DOJ Watch is The Investigative Journal’s daily digest of federal enforcement activity, drawn from Department of Justice press releases, U.S. Attorney announcements, and public court filings. Cases described as charges, complaints, or settlements remain allegations; defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Federal prosecutors closed the first week of June with an enforcement slate dominated by health care fraud, sanctions evasion, and transnational organized crime. The Justice Department’s newly stood-up National Fraud Enforcement Division anchored the week with a rare cluster of jury convictions, while a sanctions case in California, a $56.5 million civil settlement, and a wave of guilty pleas rounded out an unusually active stretch. Below, TIJ summarizes six notable actions announced between June 3 and June 4, 2026, each sourced to the underlying DOJ record.
1. Health Care Fraud Unit secures six trial convictions tied to more than $1.1 billion in losses
The Justice Department announced on June 4 that its Health Care Fraud Unit secured jury convictions in six separate trials between May 13 and June 1, spanning federal courtrooms in Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, and Nashville. Department figures indicate the underlying schemes involved more than $1.1 billion in combined fraud losses across six distinct categories of conduct, a pace the Department says ties the unit’s record for convictions in a single month.
The largest matter, United States v. Blackman, centered on HealthSplash founder Brett Blackman, whom a jury convicted of health care fraud conspiracy, kickback conspiracy, and conspiracy to defraud the United States. According to the Department, Blackman’s DMERx platform connected foreign call centers to telemedicine companies that signed bogus orders for medically unnecessary orthotic braces, generating more than $1 billion in false billings, of which Medicare paid in excess of $450 million. In a second case, United States v. Mailyan, prosecutors said a data analytics review flagged a California physician who had been paid more for Botox injections than any other doctor in the country; the trial evidence, the Department stated, showed billing for injections never administered, including on days the clinic was closed and while the defendant was traveling abroad.
The remaining convictions covered a Michigan home health operator who allegedly bribed a hospital discharge nurse through CashApp, a Brooklyn substance-abuse clinic that prosecutors described as a narcotics-diversion hub, a physical-therapy kickback ring, and a Tennessee nurse practitioner convicted of illegally distributing nearly one million opioid pills. Records indicate the unit has now completed nine trials in 2026, all resulting in convictions. The significance for TIJ readers is structural: the Department is publicly emphasizing trial outcomes rather than plea statistics, signaling an institutional appetite to take complex white-collar cases to verdict.
2. Dual U.S.-Iranian national charged with supplying U.S. technology to Iran’s nuclear and military bodies
On June 3, the National Security Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced the arrest of Jamshid Ghomi, 63, of Newport Coast, California, on a federal complaint charging conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). According to the affidavit filed with the complaint, Ghomi is the founder and CEO of Tehran-based Faraz Pardaz Rayaneh Co. Ltd. (FPR), which prosecutors allege procured U.S.-origin networking, security, and encryption equipment for Iranian customers without the required OFAC license.
The filing alleges that between 2017 and 2023, FPR supplied U.S.-origin equipment to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran — the agency the State Department sanctioned in 2020 over Iran’s uranium-enrichment activities — and that from 2014 to 2022 it supplied Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics. Prosecutors further allege Ghomi moved more than $15 million from Iran into U.S. accounts, falsely reporting the funds to the IRS as a foreign inheritance while claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit in seven tax years. Authorities said they are seeking forfeiture of his Newport Beach residence.
The Department emphasized that a complaint is merely an allegation and that Ghomi is presumed innocent; if convicted, he would face a maximum of 20 years in prison. The case warrants continued TIJ attention because it sits at the intersection of export-control enforcement, sanctions evasion, and alleged tax fraud — an enforcement pattern that has recurred in National Security Division prosecutions.
3. Matrix and HealthFair agree to $56.5 million False Claims Act settlement
The Civil Division announced on June 3 that Matrix Medical Network, HealthFair, and HealthFair founder Shahriah “James” Ekbatani agreed to pay a combined $56.5 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations involving false or invalid diagnosis codes submitted to the Medicare Advantage program. Matrix will pay $36.5 million, HealthFair $5 million, and Ekbatani $15 million. The Department stated the claims are allegations only and that there has been no determination of liability.
