The Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division today announced that its Health Care Fraud Unit, one of the most active white-collar litigating components across the Department, secured federal jury trial convictions in six trials in just under three weeks. The convictions in six trials between May 13 and June 1 spanned federal courtrooms across the United States, including in Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Detroit, New York and Nashville. Six trial convictions in under three weeks ties the Health Care Fraud Unit record for number of trials to result in a conviction in a single month period.
Key details of the case
The cases behind these recent convictions, however, represent a greater level of sophistication and complexity: more than $1.1 billion in fraud losses across six distinct schemes, including a digital health platform that industrialized Medicare fraud at national scale, a proactive data-driven prosecution of a physician who out-billed every other Medicare provider in the country for Botox. Prosecutions requiring simultaneous command of health care data analytics, financial forensics, sophisticated digital evidence, and expert testimony. These results reflect not merely the volume of trials but the caliber of the Fraud Division’s trial practice that carried each one of them to conviction.
Moreover, the Health Care Fraud Unit has completed nine trials to date in 2026 (all of which have resulted in convictions) and 17 trials in 2025, maintaining an extraordinary pace of white-collar trial activity. The Health Care Fraud Unit operates through an integrated team model, pairing specialized trial-ready prosecutors with data analysts, investigators. Paralegals who work together from the opening of an investigation through the return of a verdict.
Meanwhile, leadership reinforces this specialization and emphasis on trial preparation: specialized Assistant Chiefs for Trials oversee and support trial teams across the country, facilitating trial preparedness and institutional knowledge. The results demonstrated over this period reflect a team of trial lawyers who are prepared to take cases to trial and hold accountable those who defraud our nation’s health care programs and steal from the American taxpayer. “What sets the Fraud Division apart is not only our ability to proactively detect, investigate and dismantle fraud schemes before they cause further harm.
Enforcement actions and official statements
In addition, the depth and skill of the trial lawyers who carry those cases across the finish line. The American people should rest assured that we are prepared to seek accountability at trial for health care fraudsters, whether for a $1 million fraud in Michigan or a $1 billion fraud in South Florida,” said Colin McDonald, Assistant Attorney General for the National Fraud Enforcement Division. “The Fraud Division is providing full-spectrum accountability to any fraudster who seeks to use Americans’ hard-earned savings as their personal piggy-bank.”.
As a result, blackman Trial Conviction (Industrial-Scale Telehealth Platform Fraud, $1 Billion):. Brett Blackman was the founder and CEO of HealthSplash. Owned DMERx, an internet platform that did not facilitate legitimate medicine but instead industrialized fraud. For complete details, refer to the official DOJ press release.
Foreign call centers blasted spam mailers targeting hundreds of thousands of Medicare’s most vulnerable patients, pressuring elderly beneficiaries into accepting medically unnecessary orthotic braces. When patients agreed, DMERx connected the leads to telemedicine companies that took illegal kickbacks in exchange for signing bogus physicians’ orders, orders that falsely certified a doctor had personally examined the patient, when in many cases the doctor never spoke with them at all. The government’s undercover agent posed as a Medicare beneficiary and documented the scheme in real time: a foreign call center pushed the agent into multiple braces.
Notably, a DMERx doctor then signed orders claiming to have conducted in-person tests that are physically impossible to perform remotely. To conceal the conspiracy, Blackman and his co-conspirators manipulated physicians’ orders to evade Medicare audits and used sham contracts to disguise kickback flows. All told, the scheme generated more than $1 billion in false billings, of which Medicare paid more than $450 million. For related coverage, see CEO of iran tech company arrested on federal charge of supplying u.s. equipment to iran’s nuclear and military establishment — DOJ.
Specifically, a jury convicted Blackman of health care fraud conspiracy, kickback conspiracy, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. His co-defendant Gary Cox, convicted at a prior trial, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. (Southern District of Florida). Mailyan Trial Conviction (Proactive Data Driven Lead for Botox Billing Fraud: Obstruction, Fabricated Records, $45 Million):.
Subsequently, this prosecution began not with a witness or a complaint, but with a data anomaly. The Health Care Fraud Unit’s Data Analytics Team identified Dr. Violetta Mailyan as a statistical extreme: she had been paid more by Medicare for Botox injections than any other physician in the United States, collecting more than $24 million over four years, roughly six times the next-highest provider group, all neurologists. For related coverage, see Maryland man Boateng sentenced to nine years for role in multi-million dollar money laundering scheme.
What the data predicted, the trial evidence confirmed. Mailyan billed for thousands of Botox injections that were never administered, including while she was on vacation in Cabo, Mexico. Maui, Hawaii; Las Vegas; Pennsylvania; and New York.
In particular, she billed for a patient who was federally incarcerated at the time of the purported injection. She submitted more than $19 million in claims on days when her clinic was closed. She back-dated claims to bill for injections purportedly provided before patients had even contacted her clinic to request an appointment.
When federal investigators closed in and a grand jury subpoena arrived, Mailyan fabricated and back-dated patient consent forms and medical records and delivered the altered documents to agents, adding obstruction charges to the fraud counts. Post-verdict, the jury found a Tesla Model X, a Tesla Cybertruck, brokerage accounts valued at over $7.3 million. Four California properties subject to forfeiture as proceeds of the fraud. (Central District of California).
Investigation and prosecution details
Scott Trial Conviction (Home Health Kickback Network: Hospital Nurse Bribed via CashApp, Stolen Patient Identities):. Ruby Scott, a licensed nurse and owner of Delta Home Health Care LLC in Michigan, built her patient pipeline by corrupting a hospital discharge nurse, a relationship she had first cultivated at a prior employer and then carried with her when she launched Delta. The nurse used her hospital access to identify Medicare patients and fax their confidential records to Delta without their knowledge or consent. Scott transmitted over $130,000 in illegal kickbacks to the nurse through CashApp, PayPal, check, and cash.