455 people charged in alleged $6.5B healthcare 'fraud schemes': Department of Justice

Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Today, we are here to announce the results of the 2026 National Healthcare Fraud Takedown. This announcement marks the greatest combined federal and state effort in combating healthcare fraud in history. Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and the Vice President and all those folks standing behind me and next to me, we are more united than ever before. This team is working tirelessly to take down fraudsters who steal from taxpayer-funded programs and prey on vulnerable Americans. When we talk about the team that's working on these cases, I want to give some context around that. There are nine healthcare fraud strike forces that have been part of this effort, 57 U.S. Attorney's Offices, 41 State Attorney General's Offices, not red states, not blue states, but both working together with the federal government. Multiple law enforcement agencies, including inspector generals, some of the agencies that are here with me on this stage, that's what we talk about when we say this is an all-government approach to combating fraud. It's not just the Department of Justice. It's not just HHS. It's all government, including working with our state and local partners. Today, we are announcing federal and state charges, all of which were charged or unsealed at some point over the past two weeks, the past 14 days, coordinated nationwide action. Since June 8th, we've charged 455 defendants across 56, like I said a minute ago, U.S. Attorney's Offices and 45 U.S. states and territories. As alleged in the various indictments, these individuals participated in healthcare fraud schemes involving over $6.5 billion in false claims submitted to Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs. The team around me will get into more specifics, but here are a few points that stand out. In one indictment, we're bringing charges against a corporate executive in Arizona in connection to over a $1 billion fraud involving unnecessary wound grass. This alleged scheme cost Medicare over $1 million per patient. In total, our indictment charges 11 defendants for over $2 billion in fraudulent claims in connection to alleged wound care schemes. The indictment also alleges that these individuals then used the taxpayer money to bankroll multimillion-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. We're taking back the money, the luxury cars, the jewelry, and these alleged fraudsters will face justice. The coordinated actions of 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. In terms of Medicaid fraud, we're able to announce today the creation of the West Coast Strike Force and the deployment of additional prosecutors, allowing us to bring charges against a record-setting 295 defendants. Our indictments allege over $518 million in Medicaid fraud between these individual defendants. You're going to hear from Director Patel in a moment, but apprehending alleged fraudsters remains a top priority of the Department of Justice and the FBI and our other law enforcement partners, including the DEA, who's here as well. At last year's takedown, a year ago, we charged multiple individuals for allegedly running a $10.6 billion medical equipment scheme using stolen identities to make false Medicare claims. Today, I can announce that earlier this month, we apprehended two of those defendants extradited from Estonia. Separately, over the weekend, we conducted the foreign transfer to custody of a defendant who was allegedly connected to another $3.7 billion in intended loss. I want to thank our tireless federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies who work hard every day and participated in these whole-of-government operations. This is just the beginning. Fraudsters can no longer rip off American taxpayers. If you seek to harm or cheat Americans, we will find you, seize any assets, and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. Thank you very much. I'm going to turn it over now to Secretary Kennedy. Thank you. Thank you, Attorney General Blanch, and thank you to the White House Fraud Task Force, to Colin McDonald of the Justice Department, to Director Kash Patel of the FBI, to the HHS Office of Inspector General, Dr. Shahnaz and the CMS team, and the investigators and law enforcement officers who brought these cases forward. President Trump directed this administration to confront healthcare fraud aggressively, and we are doing that. The 2026 national healthcare fraud takedown uncovered $6.5 billion in alleged fraud, the second largest amount ever charged in a single healthcare fraud operation. The Department of Justice charged a record number of Medicaid fraud defendants. More than 440 defendants now face charges. This effort brought together federal agencies, state partners, and U.S. territories across the United States. 18 of the participating states, as Attorney General Blanch pointed out, were blue states with Democratic governors. Fraud does not recognize party lines, and neither does accountability. Today's cases include the largest Medicaid fraud enforcement action in the Department of History. 