DOJ Watch is The Investigative Journal’s daily digest of federal enforcement activity, compiled from Department of Justice press releases, court filings, and official announcements. Except where a conviction, guilty plea, or formal admission is noted, the conduct described below reflects government allegations, and every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
The Justice Department closed June with one of its busiest enforcement stretches of the year. The period was anchored by what the department calls the largest health care fraud takedown in its history and punctuated by a rare Espionage Act guilty plea from a former White House national security adviser. Below, TIJ reviews eight of the most consequential actions on the public record, with links to the underlying DOJ announcements and, where available, court documents.
1. Record $6.5 billion health care fraud takedown charges 455 defendants
On June 23, the Justice Department announced the results of its 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, charging 455 defendants — including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals — in connection with more than $6.5 billion in alleged false claims. According to the department, the coordinated action reached 56 federal districts and 45 states and territories, with 50 state Medicaid Fraud Control Units participating, which DOJ described as the most in its history. The department said it seized more than $182 million in cash, luxury vehicles, jewelry, and other assets.
The schemes outlined by prosecutors range from fraudulent wound-care billing to opioid diversion. In one line of charges, the department alleges that a company relabeled amniotic wound allografts at roughly a 2,000% markup and paid kickbacks that helped drive more than $4 billion in Medicare billings. In another, filings indicate a cardiovascular practice billed some $89 million for medically unnecessary tests marketed to student athletes. The department also highlighted parallel administrative action by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which it said suspended 1,079 providers and revoked billing privileges for 1,403 others. The department’s release states that an indictment “is merely an allegation” and that all defendants are presumed innocent.
“This year’s National Health Care Fraud Takedown represents the greatest whole-of-government effort to combat health care fraud in our Nation’s history,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in the announcement. Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the department’s newly created National Fraud Enforcement Division said the government was “aggressively scaling” its response to those who “put profit over patients.” Case-by-case summaries are posted on the department’s Health Care Fraud Unit page.
2. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton pleads guilty under the Espionage Act
In a case with few modern parallels, former National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, 77, of Bethesda, Maryland, pleaded guilty on June 26 to willfully retaining national defense information. According to court documents cited by the department, Bolton — who served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019 — incorporated classified material, some at the TOP SECRET level and including Sensitive Compartmented Information, into “diary” entries and transmitted them to two family members not authorized to receive classified information, using personal email and messaging accounts.
The department states that Bolton’s personal email account was later hacked by a cyber actor it believes was associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that while Bolton reported the intrusion he did not disclose that the account contained national defense information. A federal grand jury in Maryland had indicted him on 18 counts in October 2025; the plea resolves all 18. Under the agreement, Bolton faces a maximum of 60 months in prison, agreed to a $2.25 million fine, and — per the plea — forfeits any federal annuity. U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang set sentencing for October 28.
“John Bolton held a position of extraordinary public trust as the country’s top National Security Advisor, and he betrayed that trust,” said Hayden O’Byrne, Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division. Because this matter is resolved by a guilty plea rather than pending charges, the admitted conduct is a legal finding rather than an allegation — a distinction that sets it apart from most items in today’s digest.
3. Telemedicine owner sentenced to 10 years in $136 million Medicare scheme
On June 30, Jean Wilson, 54, a licensed nurse practitioner from Richmond Hill, Georgia, was sentenced 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 court documents, Wilson owned two telemedicine companies between 2017 and 2019 and paid kickbacks to obtain signed orders, which were then sold to marketers for roughly $90 per Medicare beneficiary. Prosecutors said the conspiracy generated more than $136 million in false claims, of which Medicare paid over $66 million.
In an unusual detail, the department noted that after her arrest Wilson marketed herself as a health care compliance consultant and authored books on the subject — including one in which she warned readers that “some entities and individuals will try to use you.” Wilson pleaded guilty in March 2024 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud; her husband was previously sentenced to seven years for his role. The sentencing reflects a finding following a guilty plea.
4. Antitrust Division moves against alleged egg-price manipulation
The department’s Antitrust Division, joined by 17 state attorneys general, filed a civil lawsuit on June 30 against Cal-Maine Foods, Hickman’s Egg Ranch, and the Versova group of companies, alleging coordinated manipulation of egg prices. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, the complaint alleges the producers conspired to inflate the daily price quotations published by Urner Barry, a market-reporting firm whose benchmarks influence what grocery stores and restaurants pay for eggs nationwide.
The department simultaneously filed proposed settlements that, if approved by the court, would bar the companies from coordinating bids or sharing bidding information with competitors and would require them to adopt antitrust compliance programs. The allegations remain unproven; the settlements are proposed resolutions subject to a 60-day public comment period under the Tunney Act before a judge may enter them. The complaint and proposed final judgments are posted with the announcement. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward framed the action as “real relief for everyday Americans’ pocketbooks.”
