The Justice Department closed the final week of August with a concentrated burst of enforcement activity, announcing on Friday a $50 million opioid settlement with the nation’s largest retailer, a jury conviction in a Russia export-control case, two sets of international extraditions, and a string of fraud, environmental, and tax resolutions. This digest covers seven actions, each drawn directly from Justice Department records, with links to the underlying press releases throughout.
Walmart to pay $50 million over opioid dispensing allegations
The Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration announced a $50 million settlement with Walmart Inc. on Friday, resolving allegations that the company’s pharmacies illegally filled thousands of invalid prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances in violation of the Controlled Substances Act. The settlement closes out a long-running civil action: the government’s complaint was filed on Dec. 22, 2020, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and amended in 2022.
According to the department, the complaint alleged that since June 2013, members of Walmart’s own compliance team knew certain prescribers were operating as “pill mills” but filled their prescriptions anyway — even after Walmart pharmacists flagged the conduct through thousands of “refusal-to-fill” forms. The filings quote a compliance director’s email suggesting that “[d]riving sales and patient awareness” was “a far better use” of managers’ time than analyzing those reports. Prosecutors also alleged pharmacists filled prescriptions bearing obvious red flags, including dangerous opioid “cocktails” and repeated early refills of high-dose, often-abused drugs.
Beyond the payment, Walmart entered a memorandum of agreement with DEA requiring a reporting hotline, proactive monitoring of dispensing patterns, and a process for evaluating suspect prescribers. Significantly, the department notes that “the claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only; there has been no determination of liability.” The forward-looking DEA agreement — not the dollar figure — may prove the more consequential piece, giving regulators a standing compliance framework against one of the country’s largest pharmacy operations.
Russian national convicted of funneling aircraft parts to Aeroflot
A federal jury in the Southern District of Florida convicted Alexander Mamonov, 62, a Russian national living in Florida, on all 12 counts tied to a scheme to illegally export aircraft parts to Russia and state-owned carrier PJSC Aeroflot. The counts include conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, smuggling, submitting false export information, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Sentencing is set for Nov. 20 before U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams.
According to court documents and trial testimony cited by the department, Mamonov — a former Aeroflot employee — conspired with Ignat Vakorin of Russia to ship more than $900,000 in aircraft parts after the Commerce Department tightened export restrictions and barred Aeroflot from receiving U.S.-origin goods following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The pair allegedly misled U.S. suppliers into believing the parts were destined for the United Arab Emirates and China. Vakorin, charged alongside Mamonov in an April 2025 indictment, remains a fugitive.
The case underscores a pattern federal enforcers have repeatedly flagged: sanctioned Russian buyers using U.S.-based intermediaries and false transshipment destinations to acquire aviation components. The FBI’s counterintelligence division called the verdict “a warning to anyone considering smuggling U.S. technology to our adversaries.”
Alleged Tren de Aragua cell leader extradited to Chile
The United States extradited Rafael Enrique Gamez Salas, 40, a Venezuelan national, to Chile on Thursday to face seven charges stemming from his alleged leadership of “Los Piratas,” described by the department as the primary Chilean cell of the Venezuelan transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua. Chilean authorities accuse him of directing extortions and kidnappings, including the February 2024 kidnapping and murder of a former Venezuelan military lieutenant in Santiago — a victim later found buried in concrete, with an autopsy indicating torture.
Records cited in the release indicate Gamez Salas was removed from the United States to Venezuela in 2023, illegally reentered, was convicted of human smuggling in a Texas state prosecution in February 2025, and pleaded guilty to federal illegal reentry in April 2025. He was serving that sentence in California when arrested on Chile’s provisional request, and he consented to extradition in June. Because Venezuela does not extradite its own nationals, the department framed the Chilean handover as the surest path to prosecution on the homicide-related charges.
This is the second Tren de Aragua extradition to Chile arising from the same murder — the department extradited alleged member Edgar Javier Benitez Rubio in September 2025. The Chilean charges against Gamez Salas are accusations; he has not been tried on them.
