In 2024, at a ceremony in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, an emcee praised the business acumen of Sekou Dukuly, the newly installed director of the West African nation’s government-owned port system.
Dukuly had been “delivering multimillion-dollar profit increases everywhere he worked,” the emcee said.
Dukuly 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 $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 the Twin Cities. 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, 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 that “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,” Golberstein said.
Public records also show some of Dukuly’s financial practices may have crossed legal lines.
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 $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.
And in Liberia, a former business partner is currently suing Dukuly over control of a water bottling business there. The business partner provided receipts showing 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 what they termed “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, a company with no apparent ties to Dukuly.
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.
“At this time, MDH has not taken steps to revoke a license for one of the facilities linked to this person,” the department said in a written statement. “MDH has held the provider accountable for not meeting statutory requirements through other enforcement actions.”
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.
