DOJ Watch is The Investigative Journal’s running digest of federal enforcement activity, compiled from Justice Department press releases, court filings, and other public records. Every factual claim below is drawn from the linked public documents.
The Justice Department closed out the week of September 8 with a cluster of enforcement actions notable for both novelty and scale. Between September 10 and 11, the department announced the first-ever removal ordered by a special terrorism court that had sat unused since Congress created it in 1996; a 76-month sentence and more than $56 million in restitution in a $64 million Medicaid fraud case; a four-year prison term for a developer tied to the Conti ransomware operation; a $32 million False Claims Act settlement with a pharmaceutical manufacturer; the final four lawsuits in a 25-state civil campaign over in-state tuition for illegal aliens; and a proposed $125 million Superfund consent decree. Below, TIJ summarizes the eight actions most worth watching, with links to the underlying records.
First-ever Alien Terrorist Removal Court case ends in deportation
In a case with no direct precedent, the Justice Department announced Friday that Nazira Haji Zada, 47, an Afghan national who had been living in Fort Worth, Texas, was removed from the United States following proceedings before the United States Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC) — the first case ever brought before that court since Congress established it in 1996. According to the department, Zada conceded alien-terrorist status with the assistance of two federal public defenders, waived appeal, and was returned to her country of origin; the court’s August 20 removal order was unsealed September 11. She is now permanently inadmissible to the United States, the release states.
The department states that Zada supported an ISIS-inspired plot to carry out a mass shooting on Election Day 2024 — a plot for which her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, and her son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, pleaded guilty to two terrorism-related offenses and awaits sentencing. Court documents cited by the department state that Tawhedi conspired to purchase two rifles and 500 rounds of ammunition from an undercover FBI employee, and that the family sold property and bought one-way airfare to Kabul ahead of the planned attack. “This landmark case, resulting in the prompt removal of this alien terrorist to her country of origin, is a win for national security and the rule of law,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in the announcement.
The significance here is procedural as much as substantive. The ATRC — staffed by Article III district judges appointed by the Chief Justice, with ATRC Chief Judge Joan N. Ericksen presiding in this matter — permits the government to rely on classified information, with appeal available to the D.C. Circuit. The activation of a statute dormant for nearly three decades creates a template future administrations may use, and the procedural record will merit close reading. Filings are available at atrc.uscourts.gov, and the department’s original application was announced in July.
Conti ransomware developer sentenced to four years
Oleksii Oleksiyovych Lytvynenko, 44, a Ukrainian national formerly of Cork, Ireland, was sentenced to four years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with the Conti ransomware operation, the department announced September 10. According to court documents, Conti was used between 2020 and 2022 to attack computers and networks in 47 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 31 foreign countries; the FBI estimated victim payouts associated with Conti exceeding $150 million as of January 2022.
Per his June guilty plea, Lytvynenko possessed data stolen from eight U.S. victims and four overseas victims and was directed to code a “loader” — malware used to stage further attacks. He was arrested in County Cork in July 2023 and extradited with the assistance of Irish authorities. Filings indicate the case was prosecuted in the Middle District of Tennessee, the same district where an indictment against four other alleged Conti conspirators was unsealed in September 2023. The extradition itself is the story: it signals that ransomware personnel who reside in cooperative jurisdictions are reachable by U.S. courts.
$64 million Medicaid fraud: Brooklyn daycare owner gets 76 months
Zakia Khan, 55, of Brooklyn, was sentenced to 76 months in prison for leading what the department describes as a $64 million Medicaid fraud and kickback scheme run through her two social adult daycare centers and a home health company, according to a release issued Friday. She was also ordered to pay more than $56 million in restitution and to forfeit $5 million in proceeds, including two properties, cash, and gold jewelry seized from her home. Khan pleaded guilty in August 2025 to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay health care kickbacks.
According to court documents, from roughly October 2017 through July 2024 a network of marketers referred Medicaid recipients to Khan’s centers in exchange for kickbacks, recipients were themselves paid to sign up, and Medicaid was billed approximately $64 million for services “never actually provided as represented.” The department states that multiple corporate entities were used to launder proceeds and generate the cash for bribes. The case was prosecuted by the department’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division, created April 7, alongside the Eastern District of New York — and the department notes its Health Care Fraud Strike Force program has charged more than 6,200 defendants tied to over $45 billion in billings since 2007. The unresolved question TIJ will pursue: how many of the marketers and co-conspirators in Khan’s referral web face their own charges.
Dompé U.S. pays $32 million over co-pay foundation kickback allegations
Dompé U.S. Inc., the California-based subsidiary of Italian drugmaker Dompé farmaceutici S.p.A., agreed to pay $32 million to resolve allegations that between 2018 and 2021 it paid Medicare beneficiary co-pays through two patient assistance foundations to induce purchases of its drug Oxervate, in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute and the False Claims Act. The settlement agreement records Dompé’s admission that employees expressed reservations about launching the drug before a foundation payment was made, and that the company solicited foundation data relevant to its budgeting process.
Two features stand out. First, the conduct was self-disclosed by the Italian parent, and the department states the company received cooperation credit under its False Claims Act guidelines — a data point for compliance officers weighing the value of voluntary disclosure. Second, the District of Massachusetts, which handled the matter, notes it has now recovered over $1.4 billion from drug-company kickback cases involving purported co-pay charities. Consistent with the department’s own caveat, it should be noted that the claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.