165 defendants charged with allegedly submitting more than $200 million in false claims to Medicaid. These schemes did not target government programs, they targeted the American taxpayer. They stole money from workers who pay taxes, from families who depend on Medicare and Medicaid, and from patients who trusted their healthcare professionals to be serving their health interests, when it turns out they were just chasing money from our agencies. The allegations in these cases are particularly disturbing. Some defendants allegedly ordered medically unnecessary tests. Others prescribed products that patients did not need. Some allegedly fueled opioid addiction to increase their own revenue. In certain cases, patients allegedly died while believing they were receiving legitimate medical care from providers who only viewed them as billing opportunities. These defendants did not simply break the law, they violated the trust that patients place in medical professionals. One of today's indictments charged a hospice owner in the Los Angeles area and two marketers in a $27.7 million Medicare fraud scheme. According to the indictment, the owner paid illegal kickbacks to obtain personal information of deceased Medicare beneficiaries. One of the ways that Colin and Dr. Oz have been chasing down hospice fraud, we've closed now 800 hospices in LA. 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 particular owner was actually going out and purchasing names from coroners of dead patients and then billing us for those, making it appear that some of his patients were actually finally dying. While taxpayers funded these false claims, the owner purchased a Rolls-Royce Phantom. That case illustrates exactly what is at stake. Every fraudulent dollar diverted into a criminal scheme is a dollar unavailable for patient care, for medical innovation, or for services for vulnerable Americans. During the Biden administration, my predecessor implemented two reforms at HHS. One of those was the so-called pay and chase system. We know on billing, when invoices come into my agency, we can tell that some of them are fraudulent or probably fraudulent. The new system said, we're not going to stop those payments. Everybody paid and then we'll claw them back at the end. It was called pay and chase. When I asked people the careers at HHS, how could you do this? This is crazy. Of course, we never claw back anything. They said that they were told to focus on enrollment and not fraud. The other thing that they did is to liquidate our program integrity office. When my predecessor came into office, there were 80 people in program integrity, which is not enough. It was 50 states and five territories. When I got in, there was only six left. All of those people were transferred or let go. We were literally doing no program integrity. That opened up the floodgates for all of this fraud, $100 billion in fraud a year that are being stolen now from my agency. The federal government paid claims first and chased fraud after the money was out the door. That approach, of course, failed taxpayers. We are ending it. HHS is replacing the old pay and chase system with a detect and prevent a strategy that identifies suspicious claims before the taxpayer dollars ever leave the treasury. We are deploying advanced artificial intelligence and data analytics to identify fraudulent billing patterns in real time, stop improper payments before they occur, and strengthen oversight across federal health programs. Our objective is straightforward, to stop the fraud before it happens. The people charged today should understand that we will continue expanding these capabilities, strengthening enforcement, and pursuing every credible allegation of fraud. If you exploit patients for profit, if you steal Medicaid or Medicare dollars, if you treat taxpayer dollars as your personal bank account, we will investigate you, we will build a case, and we will bring you to justice. We will find fraud, we will stop it, we will recover taxpayer dollars whenever the law permits, and we will restore integrity to the programs that millions of Americans rely on for their care. Thank you, and I now want to introduce Colin McDonald from the Justice Department. Thank you, Secretary Kennedy. Today's record health care fraud charges and arrests makes clear that there is no case too big, no scheme too complex, and no hiding place too remote for our fraud-fighting team. In just 14 days, 455 defendants have been charged across the country for schemes involving over $6.5 billion in fraud. Under the leadership of President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Attorney General Blanche, the Department of Justice is aggressively scaling our offensive against anyone using health care as a front to steal from the American people. But today's cases allege more than the theft of taxpayer dollars. Many allege the theft of human dignity. Our sick, needy, and elderly, placing their faith in the gift of medicine, were neglected, ignored, and used for personal profit. For example, one defendant is charged with conspiring to submit approximately $89 million in false and fraudulent claims for cardiovascular tests. This defendant allegedly used marketing tactics designed to prey on