His company, California Home Health Agency, has billed the program for more than $30 million.
Last December, Chief Nathan Ogbatue arrived in a motorcade outside the grand entrance of a newly built palace in Abatete, Nigeria. A videographer shouted praises in Igbo, calling him “half man, half god” and commending him for building the palace “free of charge” for the Abatete community.
Ogbatue is hailed on social media as a philanthropist who has built roads and housing, sponsors annual medical clinics, and provides food for the needy in Abatete. He is also, it turns out, CEO of California Home Health Agency (CHHA), a lucrative taxpayer-funded company that provides in-home medical care and a range of specialty treatments.
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How did Ogbatue make his money? Between 2018 and 2021, CHHA made less than $2 million from Medicaid. Then, over the next three years, the company raked in more than $34 million—a massive increase, which coincided with a series of high-dollar real estate transactions. Experts we spoke with said that CHHA’s billing numbers raised major red flags.
Ogbatue and his wife, Agnes, have built a small fortune. Between 2023 and 2024, Nathan and Agnes amassed at least $7 million worth of property, including a Riverside mansion with a sports court, putting green, archery range, and a pool. Nathan’s taxpayer-funded business appears to have played a significant role.
That business, CHHA, dates back at least to 2013, when Agnes submitted its first publicly listed utilization report. She appears to have filed that mandatory form for every year through 2019. California’s Health Care Access and Information department told City Journal that since then, it has not received a report from CHHA “despite continued requests.”
In the years that followed, CHHA’s Medicaid revenues exploded. In 2018, the agency received just $89,570. In 2022, CHHA pulled in nearly $4 million. Across the following two years, the company garnered over $17 million and $13 million, respectively.
The real-estate records seem to reveal a similar trajectory. In 2000, Ogbatue bought a Riverside home for $330,000. Then, between 2023 and 2024, he and his wife purchased the $2.7 million Riverside mansion, a $1.9 million beach house, and $1.4 million in other Riverside properties. In all, the Ogbatues acquired more than $7 million worth of property between 2023 and 2024.
The home that Ogbatue bought in Redondo Beach was tied to another Nigerian family. Before Ogbatue took possession of the home, it served as collateral for the bail bond of Tamara Motley, who was sentenced to prison in December 2023 for submitting $24 million worth of fraudulent claims to Medicare. As of 2023, Motley was married to former Nigerian Senator Ahmed Ogembe, whom the Obgatues named as a defendant in a lawsuit related to the sale of the Redondo Beach property.
California Home Health Agency’s website makes no mention of Nathan or Agnes Ogbatue. When we called the number on the site, a woman picked up, but declined to answer our questions, saying it was a customer service line only.
We drove to California Home Health Agency’s location in a strip mall in Riverside. The blinds were shut tight as we knocked on the door. After a while, a woman answered, and directed us to call Nathan.
We showed her a photo of Chief Nathan Ogbatue in Abatete standing in front of golden statues of himself and Agnes. She confirmed that Nathan Ogbatue was the man in the photo.
Next, we drove to the Ogbatues’ six-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion, but the gates were closed. We called and asked to talk, but Nathan himself brushed us off, saying he didn’t have the time. In a previous conversation over the phone, he denied that he was the “Owelle” (roughly translating to “chief”) of Abatete and said our investigation wouldn’t get anywhere.
“We worked really hard, to be honest with you. If we were doing anything funny we wouldn’t talk to you,” he said. “I’m talking to you because I have nothing to fear. What I’m telling you is that we worked hard.”
We spoke to Ogbatue over the phone three times. During two of those calls, we asked how many people he employed, but he would not give us an estimate.
Nathan Ogbatue was crowned chief of Abatete, a southern Nigerian farming town, in a boisterous ceremony in 2012. A YouTube video shows his acceptance speech, during which he pledged “to place the interests of Abatete first in all my private and official transactions . . . so help me God.”
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