblazoned with “Corporate Crime Control” removed the couple from the house.
A business named Corporate Crime Control is headquartered in Portland. Its website says it provides private investigative and security services. Fagerlie and Sanders provided ORF with photos of “notices of criminal trespass” given them by the men who removed them from the house March 7. That notice says it is issued by “Corporate Crime Control Protective Services.”
Fagerlie told ORF he believes the termination of his participation in the Versa Force program was a direct result of his questioning its legitimacy and legality. During a house meeting the day prior, according to Fagerlie and Sanders, Versa Force’s White/Wyatt called a house meeting, in which Fagerlie asserted his concerns about the “loophole,” White/Wyatt’s refusal to provide his full name, and the general dysfunction of the house. During that meeting, Fagerlie and Sanders were given notices of termination of services, requiring them to leave the house due to “repeated false accusations toward staff members, and conduct that disrupted the therapeutic environment and program operations.” Fagerlie provided ORF with a copy of that notice.
Following his removal from the house, Fagerlie said he subsequently returned to pick up mail, and the house appeared to continue to operate in the manner he witnessed during his five-month stay.
Fagerlie and Sanders continue to search for longterm housing in the Portland area.
Oregon Roundup Foundation created this article. ORF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation dedicated to covering Oregon political and government news. Media outlets are welcome to use this article for free with attribution of the author and Oregon Roundup Foundation.