fears that student-athletes could die from sudden cardiac arrest. He then allegedly rubber-stamped test results as normal without reviewing them. Despite one patient's test results showing an enlarged heart, the defendant allegedly signed off on the test results within approximately 11 seconds of accessing the 63 test result images. As a result, the student was cleared to play, and he suffered sudden cardiac arrest and died on the basketball court just weeks later. That is why we cannot and will not tolerate fraud in health care. How are we going about targeting fraud in health care? We are following the data. Data talks, and data doesn't lie. It identifies where fraud is happening and unmasks the perpetrators driving it. For example, our data analytics team observed a dramatic spike in payments for allografts from less than $1 billion in 2021 to over $14 billion just four years later. Our resulting investigations have led to criminal charges against 11 defendants across six districts for allograft fraud, including a company executive and eight medical professionals. What happened here, to be clear, was not medicine. The defendants in schemes purchased allografts for $30 to $75, inflated the price up to nearly 50 times that cost with the tab picked up by the taxpayers, and then secretly gave lucrative kickbacks for allografts applied. Marketers and nurses who took kickbacks targeted vulnerable hospice patients, making in many instances over $1 million per patient. These allograft fraud charges are the result of just one of our many data-driven initiatives. We are announcing today the first prosecution arising out of our financial intelligence review team, a cutting-edge effort to combine traditional data analytics with financial information. In less than seven months after identifying a suspicious behavioral health provider in Illinois, we brought charges against a defendant for a $67 million Medicaid fraud scheme. The defendant allegedly billed Medicaid for providing behavioral health services to patients who received no services and were actually even hospitalized at entirely separate health facilities at the time of the billings. Today is just the beginning of a new era of healthcare fraud enforcement. The Fraud Division's Healthcare Fraud Unit, which led today's nationwide takedown, is one of the best investments across the government, saving $106 for every dollar spent. And with the whole of government laser-focused on rooting out fraud under the leadership of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, we are rapidly enhancing our fraud-fighting capabilities. Today, we are announcing an agreement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to obtain dedicated cloud computing space in the CMS's cloud environment to run real-time advanced analytical models to detect fraud. We are also announcing agreements with the Federal Trade Commission and Customs and Border Protection to eliminate data silos and enrich our algorithms. And we're coordinating with prosecutors, agents, and analysts from across state and federal government at a scale and scope that has never before existed until today. The era of getting rich off America's healthcare system is over. If you defraud the American people and put profit over patience, we will do everything we can to put you in prison. I'll now turn the podium over to a critical partner in our fight against fraud, Director Kash Patel. Thank you. America, you should take a look. You should take a look at what leadership from the White House and President Trump's prioritization to go after and combat fraud looks like. America should take a look at the Vice President's Task Force and the initiative by the Justice Department here under AG Todd Blanch and AAG Colin McDonald. Fraud is no longer being tolerated, is not being put up with, and you've seen the staggering numbers that in just the last two weeks, that's all we're here to talk about today, is just the last two weeks of fraud, of perpetrators and criminals who have been arrested and apprehended from around the world, totaling over six and seven billion dollars in fraud, in money stolen from the American people, our precious taxpayer dollars that are supposed to service our seniors and our kids, were being stolen outright by individuals who thought they could get away with it. But thanks to the Trump administration and the Vice President's Task Force and the White House Task Force and Department of Justice's courageous prosecutors, we have now been able to charge a record number of individuals. I just want to go over a couple of things. One such individual, the FBI is responsible for what we call foreign transfer of custodies, FTOCs. Last week, the FBI executed four FTOCs on four separate continents in 24 hours. We did this because we had the backing of the White House and the U.S. government and the Department of Justice to go out and apprehend criminals wherever they are. One such individual related to fraud was apprehended in Turkey, thanks to the relationships and partnerships between Ambassador Tom Barak and the Turkish government. Mr. Hilmi was arrested after perpetrating a multi-billion dollar fraud in Turkey, apprehended and transferred back to the United