Fraud, fraud, and more fraud! Enforcement efforts continue to intensify. The Acting U.S. Attorney General just launched a National Fraud Enforcement Division (NFED) for taxpayer-funded programs. There is allegedly more than $1 trillion at stake each year.
The NFED will be headed by an assistant attorney general who will serve as a central staff member. This person will oversee multiple fraud units, including the Health Care Fraud Unit. In addition, NFED will also collaborate with various other entities to set up a National Fraud Detection Center for producing leads for investigators and prosecutors.
The FBI will work concurrently with the Justice Management Division to increase the number of personnel dedicated to investigating fraud that affects taxpayer-funded programs. Within ninety days of an assessment of realignment of the Department of Justice’s resources, personnel will move into the NFED. Within twenty-one days of publication of an April 7, 2026, memo establishing the Division, every U.S. Attorney’s Office will appoint a prosecutor who will be accountable for the NFED. Then it’s off to the races!
The governor of Texas has already launched investigations into dozens of Medicaid providers. Congress and the White House have increased scrutiny in particular states. Expect more.
Meanwhile, providers continue to declare that they have nothing to hide. Oh, but you do! Statements like this from providers are cringe-worthy. If you’ve said that before, please don’t ever say it again.
Here’s why:
First, many providers think that when fraud enforcers are required to show intent, they must show that providers, for example, sat down at their desks on a Tuesday afternoon and decided to engage in fraud. On the contrary, enforcers can demonstrate intent by showing that there was fraudulent conduct that providers knew about or should have known about. This is a game changer. It’s easy to imagine fraudulent conduct that providers should have known about but have not identified and corrected.
As George F. Will pointed out in his Washington Post column, the volume of legal requirements has skyrocketed (“Have You Committed a Felony Yet? Probably So.” The Washington Post, August 30 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/30/justice-neil-gorsuch-new-book/.) Here is what Mr. Will says:
"Less than a century ago, …a single volume contained all federal statutes. By 2018, they filled 54 volumes – about 60,000 pages. In the past 10 years, Congress has enacted about 2 million to 3 million words of law each year. The average length of a bill is nine times what it was in the 1950s. Agencies publish their proposals and final rules in the Federal Register, which began at 16 pages in 1936, and now expands by an average of more than 70,000 pages annually. By 2021, the Code of Federal Regulations filled about 200 volumes. And in a recent 10-year span, federal agencies churned out approximately 13,000 guidance documents."
Mr. Will goes on to point out that ignorance of the law is, therefore, inevitable. Congress has added an average of fifty-six new federal crimes each year so that there are not more than five thousand federal statutory crimes. In addition, at least three hundred thousand regulations of federal agencies include criminal sanctions.
Here are some common examples:
Mr. Will says in his column that James Madison predicted our current situation in which laws are “so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood” and “undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.” So, don’t even think that you have nothing to hide!
©2026 Elizabeth E. Hogue, Esq. All rights reserved.
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