DOJ Watch is The Investigative Journal’s running digest of federal enforcement activity, drawn directly from Justice Department press releases, U.S. Attorney announcements, and court filings. Cases described as charges or allegations remain unproven; defendants are presumed innocent unless and until convicted.
Federal prosecutors closed the week of July 13–17 with a cluster of enforcement actions that spanned transnational money laundering, one of the deadliest human-smuggling cases in recent memory, pharmaceutical kickbacks, and a widening civil campaign against state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants. Below, TIJ summarizes eight notable matters announced in Washington and in U.S. Attorney’s offices, with links to the underlying records and notes on where each case may lead.
1. Two charged in Chinese money-laundering network tied to $43 million in investment-fraud losses
The marquee financial-crime case of the week came out of Brooklyn, where two New York residents made their initial court appearance on July 16 on a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. According to an indictment unsealed that day in the Eastern District of New York, Zhuoying Chen, 27, of Brooklyn, and Haojie Zhang, 38, of Queens, allegedly managed a network of more than a dozen individuals who opened roughly 140 bank accounts in the names of about 45 shell companies to launder at least $43 million in proceeds from cyber “investment” scams between 2020 and 2022.
Prosecutors allege the defendants then worked with China-based co-conspirators to move the stolen funds abroad. The schemes fit the now-familiar pattern federal authorities describe as “pig butchering”: perpetrators cultivate trust with victims over messaging apps and social media, display fake profits on bogus investment platforms, and steal the funds once victims commit more money. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. An indictment, the department noted, “is merely an allegation,” and both defendants are presumed innocent.
The case is significant because it targets the financial plumbing rather than the scam callers themselves. Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Criminal Division framed the prosecution as an effort to dismantle “the financial networks that fuel and profit from these fraud schemes,” and the matter was investigated by the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Records indicate the prosecution is tied to the Homeland Security Task Force established under Executive Order 14159.
2. Final defendant admits role in 2021 Chiapas smuggling disaster that killed more than 50
On July 17, the Justice Department announced that Tomas Quino Canil, 38, a Guatemalan national extradited to the United States in 2025, pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Texas to his role in a human-smuggling conspiracy connected to a December 9, 2021, tractor-trailer crash near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, in Chiapas, Mexico. Court records indicate the trailer was packed with at least 150 people — adults and unaccompanied minors — when it crashed, killing more than 50 and injuring over 100.
Quino Canil is the last of six defendants to admit involvement in the conspiracy to smuggle migrants from Guatemala through Mexico to the United States. According to the department, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bring an illegal alien to the United States, placing life in jeopardy, causing serious bodily injury, and resulting in death — an offense that carries a maximum of life in prison. Sentencing is pending before a federal district judge.
The prosecution was handled by the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Texas, and supported by Joint Task Force Alpha, which the department says has produced more than 465 arrests and 419 convictions to date. Filings tie the case to “Operation Take Back America,” the administration’s consolidated anti-cartel and border-enforcement initiative.
3. EyePoint Pharmaceuticals to pay $4.66 million to resolve kickback allegations
In a civil resolution announced July 17, Massachusetts-based EyePoint Pharmaceuticals Inc. agreed to pay the United States $4,657,463.18 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act. The government alleged that between January 2019 and March 2023 the company paid kickbacks to certain ambulatory surgical centers to induce them to buy and dispense DEXYCU, an injectable drug for ocular inflammation following cataract surgery.
According to the department, EyePoint ran an “Assurance Program” that reimbursed the centers when insurers denied or underpaid DEXYCU claims, and offered excessive free samples. As part of the deal, the company entered a five-year corporate integrity agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. The claims arose from a whistleblower, or qui tam, suit; the relator, AFCE LLC, is set to receive $791,768.74. The department emphasized that “the claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only and there has been no determination of liability.”
The settlement is a data point in the administration’s stated “war on fraud,” and the release references the newly created National Fraud Enforcement Division and a Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. For accountability reporters, health-care kickback settlements like this one are worth tracking because they often originate with industry insiders and can signal broader billing practices across a drug’s market.
