The Investigative Journal’s survey of federal enforcement actions, compiled from Justice Department press releases and the court records they cite. Charges are allegations unless a court has entered a conviction or judgment; civil settlements are not findings of liability unless a court has said otherwise.
The Justice Department’s enforcement docket from Aug. 13 through Aug. 17 ranged from a consumer-protection penalty against one of the country’s largest retailers to another conviction in what the department describes as the largest health care fraud case it has ever prosecuted. The week also brought guilty pleas in a $43 million abusive-trust tax shelter, a seven-year drug-money laundering operation, an international alien-smuggling ring, and a Massachusetts sex-trafficking conspiracy — plus two Civil Rights Division actions aimed at state institutions in California and Virginia. Here is what the public record shows.
Amazon to pay $2.25 million over identity-theft record requests
A federal court in the District of Columbia has entered a stipulated order against Amazon.com Inc. resolving allegations that the company violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Justice Department announced Aug. 14. According to the government’s complaint, Amazon failed to provide identity-theft victims with requested records of transactions made by people believed to have fraudulently used their identities — and failed to produce those records within the 30 days the statute requires.
The order imposes a $2.25 million civil penalty and requires Amazon to provide such records free of charge within 30 days of a verified request, and to post a notice on its website telling identity-theft victims how to ask for them. The case was investigated and referred to the department by the Federal Trade Commission. “Consumers whose identities have been stolen should not face unnecessary red tape when they investigate how their identities were misused and seek to clear their names,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Civil Division.
The significance: FCRA cases against major platforms are comparatively rare, and this one — a stipulated resolution, not an adjudicated finding of liability — signals the Civil Division’s continued appetite for FTC-referred consumer cases following the department’s $150 million Adobe settlement in March.
Operation Gold Rush notches its 16th conviction as Ohio man admits laundering $3.4 million
Eldar Zarbavel, 45, of Pepper Pike, Ohio, pleaded guilty Aug. 13 to one count of money laundering for moving approximately $3.4 million in health care fraud proceeds through regional banks on behalf of a foreign-based transnational criminal organization, according to a Justice Department release. Prosecutors say the organization, based in Russia and elsewhere, sits at the center of Operation Gold Rush — the multi-billion-dollar Medicare fraud investigation the department calls the largest health care fraud case it has ever prosecuted. Thirty-five people have been charged to date; Zarbavel is the 16th convicted.
Charging documents allege the organization equipped nominee owners with false sale and corporate-registration paperwork to take over durable medical equipment companies, then funneled Medicare and private-insurance reimbursements — money that looked “clean” because it came from legitimate payers — into accounts it secretly controlled before siphoning funds to shell companies and banks overseas. Zarbavel’s role, per his plea: opening Northeast Ohio bank accounts for Royce Medical Supply LLC, a Florida DME company through which the organization submitted $1.42 billion in false claims between July 2022 and July 2024. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services suspended reimbursement on nearly all of those claims, but some were paid, and filings indicate Zarbavel moved roughly $3.4 million of the proceeds in June and July 2024.
Zarbavel faces a maximum of 20 years in prison at his Dec. 16 sentencing. One detail in the department’s account warrants attention: the organization allegedly circumvented bank internal controls “and in some cases coordinated directly with associates employed at the banks” — an insider dimension that remains largely unexplored in public filings.
Texas promoter admits role in tax shelter that cost the IRS $43 million
Larry C. Conner, 69, of Frisco, Texas, pleaded guilty Aug. 12 to conspiring to defraud the IRS by promoting an abusive trust tax shelter, the department announced. According to court documents, Conner sold clients nationwide a structure of three purported “non-grantor” trusts and a so-called private family foundation — marketed through in-person seminars under the name The Business Solutions Group — for fees typically between $25,000 and $50,000. Conner admitted he knew the shelter was fraudulent, having received repeated warnings from attorneys and accountants, and admitted using it himself to evade taxes on about $5.2 million of his own income from 2016 through 2021.
The scheme’s collective toll, per the release: false returns sheltering approximately $156 million in income, for a tax loss of roughly $43 million. The broader network has now largely been dismantled. Co-conspirator Timothy McPhee is serving 151 months; Marcia Predmore, Weldon Wulstein, Suzanne Thompson, and Roderick Prescott were convicted at a five-week trial in May and June and face sentencing in January 2027; tax preparer Kent Ellsworth pleaded guilty and is set for sentencing Dec. 7 in Arizona. Conner faces up to five years at his Jan. 26, 2027 sentencing. IRS Criminal Investigation handled the case.
Colombian national pleads guilty in seven-year electronics laundering scheme
Andrelio Castaño Rojas, 55, of Colombia, pleaded guilty Aug. 17 to a money laundering conspiracy that ran from January 2018 through March 2025, according to the department. Court documents describe a currency-exchange scheme: Rojas opened U.S. bank accounts for two of his American companies, arranged for those accounts to receive drug proceeds via wires and bulk cash deposits, then converted the money into consumer electronics exported to Colombia.
The case, prosecuted in the Eastern District of Virginia by the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics and Forfeiture Section, was investigated by the DEA’s Norfolk and Miami offices. Rojas faces a maximum of 20 years at sentencing, set for Jan. 22, 2027.