Two Nigerian men extradited to face fatal sextortion charges
Two Nigerian nationals arrested in 2023 were extradited to the United States to face charges in separate financially motivated sextortion cases that the department says resulted in the deaths of teenagers. Adebola Festus Adekunle, 26, appeared in federal court in Oxford, Mississippi, charged with sexual exploitation of a minor resulting in death, coercion and enticement, and interstate threats with intent to extort. Mudasiru Afeez Olawale, 24, appeared in Greensboro, North Carolina, on charges including sexual exploitation of minors resulting in death and distribution of child pornography.
Both cases grew out of Operation Artemis, the FBI’s surge against Nigeria-based sextortion rings that the bureau has linked to dozens of American teen suicides. Each man faces a maximum of life in prison, with a 30-year mandatory minimum on the exploitation-resulting-in-death counts. The department credited Nigeria’s Attorney General and its Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for the transfers — a notable data point on international cooperation in a crime category that has largely operated beyond U.S. reach. As the department itself notes, the charges are accusations, and both defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
95-month sentence for laundering $3.1 million in scam proceeds
Oluwasegun Baiyewu, 40, of Houston, was sentenced to 95 months in prison for leading a conspiracy that laundered more than $3.1 million in proceeds from business email compromise, romance, and unemployment insurance fraud schemes. According to court documents, Baiyewu and at least six co-conspirators in the United States and Nigeria used illicit funds to buy salvaged cars and ship them to West Africa between May 2020 and October 2021, coordinating over encrypted messaging applications. In one instance, the department says, the network laundered roughly $280,000 wired by a Puerto Rican renewable energy company deceived in an email compromise scheme. A federal jury convicted Baiyewu of money laundering conspiracy in August 2025; the case falls under the Criminal Division’s Cyber-Enabled Scam Initiative, the department’s umbrella effort against fraud networks targeting Americans.
Shipping companies fined $1.75 million for concealed ocean dumping
MSC Shipmanagement Limited, one of the world’s largest vessel operators, and shipowner Hong Kong Spirit Shipping and Trading Limited each pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships and were sentenced to pay a combined $1.75 million fine and serve four years of probation. According to the department, senior engine officers aboard the MSC Samira III directed crew to pump oily bilge water overboard through the sewage system, bypassing required pollution-control equipment, and later “tricked” the oil-water separator by running fresh water through its monitor — then presented a falsified oil record book to the Coast Guard during two Port of Philadelphia calls in January 2025. A second engineer, Mikhail Tsurikov, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 10 — a docket date worth watching for a signal on individual accountability in maritime pollution cases.
Brooklyn tax preparer admits $1.4 million fraud
Edris Cust, who operated Cust Tax Service in Brooklyn, pleaded guilty to aiding in the preparation of false tax returns. According to court records cited by the department, from roughly 2019 through 2023 she prepared returns with false head-of-household elections, fabricated capital-asset losses, and inflated rental expenses, causing an IRS loss exceeding $1.4 million. She faces a maximum of three years in prison, with sentencing to be set. The prosecution was brought by the Tax Section of the department’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division, created in April — one of a steady stream of cases the division has announced as it builds out its docket.
On TIJ’s radar
Several threads from this cycle merit deeper reporting. First, the National Fraud Enforcement Division’s rapid caseload growth, alongside the Aug. 24 launch of the National Fraud Detection Center, raises practical questions TIJ intends to examine: how the prosecutor-led center will select targets, and how its data-driven referrals will hold up in court. Second, the department’s national security docket produced three cases in one week that reward follow-up: the Mamonov verdict, the Aug. 27 guilty plea of a former Defense Intelligence Agency IT specialist for attempting to pass national defense information to a foreign government, and the Aug. 26 seizure of two hacking platforms the department says were used by Chinese state-sponsored actors against U.S. critical infrastructure. Third, the fugitive status of Ignat Vakorin in the Aeroflot parts case leaves open the question of how much of the procurement network remains active — and whether related transshipment channels through the UAE and China have been closed.
Editorial note: This digest is compiled from Justice Department press releases and court records linked above. Charges described as pending are allegations only, and all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court. The Walmart settlement resolves allegations without a determination of liability. The parties named had not been contacted for comment as of publication; responses received will be added. — Eduardo Bacci, The Investigative Journal