DOJ Charges 324 in Record $14.6 B Health-Care Fraud Sweep

The US Department of Justice, working with the FBI and federal and state health-care agencies, has charged 324 people in what officials describe as the largest coordinated health-care fraud action in the nation’s history. Prosecutors allege the defendants collectively sought more than $14.6 billion in false Medicare, Medicaid and private-insurance claims.

The 2025 National Health Care Fraud Takedown stretches across 58 federal districts and includes 25 doctors among those indicted. Authorities say schemes ranged from unnecessary skin-graft procedures to the diversion of roughly 15 million opioid pills, underscoring the breadth of fraud targeting taxpayer-funded health programs.

Central to the crackdown is “Operation Gold Rush,” which focuses on a transnational network that allegedly used front owners to buy US medical-supply firms and file about $10.6 billion in bogus catheter claims. Nineteen suspects have been arrested so far, with four apprehended in Estonia following cooperation with foreign law-enforcement agencies.

Separate cases illustrate the scope of the probe. An indictment in Arizona accuses Pakistan-based billing operator Farrukh Ali of stealing $564 million from the state’s Medicaid program through fake drug-treatment claims. In Chicago, staffing-firm owner Jamil Elkoussa allegedly steered $233 million in fraudulent COVID-19 testing bills, pocketing more than $60 million. Georgia authorities charged Liberty Medical owner Elizabeth Sue Ivester with billing $5.4 million for medical equipment that was neither ordered nor supplied, while four Pensacola residents face narcotics-related fraud counts tied to the nationwide dragnet.

To build on the takedown, the Justice Department said it has created a data “fusion centre” to consolidate health-care billing information and accelerate future investigations. “The scale of today’s takedown is unprecedented, and so is the harm we’re confronting,” Acting HHS-OIG Inspector General Juliet Hodgkins said, urging the public to report suspected fraud to federal hotlines.