First, there was Richardson Hollow, at one time the state's largest in-home provider for people with mental illness.

The Lewiston firm went bust in 2007, leaving taxpayers and former employees unpaid.

Meanwhile, two local agencies filed suit against owner Linda Hertell, claiming she set up a series of intertwining shell companies designed to keep her assets, including at least 14 properties in six counties, out of the hands of debt collectors.

Then, this past fall, came the even larger collapse of Possibilities Counseling, another provider of health care services with 500 affiliate therapists and case managers serving 10,000 mental health clients all over Maine.

The Auburn firm, operated by President Wendy Bergeron, closed in October after it became clear that $3.8 million in taxpayer money given her to pay her affiliates had somehow gone missing.

The counselors and case workers have filed suit to recover the money owed them. The state, meanwhile, has washed its hands of the case, claiming paying Bergeron was the end of their responsibility.

Then Monday, in perhaps the most brazen collapse yet, a Harrison woman operating the Living Independence Network Corp. in Norway, pleaded guilty to stealing $4 million from taxpayers through the state's MaineCare program.

Dawn Cummings Solomon, 42, admitted she billed the state for work that was never done and expenses that were never incurred over a four-year period.

Her appetite for stolen money grew over the years, according to prosecutors. She started out siphoning off about $80,000 per month in 2006, which became $107,000 per month in 2007 and $134,000 in 2008.

The pattern is frightening. In all three cases, millions of dollars were flying out of Augusta with apparently very little supervision and no audit control.

The Solomon case should be especially galling to taxpayers. Can it really be that for four years, people in Augusta just kept sending this thief money without any proof the work was being done?

That's astounding.

Worse, the state didn't uncover this fraud on its own. Only thanks to a telephone tip to an anonymous complaint line was this case broken. Save for that, she could have gone on bilking us for another four years.

What does all of this say about MaineCare, Medicare and Medicaid in general?

In October, the federal government shut down two health care agencies in Florida and accused them of stealing $83 million from taxpayers through Medicare.

The usual response from government is that the numbers seem large, but fraud is only a small slice of the money paid out.

Which must leave taxpayers wondering just how much fraud simply goes undetected for years or, worse, forever.

As all three of these cases show, the Maine DHHS is simply a check-writing facility with too few financial controls and too little oversight to guarantee state money is spent correctly.

We can only hope Gov. Paul LePage's new administration and the new Republican Legislature can better control this spending.

editorialboard@sunjournal.com