States of America while he faced prosecution. I also want to highlight the Vice President's brilliant idea to put together a most wanted fraudsters list. The FBI has always had our top 10 most wanted fugitive list, but we in two weeks ago, I think we were all in Ohio where we announced our most wanted fraudsters list. And in just the last two weeks, thanks to the help of the American people in the world, we have apprehended two of the most wanted fraudsters already. One of those individuals, Herbert Leon Kimball, was apprehended in the Philippines. He's an American citizen. He had been bilking, allegedly, the system against Medicaid for billions of dollars since 2014, $1.2 billion in telemedicine specifically alone. That individual was apprehended in the Philippines and transported back to the United States of America where he will now face justice. This is the reach of the United States government. This is the reach of this team, the interagency and state and local partners focused on one mission and one mission alone to combat fraud and make sure the American public's precious taxpayer dollars go where they're supposed to go to the American people that need them the most and not to these criminals who are stealing from us day in and day out. Those days are over and this should showcase to the world the length that we will go as an interagency and as a task force to apprehend and arrest and bring to justice anyone who steals our dollars that are meant for our most vulnerable citizens. We're also going to ask what we did in Ohio a couple of weeks ago, and we'll circulate it on social media later. We're adding two more individuals to the most wanted fraudster list. I said then, and I've said it before, the American people and the world are our best sources of information. There is no such thing as bad information. So if you have any information on Khalid Sattari, who is wanted for a $547 million genetic testing scheme, and we believe to be hiding in the United Arab Emirates, call 1-800-CALL-FBI. 1-800-CALL-FBI. Let us know. You saw what we did in just two weeks by apprehending two of the most wanted fraudsters. With your help, we will apprehend the rest of them. The last one is Emily Tai, who's also wanted in connection with a genetic testing scheme for allegedly stealing $90 million. She was previously on an ankle monitor and fled, we believe, to Vietnam. So if the American public or anyone in the world has information on Emily Tai, please call 1-800-CALL-FBI. We need your information. We need your help. And you have now seen what we can collectively do as an interagency, under the Attorney General's brilliant leadership and the prioritization at the White House, that fraud will not be tolerated, that fraud perpetrators will be apprehended, not just across the United States of America, but from the four corners of the world. So we plead with you to give us any and all information that you have. And again, the only type of bad information is the one that we don't receive from you. So please call 1-800-CALL-FBI with any information on any of the fraudsters on our Most Wanted list. And this should be a clear message to the world that the FBI, along with our interagency partners, are not tolerating fraud anymore. And we will chase them down just like we chase down terrorists, narco-traffickers, gangbangers, and those that wish to do harm to our communities, because this type of harm is equally as harmful to our most vulnerable. Thank you. And I now turn it over to our brilliant partner, Dr. Oz. I'm going to put my doctor's hat on here. There's two issues that we have not gone into in detail, but they've been mentioned by many. The first is affordability. The $100 billion that Secretary Kennedy mentioned is stolen from Medicare and Medicaid. If we were able to just take that out of what's being stolen from Medicare, we'd double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund. It massively changes what people pay when we tolerate this kind of fraud. The second big message, again, is that costs matter. They matter a lot. And they're measured, oftentimes, in ways that we can put on signs. But the actual cost is that of human health and the lives of humans hurt by these fraudsters, because they don't care about you. If they're willing to steal your money when you're down and out and struggling and you're vulnerable, they will definitely take your health and take your life if that's required. Today's actions are the result of months of painstaking collaboration by law enforcement agencies represented on this stage. The U.S. Attorney, of course, the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force, the FBI, HHS-OIG, CMS colleagues, all of us worked tirelessly towards one goal, making sure that people who steal from Medicare and Medicaid face real consequences, because it scares away future perpetrators. As Secretary Kennedy mentioned, the general approach has been slow, meandering, and non-consequential for fraudsters, which is why, after COVID, they rushed into this space. CMS's role in this partnership has fundamentally changed because of the nature of the fraudsters. We now use techniques that historically were never thought of. Instead of just flagging