The Investigative Journal’s daily DOJ Watch summarizes the most consequential public enforcement actions from the U.S. Department of Justice, drawn entirely from Department press releases and related court records. The Justice Department closed the final week of June 2026 with a dense run of activity spanning national security, violent crime, health care fraud, bank-compliance failures, antitrust and digital piracy. Where an action is described as an allegation, it remains unproven, and every charged defendant is presumed innocent unless and until convicted.
Chinese National Pleads Guilty to Cocaine Trafficking and Material Support for CJNG
Wenshen Xu, 52, a Honduras-based Chinese national extradited from Guatemala, pleaded guilty on June 30 in the Eastern District of Virginia to conspiring to import cocaine, conspiring to launder drug-trafficking proceeds, and providing material support to the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), a group the government has designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization, according to the Department’s announcement.
Court documents indicate Xu used a transportation network with access to airstrips, couriers and armored cars to move multi-kilogram cocaine loads. Filings state that he and co-conspirators imported more than 450 kilograms of cocaine into the United States and coordinated the laundering of over $22 million in drug proceeds using cryptocurrency transfers, trade-based methods and encrypted communications platforms. Arrested in Guatemala City in July 2025 and extradited in January, Xu faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life at his scheduled Oct. 15 sentencing.
The plea is significant because it folds a material-support-to-terrorism count into an otherwise conventional narcotics-and-laundering case — a charging approach enabled by the designation of major cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Records suggest the Department intends to apply terrorism-financing tools against cartel logistics and money-movement networks, a posture with potential implications for banks, cryptocurrency intermediaries and freight operators well beyond this defendant.
Three MS-13 Members Convicted in Las Vegas of Nine Murders
A federal jury in the District of Nevada on June 29 convicted Jose Luis Reynaldo Reyes-Castillo, David Arturo Perez-Manchame and Joel Vargas-Escobar — members of MS-13’s “Parkview” clique in Las Vegas — of racketeering conspiracy, murder in aid of racketeering, kidnapping and related firearms offenses, the Department said. Evidence presented at trial tied the three to nine murders across Nevada and California over roughly a year in 2017 and 2018, many involving the kidnapping and killing of suspected rival gang members.
All three face a mandatory minimum penalty of life without parole; sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 10 before U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro. The Department noted that the prosecution was supported by Joint Task Force Vulcan, the MS-13-focused unit created in 2019 that DOJ says has been expanded to target the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
By victim count, the verdict ranks among the more substantial MS-13 murder convictions secured to date, and it reinforces the Department’s strategy of charging entire cliques collectively under the racketeering statute. It also illustrates the operational reach of the Homeland Security Task Force framework used in several of this week’s cases.
Georgia Nurse Practitioner Sentenced in $136 Million Telemedicine Fraud
Jean Wilson, 54, a licensed nurse practitioner from Richmond Hill, Georgia, was sentenced on June 30 to 120 months in prison and ordered to pay $66 million in restitution for her role in a scheme to bill Medicare for medically unnecessary orthotic braces and prescription drugs, according to the Department. Filings indicate Wilson’s two telemedicine companies paid kickbacks for signed orders that were resold to marketing firms, brace suppliers and pharmacies, which submitted more than $136 million in claims; Medicare paid over $66 million.
In a detail the Department emphasized, Wilson later held herself out as a “Medical Professional Legal Consultant” and authored books on health care compliance after her indictment, including one that warned readers others might “use you as a way to make them millions.” Her husband was previously sentenced to seven years for his involvement in the same conspiracy, and prosecutors said the couple used proceeds to buy luxury vehicles, including multiple Rolls-Royces. Wilson pleaded guilty in March 2024.
The sentence lands amid an intensified federal focus on telemedicine-driven durable-medical-equipment fraud, a category that data-analytics units have increasingly targeted because a small number of practitioners can authorize enormous claim volumes.
National Health Care Fraud Takedown Charges 455 Defendants
Wilson’s sentencing followed the Department’s June 23 announcement of its 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which it described as charges against 455 defendants — including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals — connected to more than $6.5 billion in alleged false claims. The Department said the action spanned 56 federal districts and 45 states and territories, with 50 state Medicaid Fraud Control Units participating, and included the seizure of over $182 million in cash and assets.
Because these are charges rather than convictions, the defendants are presumed innocent and the cases remain pending. The Department said the coordinated effort also involved dozens of civil settlements, more than 1,400 provider exclusions and administrative actions by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to suspend or revoke billing privileges.
The takedown reflects a whole-of-government approach that pairs criminal charges with civil and administrative levers, and its scale — the largest number of participating state units in Department history, per DOJ — signals a continued emphasis on data-driven targeting of high-volume billers.
