By Tom Gantert
Contributing Writer
The Justice Department announced on Tuesday that it has charged about 450 defendants for various health care fraud schemes totaling more than $6.5 billion.
The charges, unveiled at a press conference in Washington, are against defendants for a variety of schemes in what officials called a record-setting action against fraud.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the charges arose from a “new era” of investigating fraud.
One example cited by officials was an $89 million health care fraud scheme where a man was accused of billing insurers for medically unnecessary cardiovascular tests involving college athletes.
The man then allegedly rubber-stamped the results as normal without reviewing them.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March creating the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which is chaired by Vice President JD Vance and has promised to target rampant fraud.
Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, said that five years ago, Medicare was paying out less than $1 billion for skin substitutes via allografts. In 2025, the payments had increased to almost $15 billion to programs that Ferguson said were “riddled with fraud.”
Ferguson cited a case in Nevada, where a nurse practitioner allegedly bilked Medicaid for nearly $1 billion in skin substitute allografts. Ferguson said the nurse practitioner was performing the allografts on elderly, vulnerable people in hospices and nursing homes and then submitting the claims.
“She was using human beings, American citizens, as living piggy banks,” Ferguson said.
The government seized $865,000 in necklaces and a $500,000 Ferrari that the nurse practitioner bought with her fraudulent earnings, according to Ferguson.
Officials spoke of new methods of attacking fraud with unprecedented cooperation among state and federal partners.
“We now use techniques that were historically never thought of,” said Mehmet Oz, administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “Instead of just flagging problems, we build cases. … By the time our law enforcement partners are ready to move, we aim to hand them a file that is already complete, already ready.”
Officials said there were 45 states and attorneys general involved in Tuesday’s charges. “For the first time in modern history, everyone is working together,” Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
