$6.5 Billion, 455 Defendants, 90 Doctors: Inside the 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown — From a $16,000 Baldwin, Wisconsin Case to a $906 Million Las Vegas Scheme

A Takedown of Unprecedented Scale

On Tuesday, 23 June 2026, the United States Department of Justice announced the results of its 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown — a coordinated, two-week enforcement operation that has produced charges against 455 defendants across the country, including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals, in connection with alleged fraud and opioid abuse schemes totalling more than $6.5 billion in false claims. The Department described it explicitly as representing "a new era in federal, state, and international cooperation to combat health care fraud," with cases spanning 56 federal judicial districts and 45 US states and territories, and with 50 separate state Medicaid Fraud Control Units participating — the largest number of state-level units ever involved in a single coordinated federal takedown.

FBI Director Kash Patel, speaking at a news conference at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building in Washington alongside Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other Cabinet officials, called the results "historic," stating that the FBI had "worked alongside our DOJ partners to arrest and charge over 450 people, including almost 100 medical professionals, for over $6 billion in alleged healthcare fraud schemes." He framed the effort as flowing directly from "the leadership of President Trump, Vice President Vance, and the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud," language that situates this takedown within the current administration's broader anti-fraud enforcement posture across federal programmes.

The agencies involved in the operation extended well beyond the FBI and DOJ's own Health Care Fraud Unit. The takedown drew on HHS-OIG, the DEA, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Homeland Security Investigations, the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, IRS Criminal Investigation, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Department of Labor, the US Postal Service Office of Inspector General, the Office of Personnel Management Office of Inspector General, and numerous additional federal, state and local law enforcement agencies — an interagency mobilisation that reflects how deeply healthcare fraud has penetrated across multiple federal benefit programmes simultaneously, from Medicare and Medicaid through to veterans' healthcare, military health benefits under TRICARE, and federal employee health programmes.

The Allograft Scheme: A $4 Billion Single Operation

Among the most significant individual cases announced as part of the broader takedown is a scheme built around amniotic wound allografts — a category of medical product derived from placental tissue, used in advanced wound care to help heal chronic and difficult-to-treat wounds. Eleven defendants, including a company executive and eight medical professionals, were charged across six federal districts in connection with a scheme that, according to the DOJ, generated more than $4 billion in fraudulent billing over approximately two and a half years, with $2 billion in actual payments received.

The mechanism alleged in this case is a striking illustration of how healthcare fraud schemes can manufacture extraordinary profit margins through pricing manipulation rather than simply inventing fictitious services. Prosecutors allege the defendants acquired allograft products and then relabelled them at a markup of 2,000 percent before billing federal healthcare programmes — a margin so extreme that the DOJ's own announcement noted it led to "lavish lifestyles" for those who participated in the scheme. Two individuals connected to this same scheme were already sentenced in a related prosecution the previous year, suggesting this takedown represents an expansion of an investigation that had already produced convictions before this week's broader announcement.

The scale of the allograft fraud problem identified through this takedown was significant enough that it triggered a direct policy response from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz stated that the agency's Health Care Fraud Unit Data Analytics Team had detected an anomalous spike in allograft payment claims, which led directly to the prosecutions announced this week, and that CMS had separately moved to reduce Medicare's payment rate for these products to $127 per square centimetre, effective 1 January 2026. Dr. Oz noted that absent this corrective action, the unchecked spending on allografts alone would have added an estimated $11 per month to every Medicare beneficiary's Part B premium nationwide — a figure that illustrates concretely how individual fraud schemes, left unaddressed, translate directly into costs borne by the entire Medicare-enrolled population. "Prosecuting criminals who steal from American patients is necessary — but stopping them before a single dollar leaves the building is smarter," Dr. Oz said. "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."

The Las Vegas Case: $906 Million and Allegations of Targeting the Vulnerable

Among the most serious individual cases highlighted within the takedown is that of Marizel Yukee, 49, a nurse practitioner who ran mobile wound clinics across four states and was charged in a scheme involving $906 million in fraudulent Medicare and TRICARE claims related to medically unnecessary amniotic wound allografts, allegedly tied to illegal kickbacks and bribes. Prosecutors allege that Yukee specifically targeted elderly and hospice patients and falsified medical records to justify procedures that were never medically necessary or, in some cases, never genuinely performed at all.

The targeting of elderly and hospice populations specifically — patients who are often less able to scrutinise their own medical billing, who may have diminished capacity to consent meaningfully to procedures, and whose deaths can in some cases be exploited to continue fraudulent billing after the point of care has become impossible — has been a recurring and particularly troubling thread running through several of the most significant cases announced in this takedown.

