OHA: No Uplifting Journey background, site checks

Oregon Health Authority chose not to subject owners of company tied to Arizona Medicaid fraud case to background checks or site visits before paying company at least $2.3 million

Oregon Health Authority’s headquarters in Salem, Oregon. (Photo courtesy Oregon Health Authority)

Oregon Health Authority chose to forego criminal background checks and site visits when it approved Uplifting Journey LLC to receive Medicaid reimbursements and subsequently paid the company at least $2.3 million, according to an agency spokesperson. One Uplifting Journey owner, Espoir Ntezeyombi, is a business associate of a man charged by Arizona’s Attorney General with orchestrating a $60 million Medicaid fraud scheme, an Oregon Roundup Foundation investigation found.

Uplifting Journey operated a sober living house in Lake Oswego, Oregon, which housed two men King County, Washington prosecutors allege kidnapped, tortured and tried to murder a Seattle area woman in January 2025. Federal and state law enforcement say the men are members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and are in the U.S. illegally.

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Police records show some 17 visits to the Lake Oswego house during Uplifting Journey’s possession of it on complaints of women screaming, breaking and entering and residents’ motorcycle racing on the residential street in the upscale Portland suburb, as first reported by The Post Millenial.

In an email to Oregon Roundup Foundation, OHA spokesperson Amy Bacher wrote yesterday, “The Code of Federal Regulations (CFRs) dictate that a background check was not required” on Ntezeyombi or co-owner Julius Maximo.

The CFRs, federal administrative rules, require states to subject Medicaid providers and their owners to increasing levels of scrutiny depending on the perceived risk of fraud and abuse associated with the type of provider. Uplifting Journey applied for, and received, OHA certification as an outpatient behavioral health provider, intended to provide substance abuse and mental health treatment. The federal rule upon which OHA says it relied does not recognize the outpatient behavioral health category among the 34 categories listed.

OHA has repeatedly sought and received federal Medicaid waivers that allow the agency to spend federal Medicaid funds on an increasing array of substance abuse treatment providers to “advance[ ] OHA’s goal of eliminating health inequities by 2030,” according to the agency’s website.

Without a direct federal requirement for elevated screening including criminal background checks and site visits, OHA chose to subject Uplifting Journey’s Ntezeyombi and co-owner Julius Maximo to the lightest-allowed checks designed only to “ensure a provider has not been previously excluded from Medicaid participation,” according to OHA’s Bacher’s email.

Uplifting Journey also operated a Gresham, Oregon sober living house, the lease for which was co-signed by Arizona Pastor Theodore Mucyranya, who is charged in the Arizona fraud case with laundering $5 million in fraud proceeds, sending $2 million of it to entities in Rwanda, Oregon Roundup Foundation exclusively reported in December.

The $2.3 million in direct OHA payments to Uplifting Journey reported by Oregon Roundup Foundation is likely a fraction of the total Medicaid funds Oregon paid to the company. Some 90% of Medicaid spending by the state flows through nonprofit Coordinated Care Organizations. CareOregon, the CCO responsible for paying providers, like Uplifting Journey, operating in Clackamas and Multnomah counties, has declined to respond to repeated emails and telephone calls from Oregon Roundup Foundation seeking records and comment on whether it paid Uplifting Journey.

Uplifting Journey told OHA it would provide services at an address on N Broadway in Portland. An August visit during business hours showed the office apparently closed, with a paper sign on the door and mattresses and full plastic trash bags in the space. Because OHA chose the lightest level of scrutiny for Uplifting Journey, OHA was not required to conduct a site visit of the Portland location.

OHA and Oregon Department of Justice have repeatedly declined to say whether they have taken any enforcement action against Uplifting Journey or related companies. Uplifting Journey continued to operate the Gresham sober living house until around December 2025, according to the landlord, four months after Oregon Roundup Foundation first reported on OHA’s payments to the allegedly Tren de Aragua-housing company.

In May, OHA Contracts Manager for the Behavioral Health Division Regan Dugger emailed agency associates with concerns about a host of companies including Uplifting Journey and others with shared ownership or other affiliations, calling them “shell game-like entities” and further describing them as “confusing, circuitous and worthy of scrutiny.”

It is unknown whether OHA scrutinized the companies as suggested by Dugger. OHA withheld Dugger’s email in its responses to Oregon Roundup Foundation’s public records requests seeking records related to Uplifting Journey and related entities. Oregon Roundup Foundation received the email from a source outside OHA.

This report is part of an ongoing and wide-reaching investigation by Oregon Roundup Foundation.

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.