4. Justice Department sues Maryland over in-state tuition for illegal immigrants
On July 16, the department filed suit against Maryland, challenging state laws and regulations that provide in-state tuition rates and financial assistance to students who are in the country illegally. The complaint alleges these provisions unconstitutionally discriminate against U.S. citizens who do not receive the same rates, and conflict with federal law. The filing represents the department’s 13th such lawsuit, part of a coordinated, state-by-state litigation effort.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said the Maryland benefits cost state taxpayers “roughly $9M for just one academic year.” The department noted that similar suits in Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Nebraska have already produced orders enjoining comparable laws, while matters remain pending in states including Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. As a civil complaint, the filing reflects the government’s allegations; the claims have not been adjudicated, and Maryland has an opportunity to respond in court.
5. Court revokes citizenship of Bosnia war-crimes suspect
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee on July 17 entered an order revoking the U.S. citizenship of Sead Miljkovic, also known as Sead Dukic, who the department says concealed his true identity to enter the United States in 1996 and naturalized in 2007. The court found he illegally procured citizenship because he lacked the good moral character required to naturalize, based on false statements to government officials.
Records indicate Miljkovic was a former member of the security forces of the short-lived Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia and was subject to a 2007 Bosnian arrest warrant and an INTERPOL Red Notice. The Red Notice alleges that in June 1994 he and accomplices beat twelve civilians and confined them in a morgue for five days. Those underlying war-crimes allegations have not been adjudicated; the department notes Miljkovic has not yet appeared before a Bosnian court, and he consented to the civil judgment stripping his citizenship. The case was prosecuted civilly by the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, Denaturalization Unit.
6. Dallas seafood wholesaler fined $250,000 for mislabeling salmon
Seafood Supply Co., a Dallas wholesaler, was sentenced on July 17 to pay a $250,000 fine after pleading guilty to two counts under the Lacey Act. According to court documents, the company falsified the country of origin of salmon sold from January 2020 to February 2022, labeling less-expensive Chilean salmon as product from Scotland or other European countries. It was also placed on three years’ probation and ordered to adopt an environmental compliance plan.
The company, which the department says has been under new leadership since the violations, pleaded guilty in March. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration investigated as part of “Operation Upstream Diligence,” and the case was brought by the Environmental and Natural Resources Division, a member of the department’s Trade Fraud Task Force. Seafood-origin fraud is a recurring consumer-protection concern, and the matter illustrates how food mislabeling can intersect with tariff-evasion and trade-fraud enforcement.
7. A wave of tax-enforcement charges from the new Fraud Division
The Justice Department’s recently created National Fraud Enforcement Division drove several tax cases during the week. In Idaho, an indictment unsealed July 16 charges Joshua Laine Bennett of Caldwell with tax evasion, alleging he caused a loss of roughly $888,313 by, among other things, buying nearly $700,000 in gold bars and using a nominee bank account to thwart IRS collections. In Florida, Miami CPA Luis E. Gonzalez Jr. was arraigned on July 15 on a charge of preparing a false tax return for a shipping company’s executive, allegedly underreporting millions in income.
And in Tennessee, a federal grand jury indicted Memphis tax preparer Lynette Hogue on 29 counts of aiding the preparation of false returns and four counts of failing to file her own returns between 2021 and 2024. Each of these matters is a charge only, and every defendant is presumed innocent. Taken together, the filings signal that the new division is prioritizing return-preparer fraud and collection evasion — areas where losses are often diffuse but cumulatively large.
Cases that warrant a closer TIJ look
Three matters from the same period merit deeper reporting. First, the department announced the July 16 transfer of Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh from Somalia to Minnesota to face charges in the sprawling “Feeding Our Future” pandemic child-nutrition fraud — a case that has already produced dozens of defendants and is a natural candidate for accountability follow-up. Second, two former TD Bank insiders were sentenced on July 15 for facilitating a money-laundering network’s movement of millions through the bank — a thread that connects to the broader compliance failures TIJ has tracked. Third, the July 2 racketeering charges against eight alleged Tren de Aragua members in Illinois and Texas raise questions about how the designated foreign terrorist organization is operating across U.S. cities.
TIJ compiles DOJ Watch from primary records published by the U.S. Department of Justice. Where matters remain pending, we will update as cases proceed to trial or resolution. Tips: editorial@tij.news.