problems, we build cases. Under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy, we've created a stellar team at CMS, fraud fighters, including Kim Brandt and Jeanine Ugo and others, who brilliantly reinvent how we catch these criminals. By the time our law enforcement partners are ready to move, we aim to hand them a file that is already complete, already ready, supported by payment suspensions and provider replications, funding deferrals, real-time fraud detection that never existed before. The numbers tell the story. I'm going to give you two really important ones. The first is, in the first quarter of last year, we revoked billing privileges for fraudsters of 1,006 providers—a pretty good result, we thought, at the time. This same period, this year, the first quarter, we made 1,400 replications. That's a 40 percent increase over last year, so 40 percent more replications. We also have payment suspensions where we just don't pay the bill because we don't think it's legitimate. This is impressive. The first half of this year, we made 1,000 Medicare payment suspensions. A thousand. That's a lot of people. Nearly 800, by the way, from one state, California. For a similar period last year, we made 219 suspensions, so a five-fold, 500 percent increase in payment suspensions because we're using tools now that historically had been used marginally. Now, these efforts brand all kinds of new tools for Medicare and Medicaid. The fraud room that has been put together is a purpose-built tool to identify, track, and neutralize bad actors, often from foreign countries, much more effectively than the old system. The form is straightforward. The DOJ brings a prosecutorial firepower. Law enforcement brings investigative tools. CMS brings data. The analytics, we use administrative muscle to push things through, and we are closing loopholes that fraudsters have avoided and been exploiting for years. Those days are over. Fraudsters, your time is up. Now, speaking of fraudsters, I want to highlight an important case that drives home what everyone on this stage really feels deeply in our heart. Kim, if you can be—this is Kim Brent that I mentioned earlier. Just bring that poster of the young man up. This young man has been referred to already. His name is Caden Francis. I spoke to his mother last night. Kim, just bring it up, if you don't mind. Looks like a pretty good athlete. This young man was involved in a scheme run by fraudsters, including doctors, a cardiovascular testing company whose director approved EKGs and echocardiograms, as was mentioned earlier by Colin, in as little as 11 seconds. That was this kid's case. The EKG was taken. His parents were told he was fine. The doctor, we believe, from the moment he got the image said it was fine was 11 seconds. The parents, who had been marketed to claiming that their kid might be at risk, were therefore told the kid was fine when, in fact, nothing had been done. The October EKG was read as normal. The kid was dead a month later. I talked to the mom, of course, still in pain. The family was told the tests were normal. Unfortunately, and despite all these internal communications that we revealed, which were acknowledged by the company that they knew these were not normal tests, and they had done something terribly wrong, they kept doing it. That kid was hurt irreparably, passed away because nothing was done about these fraudsters, and they went right after it. Their company billed over $90 million while a child was buried by their family. No remorse whatsoever. Kane's mother wanted me to give you a quote. I'm going to read it exactly as she gave it to me. The doctor is as bad as any greedy criminal who is killing people in the streets. I hope he rots in jail so no one else is hurt, but my son will never come back to me. That's the real human cost that we were speaking of on the stage. Julian's mother shared the autopsy and revealed that her son's heart was two and a half times normal. Instead of being this big, I'm a heart surgeon. That's a normal-sized heart, size of your fist, two and a half times larger than that. There is no way you could miss that, except they didn't care. That's why mom runs them to rot in hell. This is not a diagnostic company. It's a predatory scheme dressed up in medical clothing, and we're going to treat it as such. We've got a couple of big breakthroughs. Let me put them in some of these numbers to at confidence that the pay and chase model that CMS had relied on, that Secretary Kennedy spoke to, has been abandoned. Instead, we don't want the money going out the back door. We want the fraud detected as soon as it happens, and we can stop it that way. In original Medicare so far, in the year of 2025, we've done a remarkable job. In 2024, before he came in, we saved about 60% less money than this. The total amount of money saved last year was $42 billion. That's a return on investment of $22 for every dollar that we pulled back for the American taxpayer. Two-thirds of those savings, $28 billion, came from simply locking the front door, never letting the money go out the door. That's provider revocations, automated claim denials, all the things that should have been done years ago. No longer will that