DOJ files final four in-state tuition lawsuits, bringing total to 25
The Civil Division filed complaints September 10 against Hawaii, the District of Columbia, Arkansas, and Utah, challenging laws that extend in-state tuition and financial aid to illegal aliens. The filings allege these laws conflict with federal law and discriminate against U.S. citizens who are ineligible for the same rates. With these complaints, the department says it has now sued every state with such a law on the books — 25 lawsuits in total.
The department states that six of the suits — against Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois, and Kansas — have already produced favorable orders or consent decrees, including a ruling from the District of Kansas issued the day before the new filings. Suits against 16 other jurisdictions remain pending. The new complaints are allegations at this stage, and the sued jurisdictions will have the opportunity to respond in court. The endgame of this litigation campaign — and whether a circuit split emerges — is one of the more consequential federalism questions now moving through the courts.
Former NFL player sentenced to five years in federal dog-fighting case
LeShon Johnson of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 60 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $30,000 fine after a jury convicted him of six dog-fighting-related charges. Trial testimony cited by the department showed Johnson — who pleaded guilty to Oklahoma state dog-fighting offenses in 2004 — had operated “Mal Kant Kennels” since at least 2007, breeding and trafficking fighting dogs across the country and earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales and stud fees.
Authorities seized 190 dogs from his property, which the department describes as the largest number ever taken from a single individual in a federal dog-fighting case. The prosecution was brought by the Energy and Natural Resources Division’s Environmental Crimes Section with the Eastern District of Oklahoma — a reminder that federal animal-welfare enforcement runs through ENRD, and that repeat state offenders can face substantially heavier federal exposure.
Texas promoter of “own nothing, control everything” tax shelter gets five years
Aanand Shukla of Jonestown, Texas, was sentenced to 60 months for conspiracy to defraud the United States after promoting an abusive trust tax shelter to business owners nationwide. According to court documents, from 2017 to 2025 Shukla and co-conspirators sold trust packages for $25,000 to $55,000 — with fees quoted as high as $225,000 — promising clients they could route roughly 98 percent of business income through layered trusts and a private family foundation while running personal expenses through trust accounts as deductions.
Filings indicate the scheme facilitated the concealment of more than $27 million in income from the IRS. Shukla marketed through seminars, webinars, and podcasts, trained other promoters, and steered clients to tax preparers he knew would participate, the department states. He pleaded guilty in March; IRS Criminal Investigation handled the investigation. The case is a marker of the National Fraud Enforcement Division’s tax section moving against shelter promoters, not just their clients.
$125 million proposed consent decree advances Passaic River Superfund cleanup
On the civil-environmental side, the department lodged a proposed settlement with Environmental Resource Holdings LLC — a corporate successor to Occidental Chemical and Diamond Alkali — to perform an estimated $125 million of work supporting the cleanup of the Diamond Alkali Superfund site, including the lower 17 miles of the Passaic River in New Jersey. The agreement calls for construction of an upland sediment-processing facility and support infrastructure needed before dredging and capping can begin, plus baseline sampling of the river’s lower 8.3 miles.
The proposed consent decree, filed in the District of New Jersey, is subject to a 30-day public comment period and is not yet final. Documents are available at the department’s consent decree page. For one of the nation’s oldest and most complex Superfund sites, this is the step that determines whether in-river remediation actually starts.
On TIJ’s radar
Several threads from this cycle warrant deeper investigation. The ATRC’s revival is the clearest: the use of classified evidence in a removal proceeding, the concession-and-waiver posture of the first case, and the questions of how the court will function in a contested proceeding are all best answered by the primary record at atrc.uscourts.gov, which TIJ will review. In the Khan matter, the marketer network that fed the daycare scheme — and how many of those referral brokers face their own exposure — remains unresolved in the public record. The tuition litigation now pending against 16 jurisdictions may generate conflicting rulings worth mapping. And the status of the four alleged Conti co-conspirators charged in Tennessee in September 2023, which last week’s release does not address, is a standing test of whether ransomware indictments translate into custody.
Notes and disclosures: This digest is compiled from Justice Department press releases and court filings issued September 10–11, 2026; every factual claim is sourced to the public records linked above. Criminal defendants named here were convicted at trial or pleaded guilty, as indicated. Civil complaints, including the in-state tuition suits, contain allegations only, and the defendant jurisdictions have not yet responded in court. The Dompé settlement resolves allegations only, with no determination of liability, and the Passaic River consent decree is a proposal subject to public comment. This digest is based on public records and does not include comment from defendants, their counsel, or the sued jurisdictions; their responses will be covered as they enter the record, and parties referenced are welcome to contact The Investigative Journal with responses. Featured image: evidence photograph released by the U.S. Department of Justice (public domain).
Primary sources: DOJ release 26-1028 (ATRC removal); 26-1040 (Conti sentencing); 26-1047 (Medicaid fraud sentencing); 26-1037 (Dompé FCA settlement); 26-1039 (tuition complaints); 26-1042 (dog-fighting sentencing); 26-1044 (tax shelter sentencing); 26-1041 (Passaic consent decree); all at justice.gov/news.