The Hospice Fraud Network in California

In the Central District of California, federal prosecutors unsealed a 16-count indictment against Oren David Shachar, 59, of Van Nuys; Abraham Shin, 66, of Corona; and Jeannie Choi, 57, of Torrance, alleging a conspiracy to defraud Medicare of approximately $27 million through fraudulent hospice billing. According to the indictment, from February 2021 through March 2026, Shachar — who owned and operated at least four hospice care companies, including Gentle Touch Hospice Care in Valley Glen, Oxford Hospice Care in Montclair, Art of Hospice in Encino, and Holy Trinity Hospice in Glendale — submitted false claims for hospice services that were either medically unnecessary, because the beneficiaries enrolled were not actually terminally ill, or were never provided at all, because the beneficiaries listed on the claims were already deceased at the time of supposed service.

Compounding the severity of the allegations, prosecutors say Shachar paid illegal kickbacks to marketers, including Shin and Choi, to procure hospice beneficiaries, and separately paid beneficiaries directly to remain enrolled in his hospice programmes regardless of their actual medical need for end-of-life care. In 2025, Shin and Choi are accused of having sold the personal identifying information of both living and deceased patients to Shachar specifically to help him perpetuate the fraud — a detail that adds an identity theft and data trafficking dimension to what is fundamentally a healthcare billing fraud case.

Patrick Grandy, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, characterised the human cost of this category of fraud directly: "Taking advantage of grieving families at the moment they are mourning a loss and siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars from programs meant to provide real medical care, are harms that go far beyond fraud." In a separate but related Southern California case, Brenda Lee Lopez, 63, of Norwalk — a medical office manager — was indicted on seven counts of healthcare fraud and six counts of aggravated identity theft in connection with a $9 million laboratory testing scheme. Prosecutors allege Lopez prepared false orders for urinary tract infection tests, respiratory pathogen panels and oral toxicology screens using the names and forged signatures of four medical providers, for Medicare beneficiaries who never actually provided specimens for testing — some of whom, according to the indictment, were already deceased at the time the fraudulent tests were supposedly ordered.

Florida: Dozens Charged, Including a $3.76 Billion Single Scheme

Florida emerged as one of the most heavily represented states in this week's takedown, with 36 defendants charged — 26 in federal cases and 10 in state court proceedings. Of the federal cases, 12 originated from the Southern District of Florida, six from the Middle District, one from the Northern District, and the remainder from additional districts and agencies.

The most significant individual Florida case is that of a Miami man accused of directing a scheme valued at $3.76 billion — among the largest single-defendant fraud allegations within the entire national takedown — involving fraudulent billing to Medicare, Medicaid and other insurers for phantom medical supplies that were never delivered. In a related but separately charged matter, prosecutors say Muniz Rodriguez of Hialeah helped establish fraudulent medical clinics that billed Medicare for more than $117 million in skin substitutes and wound care products that were never actually provided to patients, with Medicare having paid out more than $55 million on those false claims before the scheme was detected. Investigators seized more than $27 million from bank accounts connected to twelve South Florida clinics implicated in the case, with the DOJ characterising the operation using a term familiar from financial fraud investigations — describing the clinics as engaged in a "bust out" pattern, in which a business entity is used intensively to generate fraudulent billing before being abandoned once detection becomes imminent.

Florida's case list also included a cardiologist accused of billing insurance companies for medically unnecessary cardiac screening tests performed on college athletes, and three Tampa-area healthcare workers charged in connection with a $118 million Medicare fraud scheme involving unnecessary wound care procedures and skin grafts — another instance of the wound care and skin substitute fraud pattern that recurs across multiple states within this takedown, suggesting it represents one of the more systemically exploited categories of Medicare billing in the current healthcare fraud landscape.

Wisconsin: From the Modest to the Multi-Million-Dollar

Wisconsin's contribution to the national takedown illustrates the genuinely wide range of scale present within a single coordinated enforcement action — from cases involving tens of thousands of dollars through to multi-million-dollar schemes, all prosecuted under the same nationwide operation. Five Wisconsin residents were charged, with three facing federal charges out of the general Milwaukee area and two charged in the Eastern District of Wisconsin specifically.

At the more modest end of the Wisconsin cases is Carolyn Franco, 46, of Baldwin, Wisconsin, charged by criminal complaint with theft by fraud and medical assistance fraud in connection with $16,285.48 in fraudulent Medicaid billing. According to the complaint, Franco repeatedly billed Wisconsin Medicaid for personal and home care services between March 2023 and April 2024 that she could not have actually provided, because she was out of state at the times the services were supposedly rendered. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Timothy J. Filipa of the Wisconsin Medicaid Fraud Control and Elder Abuse Unit — a state-level prosecutorial body whose involvement reflects the genuinely joint federal-state character of this enforcement action.

