The Justice Department’s Health Care Fraud Unit secured six federal jury trial convictions in under three weeks, involving more than $1.1 billion in health care fraud losses, the department announced June 4, 2026. The convictions between May 13 and June 1 spanned federal courtrooms across the United States, including in Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, and Nashville, and covered six distinct categories of health care fraud.
The six convictions in such a compressed timeframe tie the Health Care Fraud Unit’s record for the number of trials resulting in conviction within a single month. Yet the cases represent a greater level of sophistication and complexity than the unit’s previous record-tying period, according to the DOJ announcement.
One case involved Brett Blackman, founder and CEO of HealthSplash, whose platform DMERx industrialized Medicare fraud at national scale. The scheme generated more than $1 billion in false billings, with Medicare paying more than $450 million. Blackman used foreign call centers to target elderly Medicare beneficiaries, pressuring them into medically unnecessary orthotic braces, then connected the leads to telemedicine companies that took illegal kickbacks in exchange for signing bogus physicians’ orders that falsely certified doctors had examined patients they never saw.
Another conviction involved Dr. Violetta Mailyan, a California physician identified through data analytics as a statistical extreme: she had been paid more by Medicare for Botox injections than any other physician in the United States. Mailyan billed for thousands of Botox injections that were never administered, including while on vacation in Cabo, Mexico, Maui, Hawaii, and Las Vegas. She submitted more than $19 million in claims on days her clinic was closed and billed for a patient who was federally incarcerated at the time of the purported injection. Post-verdict, the jury found a Tesla Model X, a Tesla Cybertruck, brokerage accounts valued at over $7.3 million, and four California properties subject to forfeiture as proceeds of the fraud.
Ruby Scott, a Michigan home health care agency owner, corrupted a hospital discharge nurse to access patient records without consent, then transmitted over $130,000 in illegal kickbacks through CashApp, PayPal, check, and cash. Scott used stolen patient profiles to bill Medicare for services, falsely certifying physicians had evaluated patients as homebound when no physician had examined them. Total losses exceeded $1.6 million.
Tony Brown-Arkah owned a Brooklyn clinic nominally offering substance abuse treatment that functioned as a vehicle for drug diversion and large-scale fraud against Medicare and Medicaid. The clinic prescribed Suboxone, a Schedule III narcotic, and directed patients to a van on the clinic steps where they could sell prescriptions for cash. Brown-Arkah billed for office visits he personally conducted with non-clinician patients and for services never provided. A confidential source captured him on undercover video offering illegal cash kickbacks. Total fraud losses exceeded $52 million.
Olga Popovych managed a Brooklyn physical therapy clinic network that paid cash kickbacks to ambulette drivers to generate patient referrals. She falsified medical records to indicate licensed physical therapists had treated patients on days those therapists were absent. Between 2018 and 2020, Medicare paid the clinics more than $8 million based on those fabricated records.
Heather Marks, an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner, prescribed nearly a million opioid pills to almost 1,000 patients at a Tennessee pain clinic from September 2016 through May 2018. She ignored obvious signs of patients taking illegal drugs and prescribed opioids to patients she knew were likely selling them on the street, putting patients in danger of overdosing.
The Health Care Fraud Unit operates through an integrated team model pairing specialized prosecutors with data analysts, investigators, and paralegals working together from investigation through verdict. The unit has completed nine trials to date in 2026, all resulting in convictions, and conducted 17 trials in 2025. Since 2007, the National Fraud Enforcement Division’s Health Care Strike Force program, comprising nine strike forces across federal districts, has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $45 billion.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Justice — Press release announcing six trial convictions by Health Care Fraud Unit involving over $1.1 billion in fraud, June 4, 2026