money be taken out of your pocketbooks. We achieved this with only a 5% increase in Medicare program integrity spending. This is the best way for us to spend your tax dollars wisely. The Medicaid side is more difficult because states run Medicaid, but we've been on that as well. Savings reached $4 billion last year. That's a 165% increase over the prior year. We did that actually by spending 7% less money. We spent less money, brought in more frosters, and saved you a lot more money. These results don't happen by accident. They reflect a deliberate strategic shift in how CMS operates. They show what's possible when agencies stop working in silos and start working as partners like the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force has been able to achieve. Jetson leader Lewis, Jake Foster, OIG leader March Bell, Rebecca Yuan, there's lots of other people in the room right now who deserve a lot of credit. All of us agree with the President and the Vice President that the best prescription for a fraudster is prosecution. The era of champagne and private jets is over. No longer will champagne and private jets be paid for by the American taxpayer. Andrew Ferguson leads that White House Anti-Fraud Task Force together with Colin McDonnell and the Vice President. I asked him to come up and say a few words. Thank you, Dr. Oz. The President said he wanted a whole-of-government approach to combating health care fraud and fraud across all our benefits programs, and this is the result. Every major leader in this space from the federal government is standing up here and all have contributed in critically important ways to this effort. Investigators, prosecutors, health care specialists, the leadership at HHS and at CMS have made today possible. I also want to thank Jake Foster and his team, Justin Woodward and Rebecca Yuan at DOJ at the health care fraud unit that has broken records with today's effort, not just in their own prosecutions but in harnessing the power of the U.S. attorneys and state attorneys general to make today possible. The Vice President has always said we have to take a two-prong approach to this. We have to stop the money from getting out of the agencies. Administrator Oz and Secretary Kennedy have talked about that. And then we have to impose consequences on people that have defrauded the American government. And we've been saying that we're doing this to save these programs from the fraud that is bleeding them dry, that will make them unavailable in the future for future generations to protect the investment, the trillions of dollars of investment that every American taxpayer makes every single year to help their friends, their neighbors, and strangers in times of need. But I also, like Dr. Oz, I want to talk about the real human toll of this for a minute. I want to talk about skin substitutes or allografts. Five years ago, Medicare was paying out less than a billion dollars every year in allografts and skin substitutes. By 2025, almost 15 billion dollars. These programs were riddled with fraud. And yes, that's a problem because it takes money out of all of our pockets and puts it into the hands of the worst people on the planet. But this doesn't just affect all of us. These frauds affect individual American citizens in horrifying ways. We saw this, for example, in Minnesota, where a program designed to protect veterans from homelessness was so attacked by fraudsters, they had to shut the thing down because they couldn't afford it anymore. I want to talk about a particular case that the department has indicted today out of the District of Nevada, where a nurse practitioner is accused of having bilked Medicaid for almost a billion dollars in skin substitute allografts. But this isn't just filing fake claims and trying to take money out of our pockets. She was performing these skin substitute procedures on vulnerable elderly Americans in hospices and in nursing homes and then submitting those claims. She was using human beings, American citizens, as living piggy banks. And then she took the money she got from those living piggy banks and she bought $865,000 necklaces that the department seized. She bought an almost half million dollar Ferrari that the department also seized. We've heard a lot about the numbers today. We've heard how many records have been broken by the Department of Justices and HHS's incredible efforts today. But the numbers shouldn't be treated as an abstraction. This doesn't just affect the whole country as taxpayers. Real human beings, American citizens, are physically maimed because of this fraud. So shutting down this fraud, killing these incentives for people to commit fraud, putting people in jail to commit these frauds, aren't just about protecting the FISC. They're not just about protecting the program. They are about protecting our fellow American citizens from the worst of us. That is why this is so important. That's why the vice president assembled this task force at the president's direction. And this is the result, the entire federal government deploying all of its resources at home and abroad to end the fraud and to protect American citizens. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to DEA Administrator Terry Cole. Thank you. And Mr. Attorney General, good morning, sir. We stand here today, united to share the commitment to protect Americans and save American lives. It's been said, but bears repeating, health care fraud is not just a financial crime. It's a public safety threat, a public health threat, and a direct threat to the trust the Americans place in our health care system. Let me be clear. Medical providers who fuel addiction, endanger lives, and profit from pain they cause are no different than any other drug trafficker. DEA occupies a unique place in this fight. We sit at the intersection of health care, regulation, and law enforcement. Our job is to protect the controlled substance supply chain and stop those who seek to exploit it. The CSA created a closed system of distribution, one designed to keep medications available for legitimate care while preventing diversion and abuse. Every link in that chain has a responsibility to protect patients and to preserve trust in the system. Being a DEA registrant is not just a privilege. It is a responsibility. It is a promise to patients that medical decisions will be based on clinical judgment, not financial gain. While the vast majority of health care professionals honor that promise, criminals have found ways to exploit the system for personal gain. As both a law enforcement and regulatory agency, DEA sees things others don't. We connect the dots between drug diversion, fraud, and criminal activity. And when we find those abusing positions of trust, we act. We use every authority available, criminal, civil, and administrative, to protect patients and preserve trust in our nation's health care system. In this takedown alone, DEA developed 18 criminal and civil cases in coordination with U.S. attorneys' offices and issued a record 928 administrative actions to prevent future harm. This includes 205 orders to show cause, 53 immediate suspensions, and 642 surrenders for cause. In one case we worked with our partners, we uncovered $36 million in Medicaid fraud, resulting in a seizure of $15 million in U.S. currency, six aircrafts from a single physician. In another case we identified a pillar of a pill mill, clinics operating, that were issuing more than 2 million oxycodone prescriptions and over 900,000 hydrocodone prescriptions. Each scheme chips away at the safeguards put into place to ensure every patient gets the medication they need, safely and lawfully. Americans should never have to wonder whether a prescription was written because it was needed or because someone saw an opportunity to profit. Our message to any medical provider who abuses that trust is simple, if you choose personal greed over professional responsibility, DEA will hold you accountable. DEA has been entrusted to save American lives. We will not stand idle while criminals exploit patients, abuse positions of trust, and put profit over people. Thank you. And now I'd like to welcome HSI Matt Mulholland. Good morning, my name is Matthew Mulholland, I'm the Acting Deputy Executive Associate Director of Homeland Security Investigations, the principal arm, investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. Today's announcement marks a pivotal moment in our nation's ongoing fight against healthcare fraud, a crime that steals from American taxpayers, it puts vulnerable patients at risk. As part of the Department of Homeland Security, HSI is proud to stand alongside our partners in this historic effort. HSI's mission is clear, to safeguard the American public and economy from criminal organizations and individuals who seek to exploit our benefits system for personal gain. Healthcare fraud undermines trust in our healthcare system and diverts resources from those who need them most. This year's national healthcare fraud takedown is the largest in history, with 455 defendants charged across 45 states and territories, and more than 6.5 billion in alleged fraud uncovered. HSI plays a critical role in investigating the transnational criminal networks behind this fraud, identifying and apprehending fugitives overseas, and disrupting schemes that span across borders. Our special agents, working closely with the Department of Justice, HHS, the FBI, the DEA, our local and state and international partners, demonstrated extraordinary dedication and expertise, using advanced data analytics and financial intelligence to follow money, seize assets, and ensure accountability at every level. Their commitment, collaboration, and innovation have made today's results possible. Together we've shown that no criminal, no matter how sophisticated or well hidden, can evade the reach of the U.S. government. HSI remains steadfast in its commitment to protecting the American people, defending the integrity of our nation's financial infrastructure, and ensuring that those who abuse it are held accountable. Today's actions send a powerful message. If you target our healthcare programs, you will be found, you will be prosecuted, and you will be brought to justice. Thank you. All right, thanks everybody. We'll take a couple questions on what we're here for today. If you want to hear from somebody in particular on stage, just feel free to lead with that. Any questions? Alex. Last