Feds charge over 300 people in $14B healthcare fraud schemes

In what’s being called the largest healthcare fraud takedown in U.S. history, federal prosecutors charged 324 people for alleged fraud totaling $14.6 billion, Department of Justice officials said Monday. The defendants stand accused of submitting false claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care programs, according to the DOJ’s Criminal Division head Matthew R. Galeotti. Defendants include 96 doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other licensed medical professionals spread across 50 federal districts, the DOJ reported. Additionally, 29 individuals were charged for participating in transnational criminal organizations alleged to have submitted over $12 billion in fraudulent insurance claims, the release added.

Federal officials conducted a similar bust during President Donald Trump’s first term, charging more than 400 people for about $1.3 billion in medical billing and prescription fraud. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the 2017 bust as the largest healthcare fraud takedown in American history at that time. Attorney General Pam Bondi cited the 2025 operation as a record-breaking bust in the Monday release. The Trump administration will not tolerate criminals who prey on the vulnerable and line their pockets with taxpayer dollars, she said.

What kind of fraudulent claims were made?

• Charges were filed in Arizona and Nevada against seven defendants for fraudulent wound care, totaling around $1.1 billion. Defendants allegedly targeted vulnerable patients, such as elderly patients receiving hospice care, and applied medically unnecessary amniotic wound allografts, the DOJ explained.

• Over 70 defendants, including 44 licensed medical professionals, were charged with prescription drug trafficking and illegally prescribing prescription opioids and other controlled substances. Five defendants from a Texas pharmacy faced charges for allegedly distributing over 3 million opioid pills that eventually made their way to street-level drug dealers, specifically large amounts of oxycodone, hydrocodone, and carisoprodol.

• Nearly 50 defendants were accused of submitting $1.17 billion in fake claims from telemedicine and genetic testing fraud schemes.

• About 170 defendants were charged for about over $1.84 billion of fraud spread across various healthcare schemes, namely providing unnecessary medical treatments resulting in kickbacks and bribes.

As part of the coordinated fraud takedown, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services stopped more than $4 billion in payments for false and fraudulent claims and suspended billing privileges for over 200 providers in recent months, the DOJ noted. Investigators have already seized over $245 million in cash, luxury vehicles, cryptocurrency, and other assets of defendants charged with fraud.

Dig Deeper: Read my report from February about a Catholic medical center paying $29 million to settle fraud allegations.