The Justice Department announced on June 23 that it has charged 455 defendants for various healthcare fraud schemes totaling more than $6.5 billion.
The charges, unveiled at a press conference in Washington, are against defendants for a variety of schemes in what officials called a record-setting action against fraud.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the charges arose from a “new era” of investigating fraud.
One example cited by officials was an $89 million healthcare fraud scheme where a man was accused of billing insurers for medically unnecessary cardiovascular tests involving college athletes.
The man then allegedly rubber-stamped the results as normal without reviewing them.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March creating the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which is chaired by Vice President JD Vance and has promised to target rampant fraud.
Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said that five years ago, Medicare was paying out less than $1 billion for skin substitutes via allografts. In 2025, the payments had increased to almost $15 billion to programs that Ferguson said were “riddled with fraud.”
Ferguson cited a case in Nevada, where a nurse practitioner allegedly bilked Medicaid for nearly $1 billion in skin substitute allografts. Ferguson said the nurse practitioner was performing the allografts on elderly, vulnerable people in hospices and nursing homes and then submitting the claims.
“She was using human beings, American citizens, as living piggy banks,” Ferguson said.
The government seized $865,000 in necklaces and a $500,000 Ferrari that the nurse practitioner bought with her fraudulent earnings, according to Ferguson.
Officials spoke of new methods of attacking fraud with unprecedented cooperation among state and federal partners.
“We now use techniques that were historically never thought of,” said Mehmet Oz, administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “Instead of just flagging problems, we build cases. … By the time our law enforcement partners are ready to move, we aim to hand them a file that is already complete, already ready.”
Officials said there were 45 states and attorneys general involved in Tuesday’s charges. “For the first time in modern history, everyone is working together,” Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
Among the 455 defendants charged were 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals who were alleged to have participated in health care fraud and opioid abuse schemes.
In Texas, a nurse practitioner was charged in a $906 million scheme for allegedly performing unnecessary allografts and billing Medicare more than $1 million per patient on average. The DOJ press release said that the suspect then used the proceeds from the fraud to buy luxury vehicles, real estate, high-priced jewelry as well as pay for the construction of a $4.6 million beach resort in the Philippines.
The DOJ said some of those caught were not operating in the United States. A defendant in Kyrenia was charged in connection with a $3.7 billion scheme and two defendants in Estonia were involved in a $10.6 billion scheme. The DOJ also said it caught one of the FBI’s most wanted fraudsters who was in the Philippines and involved in a $1.2 billion telemedicine fraud scheme.⏎ The DOJ said the enforcement efforts resulted in the seizure of $182 million in cash, luxury vehicles, jewelry and other assets.
In a Florida case that involved a $118 million allograft fraud scheme, a nurse practitioner is alleged to have used the money from the fraud to pay for a lavish lifestyle, including a luxury box at an NFL stadium as well as more than $400,000 in art, the DOJ stated.
The Health Care Fraud Unit’s Data Analytics Team uncovered the increase in payment for allografts that led to the prosecutions. The DOJ said that claims for allografts increased from $200 million in 2019 to $14.4 billion in 2025.
“We are aggressively scaling our offensive against anyone using health care as a front to steal from the American people,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, in a statement.
“As today’s cases and arrests show, there is no case too big, no scheme too complex, and no hiding place too remote for our relentless fraud-fighting team. Our message is simple: if you put profit over patients, you should expect to be put in prison.”
Oz said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is no longer on the defense regarding healthcare.
“Prosecuting criminals who steal from American patients is necessary—but stopping them before a single dollar leaves the building is smarter,” Oz said in a statement.
“CMS is done playing catch-up. We’re deploying advanced data analytics to expose fraud networks, freeze suspicious payments, and shut down bad actors before they can do damage to the programs that millions of Americans depend on.”