Through a trailblazing, exhaustive analysis of Medicaid records and diligent, trauma-informed reporting, InvestigateWest’s Savior Complex series uncovered how a nonprofit leveraged a community’s good will into an apparent fraud scheme that exploited sex trafficking victims in the name of safety. The original series consists of three stories published within the same week in July 2024.
The first story detailed how an influential Idaho nonprofit, Community Outreach Behavioral Services (COBS), was exploiting victims of human trafficking and making money by overbilling Medicaid. The second story examined the local agencies who funded the program yet ignored previous complaints from victims. The third took a broader look at Idaho’s police-heavy approach to sex trafficking, which often results in victims losing freedoms and traffickers not being held accountable — a system bad actors like COBS rely upon. InvestigateWest also published a short article quickly summarizing the findings of each story in the series, and then a follow-up article about the federal investigation triggered by the reporting.
Reporters Wilson Criscione and Kelsey Turner spent six months digging into the Idaho nonprofit and an affiliated for-profit. The reporters built trust with women who felt exploited by the COBS “safe houses,” and they charted the various conflicts of interests and self-dealing involving COBS. And crucially, the reporters obtained and studied thousands of Medicaid reimbursement claims, discovering a pattern of overbilling and claims for unprovided services. That analysis, and the conclusion that it likely would be considered Medicaid fraud, was reviewed and backed by multiple attorneys who specialize in Medicaid fraud.
The final package combines tragic narratives from survivors of sex trafficking, strong accountability reporting, and data visualizations helping the reader understand the complex scheme