5. EagleBank admits Bank Secrecy Act failures, pays $9.7 million
EagleBank, a community bank operating in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, and its parent Eagle Bancorp entered a non-prosecution agreement on June 30 and agreed to pay more than $9.7 million to resolve a Bank Secrecy Act investigation. According to the agreement, the bank admitted that between 2010 and 2021 it willfully failed to maintain an adequate anti-money-laundering program, and that it allowed two customers — a father and son — to run a check-kiting scheme through its accounts for more than a decade.
The department states that the father was a friend and business partner of the bank’s former chairman and chief executive, who resigned in 2019, and that senior executives repeatedly overrode compliance staff who tried to close the accounts. The conduct, the bank admitted, caused a loss of nearly $6.3 million to another financial institution. The resolution comprises a $9,057,821.62 fine and $736,515 in forfeited overdraft-fee proceeds. Because the facts are admitted in the agreement, they carry more evidentiary weight than allegations in a pending case. Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said banks “must be gatekeepers, not gateways, for criminal activity.”
6. Chinese national pleads guilty in cartel-linked cocaine and money-laundering case
Wenshen Xu, 52, a Honduras-based Chinese national extradited from Guatemala, pleaded guilty on June 30 to conspiring to import cocaine into the United States, to launder drug proceeds, and to provide material support to the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. According to court documents, Xu used a transportation network with access to airstrips, couriers, and armored vehicles and, along with co-conspirators, imported more than 450 kilograms of cocaine while coordinating the laundering of over $22 million through cryptocurrency and trade-based methods.
The department said Xu was arrested in Guatemala City in July 2025 at the request of the United States and extradited in January. He is scheduled for sentencing on October 15 and faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life. The case, brought in the Eastern District of Virginia, is part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative and reflects a finding following a guilty plea.
7. Upstate New York woman charged with financing a terror group
The department announced on June 30 that Catherine Beth Washburn, 37, of Irondequoit, New York, was arrested and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to provide material support — namely currency — to the Palestine Islamic Jihad, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. The complaint alleges that Washburn made roughly 80 cryptocurrency transfers totaling about $30,116 to an account used by an individual who claimed to be a fighter for the group, and that recovered messages showed her voicing support for violence against Israeli civilians.
These are allegations set out in a complaint, and Washburn is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty; the charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said “those who aid foreign terrorist groups will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” The case was investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and is being prosecuted in the Western District of New York.
8. Three MS-13 members convicted in nine Las Vegas-area killings
A federal jury in the District of Nevada convicted three men on June 29 — Jose Luis Reynaldo Reyes-Castillo, 30; David Arturo Perez-Manchame, 27; and Joel Vargas-Escobar, 30 — on racketeering, murder in aid of racketeering, kidnapping, and firearms charges tied to the MS-13 gang’s “Parkview” clique in Las Vegas. According to evidence presented at trial, the defendants participated in nine murders across Nevada and California over roughly a year, with several victims kidnapped and killed in remote desert and mountain locations.
Each defendant faces a mandatory minimum of life in prison without parole, with sentencing scheduled for November 10 before U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro. Because a jury returned guilty verdicts, the convictions are legal findings. FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau has prioritized dismantling violent gangs, and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah for the District of Nevada said the defendants’ “reign of violence ends today.” The case was supported by Joint Task Force Vulcan and the Las Vegas Homeland Security Task Force.
Cases that warrant a closer look
Several threads from this stretch merit deeper reporting beyond the day’s headlines. The first is the wound-allograft billing ecosystem at the center of the takedown: the department’s own filings describe markups approaching 2,000% and more than $4 billion in Medicare billings driven by alleged kickbacks, raising questions about how such pricing cleared reimbursement systems for as long as it did. CMS says it has since sharply reduced allograft payment rates — a policy shift worth tracking for its downstream effects on legitimate providers.
A second thread is fugitive accountability. Alongside the takedown, the FBI added two names to its Most Wanted Fraudsters list — individuals the department says fled the country after being released on bond in large genetic-testing fraud cases, one believed to be in the United Arab Emirates and another said to have fled to Vietnam. Their status is a test of the extradition cooperation the department credited in returning other defendants from Estonia, the Philippines, and Turkey. A third thread is the corporate-governance failure admitted in the EagleBank agreement: the department’s account of executives overriding their own compliance staff for a decade is the kind of internal dynamic that rarely surfaces in public filings and deserves scrutiny. Finally, the recurring use of cryptocurrency — in both the alleged terror-financing complaint and the cartel money-laundering plea — underscores how digital assets continue to feature in cross-border enforcement.
TIJ will continue tracking these matters as charging documents, plea agreements, and sentencing filings become available. Reader tips on any of the above can be directed to our newsroom. As always, this digest summarizes public records; where a case is pending, the government’s allegations have not been proven, and the accused are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs press releases dated June 23–30, 2026, linked throughout. Additional case materials are available on the DOJ Health Care Fraud Unit and Antitrust Division websites.