The Department of Justice has 8,000 fraud cases under investigation, just a “fraction” of the scams “ripping off [the] country every day,” said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
In his first press conference on April 7, Blanche laid out details of the department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, which was created in January, saying it represents “a comprehensive and coordinated approach” to investigating fraud.
Every U.S. attorney’s office in the country will have at least one prosecutor dedicated to investigating fraud, said Blanche, who took the helm of the Department of Justice on April 2 after Pam Bondi was fired as attorney general.
Blanche said the department “will spare no resources” in giving the new division the tools it needs to complete investigations and track down the most sophisticated fraudsters.
The acting attorney general also mentioned the creation of the National Fraud Detection Center, which he described as a data analytics team that would “ferret out the most harmful actors” in fraud operations.
“The American people deserve an end to the crisis of fraud,” Blanche said.
Colin McDonald was named the head of the National Fraud Enforcement Division. McDonald was the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California.
The division is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to address fraud.
In March, President Donald Trump created the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud and made Vice President JD Vance its chairman.
Blanche said he wouldn’t comment on ongoing investigations but cited examples of recent prosecutions.
Eight people were arrested on April 2 on federal charges related to Medicare fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
They are accused of running sham hospice care facilities, mostly in Southern California, that bilked Medicare for the treatment of people who had no terminal illnesses. The U.S. attorney alleged that the defendants were part of a $50 million scheme.
Los Angeles County was the focal point of long-running hospice-care scams. According to one government investigation, a single building in Van Nuys contained more than 150 licensed hospice and home health agencies—a number that investigators believe exceeded the structure’s capacity.
In Minnesota, a child day care fraud scheme came to light in December 2025. The federal Department of Health and Human Services halted funding to child care in Minnesota as investigators looked into systemwide fraud.
“Minnesota is a Criminal COVER UP of the massive Financial Fraud that has gone on!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Jan. 25.