At the considerably larger end of the Wisconsin cases is Jasmine Cooper, 37, of Brown Deer, charged with healthcare fraud and aggravated identity theft. Cooper had been authorised to operate a prenatal care coordination agency specifically designed to assist at-risk pregnant women and women with children — a category of vulnerable patient population whose care coordination services Wisconsin Medicaid funds precisely because of their elevated medical and social need. Prosecutors allege Cooper instead submitted thousands of false claims, amounting to an estimated $5.8 million in fraudulent charges against Wisconsin Medicaid — a scheme that, if proven, represents a particularly serious betrayal of a programme designed to support some of the most medically and economically vulnerable people the Medicaid system serves.

The Historical Context: A Task Force With $45 Billion in Cumulative Allegations

This week's announcement situates itself within a much longer institutional history of federal healthcare fraud enforcement. The DOJ's National Fraud Division operates a dedicated Health Care Task Force, established in 2007, currently composed of nine separate regional strike forces. Even before this week's 455 new charges are factored in, that task force has, over nearly two decades of operation, charged more than 6,200 defendants in connection with fraudulent billings exceeding $45 billion. This week's $6.5 billion single-takedown figure represents one of the largest individual enforcement actions within that nearly two-decade institutional history, underscoring both the scale of the healthcare fraud problem in the United States and the sustained, multi-administration commitment that federal law enforcement has maintained toward combating it.

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. framed the stakes of this enforcement effort in terms that extend beyond simple financial recovery: "Healthcare fraud steals from taxpayers, exploits vulnerable patients, and puts lives at risk. Today's historic enforcement action sends a clear message: If you use our healthcare system to enrich yourself at the expense of patients or the American people, we will find you, we will prosecute you, and we will hold you accountable."

What the Pattern Across Cases Reveals

Reading across the specific cases disclosed in this takedown — from Carolyn Franco's $16,000 Wisconsin Medicaid claim to the $4 billion national allograft conspiracy, from Jasmine Cooper's alleged exploitation of a prenatal care programme for at-risk mothers to Marizel Yukee's alleged targeting of hospice patients across four states — several structural patterns emerge that characterise American healthcare fraud as it exists in 2026. Wound care and skin substitute products, particularly amniotic allografts, represent one of the single most exploited categories of fraudulent billing identified across multiple, unrelated cases in different states, suggesting a product category whose reimbursement structure has created systemic incentives for abuse that CMS's own January 2026 rate reduction was specifically designed to address. Hospice and end-of-life care services represent a second recurring category of exploitation, with multiple cases alleging that scheme operators specifically targeted patients near the end of life — populations less able to detect or report fraudulent billing conducted in their name, and in the most egregious cases, populations whose deaths were allegedly used to continue fraudulent claims after their passing.

Identity theft and the trafficking of patient personal information emerge as a recurring enabling mechanism across multiple cases, rather than a separate category of crime — fraudulent billing schemes increasingly depend on access to genuine patient identifying information, whether obtained through legitimate prior care relationships subsequently abused, through purchased data from corrupt insiders, or through other means, in order to generate claims that can survive initial automated fraud-detection screening. And the geographic breadth of this single takedown — Wisconsin, California, Florida and dozens of other states and territories, prosecuted through 56 separate federal districts working in coordination with 50 state Medicaid Fraud Control Units — illustrates that healthcare fraud at this scale is not a regional or isolated phenomenon but a genuinely nationwide pattern, requiring the kind of large-scale, simultaneously coordinated federal-state enforcement action that this week's takedown represents.

Sources

1. US Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs — National Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in 455 Defendants Charged in Connection with Over $6.5 Billion in Alleged Fraud (June 23, 2026) — justice.gov
2. US Department of Justice, Central District of California — Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in 10 SoCal Defendants Federally Charged with Defrauding Public Health Plans, Other Crimes (June 2026) — justice.gov
3. WEAU — Baldwin woman accused of healthcare fraud in massive DOJ investigation and crackdown (June 24, 2026) — weau.com
4. Fox 11 Online — Five Wisconsin residents charged in DOJ healthcare fraud crackdown (June 24, 2026) — fox11online.com
5. WUSF / Health News Florida — Dozens in Florida among hundreds charged in a DOJ crackdown on healthcare fraud (June 24, 2026) — wusf.org
6. Fox 5 DC — 455 charged in health care fraud crackdown; schemes totaled over $6.5 billion (June 24, 2026) — fox5dc.com
7. Fox 10 Phoenix — 455 charged in health care fraud crackdown; schemes totaled over $6.5 billion (June 24, 2026) — fox10phoenix.com
8. Medical Economics — 455 defendants charged in massive $6.5 billion health care fraud takedown (June 24, 2026) — medicaleconomics.com
9. Fox News — DOJ charges over 450 people in massive health care fraud crackdown: Report (June 2026) — fox.com