EagleBank to Pay $9.7 Million Over Bank Secrecy Act Failures
EagleBank, a community bank operating in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, and its parent Eagle Bancorp entered a one-year non-prosecution agreement on June 30 and agreed to pay more than $9.7 million to resolve a DOJ investigation into Bank Secrecy Act violations, the Department said. In the agreement, the bank admitted that between 2010 and 2021 it willfully failed to maintain an adequate anti-money-laundering program and allowed two customers — a father and son — to operate a check-kiting scheme for more than a decade, causing nearly $6.3 million in losses to another financial institution.
According to the Department, senior executives repeatedly overrode compliance personnel who tried to close the accounts; the father was a friend and business partner of the bank’s former chairman and chief executive, who resigned in 2019. The penalty comprises a $9,057,821.62 fine and $736,515 in forfeited overdraft-fee proceeds. Eagle Bancorp separately disclosed the settlement in a securities filing, noting the amount had already been accrued in its 2025 financial statements.
Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said financial institutions “must be gatekeepers, not gateways, for criminal activity.” The resolution continues a pattern of bank-integrity enforcement aimed at institutions whose leadership, records indicate, prioritized favored clients over compliance obligations.
Upstate New York Woman Charged With Attempting to Fund Palestine Islamic Jihad
Federal prosecutors on June 30 charged Catherine Beth Washburn, 37, of Irondequoit, New York, by criminal complaint with attempting to provide material support to the Palestine Islamic Jihad, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, the Department announced. The complaint alleges she made roughly 80 cryptocurrency transfers totaling about $30,116 to an individual who claimed to be a PIJ fighter in Gaza, and that she voiced support for violence against Israeli civilians in recovered messages.
A criminal complaint is merely an allegation, and Washburn is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty; the charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The Department said the case was developed by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and is being prosecuted by the Western District of New York together with DOJ’s National Security Division.
The case fits a broader enforcement focus on terrorism financing routed through cryptocurrency, and on domestic actors who prosecutors allege sought to convert online radicalization into concrete material support.
Antitrust Division and 17 States Target Egg-Price Benchmark Manipulation
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, joined by 17 state attorneys general, filed a civil lawsuit on June 30 in the Northern District of Iowa against Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman’s Egg Ranch and the Versova entities, alleging they coordinated bidding to inflate the Urner Barry price quotations that influence wholesale egg prices nationwide, according to the Department. DOJ simultaneously filed proposed settlements that, if approved, would bar the conduct and require antitrust compliance programs and monitoring.
The complaint alleges the companies submitted large volumes of bids — including bids unlikely to result in trades — to signal artificial demand ahead of benchmark publication, and that price quotations dropped after the firms learned of the investigation and were instructed to preserve documents in March 2025. The proposed settlements do not by themselves establish liability and are subject to a 60-day public-comment period under the Tunney Act and to court approval.
The action tests an antitrust theory built around manipulation of a private price index rather than direct price-fixing, and the Department framed it as part of a broader food-affordability enforcement push. Because the settlements are proposed, their ultimate terms and effectiveness remain to be seen.
U.S. Seizes Nearly 400 Domains Streaming World Cup Matches
On June 26, the Department announced the seizure of nearly 400 websites accused of illegally streaming 2026 FIFA World Cup matches in violation of U.S. copyright law, under a seizure warrant filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, the Department said. The action, dubbed Operation Offsides and led by the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, drew on information from FIFA, beIN Media Group, NBCUniversal, the Motion Picture Association’s Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, UFC and Warner Bros.
The Department said coordinated disruptions reached servers and domains in Peru and Bulgaria, described as centers of online piracy, with additional support from authorities in Croatia, Romania, Poland and Colombia. Domain seizures are civil enforcement actions and do not, on their own, establish criminal liability against any operator.
With the United States serving as a World Cup co-host, the operation underscores the government’s stated intent to protect broadcast-rights holders and to treat large-scale streaming piracy as an intellectual-property enforcement priority.
What TIJ Is Watching
Three threads from this week warrant deeper reporting. First, the Xu plea’s material-support count signals that the Department may increasingly pair terrorism-financing statutes with cartel prosecutions; TIJ will track how courts treat that theory on appeal and how it reshapes compliance expectations for banks and cryptocurrency intermediaries. Second, the EagleBank admissions — executives overriding compliance staff on behalf of a client tied to a former chief executive — raise governance questions worth examining across community banks, and the publicly filed statement of facts offers a documented starting point. Third, the egg-benchmark case advances a novel manipulation theory whose Tunney Act comment period will reveal whether states, consumer groups or competitors regard the proposed remedies as sufficient.
Editor’s note: This digest is compiled from public Department of Justice press releases and related court records. Allegations described here are not findings, and charged defendants are presumed innocent unless and until convicted. Parties named in these enforcement actions are entitled to respond, and The Investigative Journal will update its coverage as the cases proceed.