DOJ Takedown Announcement

On June 30, 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced what it called the largest health care fraud takedown in history, involving over $14.6 billion in alleged losses due to fraud. This takedown involved an assortment of prosecutions against individuals and entities across 50 federal districts and 12 state Attorneys’ General Offices. The enforcement action resulted in criminal charges against 324 defendants, including doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other licensed medical professionals. In addition, civil charges were filed against 20 defendants involving $14.2 million in alleged fraud. This announcement more than doubles the DOJ’s previous record takedown of $6 billion.

The effort is led by the Health Care Fraud Unit of the DOJ Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, in partnership with U.S. Attorney’s Offices, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The announced actions include the following alleged fraudulent conduct:

• fraudulent wound care (for example, a group of defendants in Arizona and Nevada are accused of billing Medicare for over $1 billion of fraudulent claims related to amniotic wound allografts);
• prescription opioid trafficking (for example, 5 defendants in Texas are accused of unlawful distribution of over 3 million opioid pills through a Texas pharmacy); and
• telemedicine and genetic testing fraud (for example, in Florida, an owner of telemedicine and DME companies is alleged to have perpetrated a scheme in which Medicare beneficiaries were targeted through deceptive marketing campaigns and then fraudulent claims were submitted to Medicare for genetic tests and DME for those beneficiaries).

In tandem with this takedown, the DOJ announced a new initiative: the creation of a Health Care Fraud Data Fusion Center in collaboration with HHS-OIG and other agencies. The center will leverage cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics to detect, investigate, and prosecute health care fraud schemes more effectively.

The announcement is a reminder of the federal government’s increasingly aggressive approach to combat health care fraud. For health care providers, maintaining awareness of enforcement trends and implementing robust internal compliance programs designed to help provider’s document their good faith compliance efforts are more critical than ever.