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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Tuesday that federal and state charges have been brought against a whopping 455 defendants since June 8, 2026, across 56 U.S. attorneys’ offices and 45 U.S. states and territories.
“These individuals participated in healthcare fraud schemes involving over $6.5 billion in false claims submitted to Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs,” he said during a press conference.
Blanche highlighted one example of the shocking allegations by sharing some details from one case, involving what he described as a “corporate executive in Arizona” who allegedly took $1 billion in fraud involving “unnecessary wound grafts,” which allegedly cost Medicare over $1 million per patient.
“The indictment also alleges that these individuals then used the taxpayer money to bankroll multi-million dollar homes, luxury vehicles, like a $135,000 Maserati, jewelry, like an $865,000 Bulgari necklace – and to top it all off, to fund the construction of a $4.6 million hotel at a beach resort in the Philippines.”
Blanche said that the coordinated actions of law enforcement over the past two weeks have resulted in over $182 million in cash and other assets seized, “making clear our healthcare fraud enforcement efforts generate a significant return on investment for our taxpayers.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during Tuesday’s press conference that this broad sweep of charges was “the second largest amount ever charged in a single healthcare fraud operation.”
Kennedy detailed some of the finer points of the cases, calling them “disturbing.”
“Some defendants allegedly ordered medically unnecessary tests, others prescribed products that patients did not need [and] allegedly fueled opioid addiction to increase their own revenue,” he stated. “In certain cases, patients allegedly died while believing they were receiving legitimate medical care from providers who only viewed them as billing opportunities.”
Kennedy said that one of the indictments from Tuesday charged a hospice owner in the Los Angeles, California region and two “marketers” for an alleged fraud scheme worth over $27 million. “According to the indictment, the owner paid illegal kickbacks to obtain personal information of deceased Medicare beneficiaries…one of the ways that we’ve been able to detect that fraud is that, in many of them, the patients never die! They live forever. That’s not supposed to happen in hospices.”
This defendant, Kennedy said, was allegedly purchasing the names of deceased Medicare beneficiaries from coroners and then billing for them. “That case illustrates exactly what is at stake,” he stated. “Every fraudulent dollar diverted into a criminal scheme is a dollar unavailable for patient care, for medical innovation, or for services for vulnerable Americans.”