Department of Justice Announces New Initiatives Supporting Its Anti-Fraud Mission

1. Introduction

On April 30, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued two new initiatives that build on its recent fraud and False Claims Act (FCA) enforcement efforts. First, the DOJ demonstrated its stated commitment to the prosecution of fraudulent activities in the healthcare sector by announcing its West Coast Health Care Fraud Strike Force (the Strike Force). This announcement came on the heels of the DOJ announcing the creation of its National Fraud Enforcement Division (NFED) and establishing a historic $300 million grant program for state and local prosecutors to join its anti-fraud mission.

Second, the DOJ’s Civil Division announced its new Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics (FOCUS) initiative, intended to improve coordination with whistleblowers in the use of federal information to identify potential FCA violations.

2. National Fraud Enforcement Division

Following up on a January 2026 White House announcement, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche officially established the new DOJ NFED on April 7, 2026. That January announcement also created the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, placing the NFED within a broader federal anti-fraud initiative. According to Blanche, the NFED’s mission is to “zealously investigate and prosecute those who steal or fraudulently misuse taxpayer dollars” with the help of designated fraud enforcement prosecutors in each of the 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices. The April 7 memo sets several ambitious deadlines for growing and supporting the NFED. We describe the January announcement of the NFED in more detail in our January 12, 2026, alert, “Trump Administration Unveils National Fraud Enforcement Division of DOJ.”

3. West Coast Health Care Fraud Strike Force 

Building on the momentum from the NFED’s creation, the Strike Force will cover Arizona, Nevada, and the Northern District of California, and it unites the NFED’s Health Care Fraud Section with participating U.S. Attorney’s Offices in those regions. At least 10 prosecutors from the Health Care Fraud Section will staff the Strike Force, which will also work in close connection with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and other federal law enforcement agencies to investigate healthcare fraud in those regions. The specialized Strike Force is based on the national Medicare Fraud Strike Force model that has collectively prosecuted more than 6,200 defendants since its inception. With the announcement of the Strike Force, the NFED issued a warning “to anyone who is committing fraud in the health care industry in Arizona, Nevada, and California: this Strike Force is coming for you, whether you are committing fraud on the street, in a medical office, or in a boardroom.”

4. Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy 

The DOJ’s renewed commitment to investigating fraud was coupled with a reminder that companies can use the Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy to avoid and/or mitigate punishment for potential fraud identified by companies’ internal compliance programs and similar initiatives. We discuss the new policy in detail in our March 16, 2026, alert, “DOJ Expands Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy Nationwide.”

5. FOCUS Initiative

Pointing to the increasing number of qui tam whistleblowers spurring FCA investigations through data mining, the DOJ also announced its FOCUS initiative on April 30, 2026. The goal of the initiative is to leverage private sector data miners to improve the DOJ’s investigatory tools and approach to data mining in its FCA investigation processes. The announcement solicits data miners who have developed effective and sophisticated tools for detecting fraud and invites them to contact the DOJ to discuss their tools in more detail. This initiative builds on the DOJ’s and other government agencies’ (such as the HHS-OIG’s) increasing trend to use large datasets instead of insider whistleblowers to identify potential fraud and source FCA actions.

6. Key Takeaways

These recent DOJ announcements are consistent with the messaging from the DOJ and other government agencies tasked with investigating and prosecuting healthcare fraud, and they demonstrate the DOJ’s continued commitment to advancing multiple targeted, national, and novel efforts to identify and address fraud on federal health care programs. Companies operating or investing in the healthcare industry should take cues from the DOJ’s stated areas of focus and shore up internal compliance efforts to identify and rectify potential issues. Such efforts may include typical compliance program activities, such as internal audits, but with an increased focus on looking at internal claims data for outliers and other data-driven anomalies to ensure compliance before an audit or investigation occurs.

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The Goodwin Healthcare team will continue to monitor activity from the courts and administration related to the FCA. For more information on the issues discussed in this alert, please contact the authors or reach out to Goodwin’s False Claims Act group or the Goodwin lawyer whom you typically consult.

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