Tampa man admits smuggling role in ESTA-fraud pipeline for Cuban nationals
Yuniel Lima-Santos, 31, of Tampa, pleaded guilty Aug. 13 to nine counts spanning alien smuggling, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and money laundering, the department announced. According to court documents, his organization encouraged thousands of Cuban nationals to enter the United States illegally, advertising on social media and filing hundreds of fraudulent Electronic System for Travel Authorization applications with Customs and Border Protection — falsely claiming European citizenship for applicants who were in Cuba at the time and are ineligible for the ESTA program.
Filings indicate clients were charged between $1,500 and $40,000, with co-conspirators at times chartering private planes. Lima-Santos admitted transmitting more than $600,000 internationally between 2021 and 2024 to purchase flights, and to incorporating a Florida shell company — no employees, payroll, or reported income — to move and disguise smuggling proceeds. He also admitted helping a co-defendant bring Cuban women into the country who then worked in strip clubs to pay off smuggling debts.
Twelve people were charged in a superseding indictment in the Middle District of Florida. Seven have pleaded guilty, including Erik Ventura-Castro, sentenced in July to 30 months. Two alleged co-conspirators, Lazaro Alain Cabrera-Rodriguez and Gisleivy Peralta Consuegra, await a Sept. 21 trial and are presumed innocent. The prosecution falls under Joint Task Force Alpha, which the department credits with more than 477 arrests and 431 U.S. convictions to date. Lima-Santos faces up to 20 years; sentencing has not yet been scheduled.
South Carolina man pleads guilty in Fall River sex-trafficking conspiracy
Alexander Smalls, 27, of Beaufort, South Carolina, pleaded guilty Aug. 17 to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, per the department. Court documents state that Smalls and co-defendant Christy Parker used beatings, threats, sleep deprivation, manufactured debts, and threats to have a victim’s child taken away to coerce at least one adult victim into repeated commercial sex acts around Fall River, Massachusetts, in 2023 — and that Smalls continued coordinating the conspiracy from jail after his March 2023 incarceration on unrelated charges.
Five co-defendants were previously convicted; Parker pleaded guilty to counts including sex trafficking of a minor and awaits sentencing. Smalls faces a mandatory minimum of 15 years and up to life in prison at his Dec. 9 sentencing. Homeland Security Investigations Boston and the Fall River Police Department investigated.
DOJ findings: California women’s prisons fail to protect inmates from staff sexual abuse
The department announced Aug. 13 that it has reasonable cause to believe the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and two facilities — the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino — are violating the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by failing to protect female prisoners from sexual abuse and harassment by staff. The findings report, the product of a CRIPA investigation opened in September 2024, describes a sustained pattern of staff sexual misconduct, failures in confidential reporting, improper investigations, and insufficient accountability, along with inadequate implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
“This deliberate indifference to the suffering of female prisoners at the hands of prison staff is illegal,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division. The department’s notice identifies minimum remedial measures — expanded camera coverage, confidential reporting channels, strengthened investigative protocols — and starts a 49-day clock: if California does not satisfactorily respond, the Attorney General may sue under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act.
These are the department’s investigative conclusions, not a court judgment; the release does not include a response from CDCR, and the state’s formal reply is pending.
Civil Rights Division opens Title VI review of William & Mary scholarships
The Civil Rights Division said Aug. 17 it is opening a compliance review into the College of William & Mary to determine whether scholarships and student benefits use racial criteria that violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, per the announcement. The department’s notice letter cites programs including the Lemon Legal Scholars Program — up to five full-ride law scholarships that appear earmarked for graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities — a graduate fellowship with a stated preference for Hispanic or Latino women, and the “Reaching Back Scholarship.”
“The Department will not turn a blind eye to race-based preferences, however they are packaged or portrayed by universities,” Dhillon said. The department stated explicitly that it “has not reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation,” and the university’s response was not included in the release. The review extends a line of higher-education Title VI actions that has become a signature of this Civil Rights Division.
On TIJ’s radar
Fraud Division priorities. A day before the Zarbavel plea, Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald issued a memorandum on enforcement priorities for the National Fraud Enforcement Division, the component created April 7 that now houses health care and tax fraud prosecutions. How the memo reshapes case selection — and resourcing for the roughly 19 unresolved Gold Rush defendants, by the department’s count — is worth tracking.
The bank-insider thread. DOJ’s assertion that the Gold Rush organization “coordinated directly with associates employed at the banks” names no institutions and no employees. Which banks’ controls failed, and whether any insiders face charges, is a question TIJ intends to pursue in court filings.
The docket ahead. Sept. 21: trial of two remaining alien-smuggling defendants in the Middle District of Florida. Early October: California’s CRIPA response deadline. December: sentencings for Ellsworth (Dec. 7), Smalls (Dec. 9), and Zarbavel (Dec. 16). January 2027: Rojas (Jan. 22), Conner (Jan. 26), and the four tax-shelter trial convictions.
Policy backdrop. In one of his first acts, Attorney General Todd Blanche on Aug. 17 finalized a regulation creating a process for restoring federal firearm rights to eligible prohibited persons, and the department on Aug. 13 settled with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over carry-permit procedures — two Second Amendment moves that will shape the enforcement landscape ahead.
Methodology and right of reply: This digest is compiled exclusively from Justice Department press releases and the linked public court documents; all quotes are drawn from those releases. Defendants in pending matters are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty; settlements and stipulated orders are not admissions or findings of liability unless stated by the court. Named parties were not contacted for comment prior to publication; The Investigative Journal will publish responses from named individuals or institutions upon request.