year's announcement, it was $14.6 billion of intended fraud loss. This year you said $6.5 billion. I'm wondering, can you explain the discrepancy there? Is this as a result of fewer prosecutions, less money, or is this, as Dr. Oz mentioned, the idea that you guys are catching this before the money goes out the door? Is that having an impact? Look, I think it's a combination of everything you just said. There were a couple cases last year that made that number that high. We said this year, we have been doing an extraordinary amount of work. When I say we, I'm not saying the Department of Justice, I'm saying everybody on the stage and the folks in the back. Part of that work includes turning off the spigot. That's right. It includes more detection early on that stops the claims from even going anywhere near payment being issued. That's part of the reason. We had a great year last year, too, when it comes to combating fraud. If you were an American taxpayer, you should be extraordinarily happy with what you see on the stage right now. Not only because of what we're talking about today, but because of what we were talking about a year ago when we had a similar day. I expect that you're going to hear more from us over the next several months. For the first time, at least in modern history, everybody is working together. When we talked about state AGs, we're talking about Republicans, Democrats. We're talking about New York. We're talking about Florida. This is a chronic problem that was actually hurting so many people, not only financially, but thievery, but also hurting, like you heard today, the stories. Look, I think we had a great year last year, a phenomenal year this year. I expect there'll be more happening over the next year, the rest of the year. Next question. We've got a lot of people here for this reason. We've got a lot of people here for this reason, and they're giving up their time. Next question. Are states with both Democratic and Republican leaders working with federal authorities to identify these cases or investigate it for five facts? Colin, do you want to handle that? Yes, thank you for the question. Just to clarify, last year, which was a great result by our department, there were 324 defendants that were charged in last year's takedown. Today, 455 in the last 14 days have been charged with fraud offenses. To your question about the state participation, last year, I believe there were 13 states that participated with us in our takedown. This year, we are in the high 40s of those who have come to the table to add their resources to come work with us, because this truly is a national problem that demands a national response. That's really driven by the White House Fraud Task Force, which is bringing everybody together to say, hey, if we don't solve it, no one will, and folks are coming to the table to ensure that we do this work against the fraudsters better than we've ever done it before. In the case involving the basketball player who died, Dr. Oz, you were highlighting that. Was that resolved and solved through old-fashioned law enforcement work, or were there techniques and tools that the Justice Department or other agencies employed that resulted in that $89 million fraud being detected? There was boots on the ground. Individuals went. They got the records. They could tell how many seconds transpired between when the actual EKG was sent to the doctor in question and when the readout was delivered, so saying that it was normal. Again, I'll speak as a heart physician. There's no way you could miss this diagnosis. This child's heart on autopsy was massive. If it's two and a half times bigger than your fist, it looks like that. The child had echocardiogram and EKG. He also had dopplers of his carotids and groins. This doctor was practicing in multiple states, which is one of the things doctors do to hide their path. They can sneak around. The mom is in Florida. It's really tragic. I just want to highlight this. A dead child is a dead child. Red state, blue state, it doesn't matter. That's why I think so many states are participating because Medicaid is a program that is run by the states. Having them all on board, I think, is a reinforcing element to the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force. Are you getting cooperation from the healthcare corporations in terms of detecting this fraud? What's your relationship with the healthcare corporations? Are these one-offs that are just individuals that are sneaking through, getting around the controls, or are the companies helping to detect this fraud? That's a good question. Who's the best We have great working relationships with healthcare corporations who are required to be alert to instances of fraud across their programs. We collaborate with them to make sure that we can illuminate fraudsters across the healthcare portfolio. We encourage every healthcare corporation to come work with us to root out those who are seeking to defraud the American people by exploiting our healthcare programs. Mr. Carradine, will you take one off-topic question? No. You got it taken off the top. Any other questions? All right. Thanks, everybody, for coming. We appreciate it. Thank you very much.