The House That Greed Built: The Fall Of The DeSantis Florida Crime Family
- Howie Klein
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
This Is A Scandal Too Big To Ignore… Will Trump Pardon Them?
It’s looking like GOP fallen star Ron DeSantis is more likely to wind up in a prison cell than in the White House. Although we talked about the still unfolding Hope scandal last week in some detail, so far this is being treated as a Florida story, rather than a national story. Jim DeFede’s analysis this week for CBS News Miami is a good place to start if you want to get a good grip on a pretty shocking, still developing story. DeSantis’ attack against his own party’s legislative leadership signals a rupture in the Florida Republican Party that isn’t going to get better than time soon. Watch this:
On Tuesday, the Miami Herald brought readers up to date on one of Florida’s biggest scandals in years. “The $10 million that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration diverted to a state-created charity last year consisted of Medicaid dollars owed to state and federal taxpayers, contrary to what the governor and other officials have publicly asserted. Three years ago, lawyers working with the state drew up a settlement agreement that said Florida’s largest Medicaid contractor, Centene, overbilled taxpayers $67,048,611 for medications… That’s the exact amount DeSantis officials settled on with Centene last year. But instead of returning all $67 million to state and federal coffers, they sent $10 million of it to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity overseen by first lady Casey DeSantis [who herself is from a prominent Mafia family]. The money was then sent to two nonprofit organizations that aren’t required to report how they spend their funds. Those ‘dark money’ groups later gave $8.5 million to a political committee overseen by DeSantis’ chief of staff in a series of transactions that some Republican lawmakers believe was illegal. How Medicaid is allocated, which pays for healthcare services for the poor, is highly regulated. The document contradicts statements by DeSantis and state officials that the $10 million was a charitable contribution by Centene separate from what it owed to the state. DeSantis said earlier this month that the $10 million ‘was in addition to what they [the state] were getting.’”
Florida officials first became aware that Centene owed the state money in 2021. At the time, Ohio, Mississippi and other states were reaching settlements with the Medicaid giant after it overbilled for prescription drugs.
The overbilling was uncovered by politically connected Mississippi law firms, which helped states negotiate settlements with Centene in exchange for millions of dollars in contingency fees, the New York Times reported last year.
The data the law firms used to calculate how much each state was owed is hidden from the public, The Times reported, making it impossible to know whether Centene paid its full share.
Florida signed on with one of the firms, Liston & Deas, in December 2021. Months earlier, other lawyers working with the firm on the Centene settlements donated $100,000 to the Republican Party of Florida and $10,000 to then-Attorney General Ashley Moody’s political committee.
…On Feb. 10, 2022, DeSantis’ chief of staff, James Uthmeier, had a “Centene Call” with some of those lawyers, according to calendar entries first unearthed by investigative reporter Jason Garcia from the newsletter Seeking Rents. The records were posted on the governor’s public records portal.
On June 16 that year, Uthmeier had another meeting with a lobbyist representing the lawyers, records show. He was joined by top DeSantis administration officials, including Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Strickland.
Strickland oversees the healthcare agencies carrying out DeSantis’ Hope Florida initiative, including the Agency for Health Care Administration. Though Casey DeSantis has no official chief of staff, Strickland functionally serves in that role, according to four people familiar with the administration’s operations.
Uthmeier and Strickland had three more meetings that year about Centene, including one with the CEO of the company’s Florida subsidiary, records show.
Where the negotiations with Centene went after 2022 is unclear. Last month, KFF Health News reported that Florida and Georgia were the final holdouts among more than 20 states that had reached settlements with Centene. Florida officials didn’t respond to the news outlet’s questions. (Nearly all the states announced their settlements in news releases.)
In reality, DeSantis officials had quietly reached a $67 million settlement with the company in September.
It wasn’t publicly disclosed by the state until this month, when reporters and state Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican, began inquiring about a mysterious $10 million donation the Hope Florida Foundation had received as a result of a “longstanding dispute” with the state.
The law firm Liston & Deas wasn’t part of the final settlement. The state fired them in 2023 and never paid them for their services, records show. Deas told the Herald/Times on Monday that a donation to Hope Florida Foundation was not mentioned in the settlement talks, and the firm didn’t learn of it until its lawyers saw media reports.
DeSantis this month said the settlement was a “good deal” for the state.
…Uthmeier, whom DeSantis named attorney general this year, said in a news conference Tuesday that he “wasn’t part of securing the deal that was struck.”
“My understanding is that there was a sweetener in there, that Centene’s estimated harms to the state was $56, $57 million,” he said.
“If it’s a contribution to a 501(c)(3) entity, that is not state dollars, that is not Medicaid dollars,” Uthmeier added.
Spokesperson Jeremy Redfern said in a statement that Uthmeier was not involved in the 2024 settlement. He said the settlement talks were referred to the Agency for Health Care Administration, “the proper agency to manage the issue.”
The then-secretary for the Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees Medicaid, attended none of the five Centene-related meetings in 2022, according to the records. The agency’s assistant deputy secretary for Medicaid attended one meeting.
Andrade, who has been investigating the $10 million transfer to the Hope Florida Foundation, told the Herald/Times on Monday that DeSantis “is either misinformed by his shrinking circle, or he’s lying.”
“This was Medicaid money that was squandered, plain and simple,” he said.
He said the meeting records raise new questions about why the state waited so long to finalize the agreement.
“They were in no rush until suddenly they needed cash to fund their campaign” against Amendment 3, he said. The 2024 initiative, which failed, would have allowed recreational marijuana in Florida. DeSantis threw his political weight against it during the past election season.
“Now, we’re just trying to drill down on whose bright idea it was to carve out the $10 million for Hope Florida,” Andrade said.
In short, the DeSantii look like they were less like a power couple and more like a pair of grifters who were in search of their next mark. From questionable PAC money pipelines and shady real estate maneuvers to the weaponization of public institutions for personal gain, the DeSantii have run Florida like their own banana republic. And while Ron’s national ambitions have fizzled into a puddle of resentment and irrelevance, the real danger has always been right at home, where unchecked power and a complicit state apparatus allowed this corruption to metastasize.
So the question becomes: why? Why the overarching greed? Why the recklessness? Why the desperation? Is it the realization that his political moment has passed? And that Trump has blocked her from becoming governor? A need to keep feeding the free-flowing divertible contribution machine now that the campaigns are over? Or is this just who they’ve always been— ambitious climbers who saw Florida not as a place to serve but as a stepping stone and a piggy bank?
There’s a growing sense among Tallahassee insiders that indictments are no longer a question of if, but when. The Hope scandal— and what we know about it— may be the tip of the iceberg, and sources suggest federal investigators are starting to take a closer look at the nexus of dark money, influence peddling, and state contracts that defined the DeSantis era. If that dam breaks, it won’t just be the end of Ron’s political career— it could trigger a cascade of revelations implicating major GOP politicians and donors, state agencies, and even members of the Florida judiciary.
But this isn’t just about personal corruption— it’s about a broader rot that DeSantis helped institutionalize. His war on public education, book bans and authoritarian crackdowns on dissent created a climate where loyalty to DeSantis mattered more than law or ethics. And Casey wasn’t just along for the ride— she was in the front seat, playing the role of image architect, fundraiser-in-chief and enforcer.
So maybe this was always the plan. The DeSantii always saw politics as a means to an end: power, prestige and wealth. And now, as that empire starts to crumble, they’re finding out what happens when you build your brand on fear and cruelty— it doesn’t leave many allies willing to go down with you.