According to the government’s allegations, Matrix reported risk-adjusting diagnoses — including conditions such as proliferative diabetic retinopathy and drug-induced polyneuropathy — that frequently lacked supporting documentation and were not diagnosed by any other provider who saw the beneficiary. The settlement resolves two qui tam whistleblower actions filed in the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Texas; the relators are slated to receive $7.3 million and $3.6 million respectively. The case underscores the continued centrality of Medicare Advantage risk-adjustment fraud to the Department’s civil docket.
4. Scam Center Strike Force reports results of cross-industry “Disruption Week”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Criminal Division announced on June 3 the results of a first-of-its-kind “Disruption Week” targeting cyber-enabled and cryptocurrency investment fraud. According to the Department, private-sector participants — including Apple, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and SpaceX — voluntarily disrupted criminal activity across more than 1.4 million social media and email accounts and froze over $3.8 million in cryptocurrency tied to laundering of funds stolen from Americans. Foreign partners including the Royal Thai Police reported the arrest of seven scammers.
The Department framed the effort as a response to so-called “pig butchering” schemes run from compounds in Southeast Asia. Citing the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, officials said reported losses from such investment fraud rose to over $7.2 billion in 2025, a 24 percent increase, while noting those figures likely understate true losses. For TIJ readers tracking the convergence of organized crime and digital finance, the public-private model on display here represents a notable shift in enforcement strategy, relying on voluntary corporate action alongside criminal process.
5. Four Tren de Aragua members plead guilty to 2024 Bronx double murder
Four members of Tren de Aragua — designated a foreign terrorist organization — pleaded guilty on June 3 before a federal judge in the Southern District of New York to two counts of murder through use of a firearm and one related firearms count, in connection with the May 24, 2024, killings of Claretha LaQuesha Daniels and Justin Lawless and the wounding of a third victim in the Bronx. Court filings describe the three as unarmed U.S. citizens.
According to the Department, all eight in-custody defendants charged in the prosecution before the court have now been convicted. Prosecutors said the case forms part of Joint Task Force Vulcan, which has charged more than 260 members and associates of the organization. Because these are guilty pleas rather than contested allegations, the underlying admissions are established on the record. The matter illustrates the Department’s continued use of racketeering and firearms statutes to prosecute transnational gang violence.
6. Nail salon owners admit to $116 million off-the-books cash payroll
A Texas couple, Vinh Q. Ho and Thanh Lan Do, pleaded guilty to tax crimes tied to a nationwide chain of more than 60 high-end nail salons, the National Fraud Enforcement Division and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio announced on June 3. According to court documents, the business paid more than $116 million in cash compensation between 2016 and 2024 that was not reported to the IRS, causing an estimated tax loss of at least $32 million.
Prosecutors said the owners trained salon managers to run the under-the-table payroll and prepared false Forms 1099 to conceal cash wages. Ho pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and tax evasion and faces up to 10 years; Do pleaded guilty to conspiracy and faces up to five years. The case is a reminder that employment-tax enforcement remains a durable, if less headline-grabbing, pillar of the Department’s fraud program.
Cases that warrant deeper TIJ investigation
Several adjacent matters from the same window merit closer reporting. The Criminal Division noted that an Aspiration Partners co-founder was sentenced to 14 years for a $248 million scheme to defraud investors and lenders, and that an activist short seller was convicted in a $21 million market-manipulation case — both signals of intensifying securities-fraud enforcement worth tracking. The broader institutional story is the National Fraud Enforcement Division itself, created in April 2026 to consolidate fraud prosecutions; its emphasis on data-driven targeting and trial readiness is reshaping how white-collar cases are built. TIJ will continue to monitor the division’s docket, the Ghomi sanctions case as it proceeds toward indictment, and the durability of the public-private “disruption” model against Southeast Asian scam networks.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs press releases, June 3–4, 2026, linked inline above. Settlement and complaint allegations are not findings of liability or guilt. Featured image: Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, photo by Pelajanela via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.