Inside the Record Healthcare Fraud Crackdown

The Department of Justice charged 455 individuals, including 90 medical professionals, with more than $6.5 billion in healthcare fraud.

That’s up from 324 defendants in 2025 and 193 in 2024.

The operation involved law enforcement agencies across 45 states and resulted in the seizure of more than $182 million in assets since June 8, including cash and luxury cars.

However, “The actual cost is that of human health and the lives of humans hurt by these fraudsters,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Schemes included billing Medicaid for services never provided and bribing individuals to obtain their Medicaid numbers to obtain fraudulent payments.

Medicare hospice services have been a particular target for fraud in California.

“One of the ways that we’ve been able to detect that fraud is that, in many of [the fraudulent hospices], the patients never die,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

One hospice owner even bought the names of deceased individuals from a funeral home and enrolled them in hospice care.

Investigators also discovered fraudulent Medicare billing for allografts—transplants of donated human tissue, often skin grafts used to treat wounds.

Allograft payments increased from less than $1 billion before 2021 to more than $14 billion in 2025. The spike was allegedly driven by a kickback scheme rather than medical necessity.

An Arizona company allegedly marked up the allograft price by 1,900 percent when billing Medicare. Marketers and medical professionals allegedly received kickbacks of about 40 percent of the sale price.

To maximize profits, defendants allegedly targeted hospice patients and applied expensive skin grafts to tiny, superficial wounds that did not require them.

Some fraudsters maximized profits by applying unneeded skin tissue to the elderly, while others exploited the fears of young athletes and their parents.

A defendant allegedly preyed upon parents’ fears of a sudden cardiac event in their children to gain permission for the testing, but then failed to properly evaluate them.

One student’s test showed an enlarged heart, but the defendant allegedly “signed off on the test results within approximately 11 seconds,” Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald said.

That student suffered cardiac arrest while playing basketball and died on the court within weeks.

“I’ll speak as a heart physician, there’s no way you could miss this diagnosis. This child’s heart on autopsy was massive,” said Oz.

“I just want to highlight, this is a dead child, a dead child. Red state, blue state, it doesn’t matter,” Oz added. “Having them all on board, I think, is a reinforcing element to the White House anti-fraud task force.”

Thirty-six defendants—including 28 licensed medical professionals—were charged with illegally distributing addictive drugs.

Pennsylvania doctors allegedly prescribed drugs without having examined the patients, leading to some deaths.

A pharmacist and two clinic managers in Texas were charged with distributing over 3.4 million opioid pills and controlled substances.

Street-level traffickers allegedly brought patients to the clinics and pharmacies to obtain the prescriptions for illicit distribution.

“Dispensing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose not only violates federal law, it endangers the lives of the recipients,” U.S. Attorney John P. Heekin said.

“Americans should never have to wonder whether a prescription was written because it was needed or because someone saw an opportunity to profit,” said Administrator Terry Cole of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“This is just the beginning,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “If you seek to harm or cheat Americans, we will find you, seize any assets, and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.

—Sylvia Xu

BOOKMARKS

A federal judge in Massachusetts has banned Donald Trump’s administration from requiring proof of citizenship to vote. “Our Constitution vests control over federal elections in the states, subject to some oversight by Congress … it does not grant the president any specific powers over elections,” the judge said.

Trump canceled the signing of a bipartisan housing affordability bill on Wednesday. He’s calling on Congress to first pass the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to vote.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court tossed out a ballot initiative dealing with rent control this week, on technical rules. The initiative included an exemption for housing units in “facilities operated solely for religious purposes,” and issues on religion cannot be decided through that process.

The hantavirus threat appears to be over, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said this week. “The successful conclusion of this response demonstrates the strength of a coordinated response to infectious disease threats that occur outside of our borders,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the CDC’s acting director, said.

Seventeen states are suing California over a law that requires single-use plastic products to be fully recyclable or compostable by 2032. “Virtually every product packaged or shipped in plastic containers, as well as a significant number of other types of packaging materials that merely incorporate plastics, fall into the Act’s remarkable sweep,” the lawsuit says.

—Stacy Robinson