On May 27, 2026, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that its Civil Division is implementing reforms to accelerate the review of False Claims Act (FCA) whistleblower complaints alleging fraud on federally funded, state-administered benefits programs. That same day, Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division, Brett A. Shumate, issued an internal memorandum directing Fraud
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently provided important information about how it plans to handle the surge in data-driven False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam lawsuits. On April 30, 2026, DOJ announced its Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics (FOCUS) Initiative, a new program designed to help the government assess viable data-driven qui tams. This initiative offers important insights into the DOJ’s evolving approach to these cases and potential new avenues for early dismissal.
The prediction market industry has spent the better part of two years arguing that event contracts are a legitimate, regulated, and economically valuable financial product—and, in important respects, that argument has prevailed. What the industry could not have anticipated is that its first landmark enforcement action involves not a rogue trader on Wall Street but an active-duty U.S. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant accused of leveraging classified intelligence about a covert military operation to pocket more than $400,000 on an offshore cryptocurrency-based prediction platform.
On April 7, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it is “supercharging” fraud prosecutions through the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division (the “Fraud Division”).
On December 19, 2025 and January 30, 2026, the United States Sentencing Commission released proposed amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for 2026. See U.S. Sentencing Comm’n, Proposed 2026 Amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (Dec. 2025 and Jan. 2026). Taken together, these amendments suggest a meaningful recalibration of how federal sentences may be calculated and, for some defendants, an opportunity for more individualized and potentially less severe outcomes.
We just released Episode 39 of the False Claims Act Insights podcast where I discussed recent oral arguments in the Third Circuit appeal of the Janssen Products case with Husch Blackwell’s Abe Souza. Abe explains how the trial of this declined qui tam—in which the Justice Department declined to intervene—led to a split
On March 10, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a new Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (“CEP”), which now governs all corporate criminal matters handled by DOJ except for antitrust violations. This new policy creates a single set of standards for voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation across the Department.
Rebecca Furdek recently published an article in Wisconsin Lawyer magazine reviewing the first year of the second Trump administration. She discusses three primary trends: the use of executive orders, deregulation across federal agencies, and white-collar enforcement priorities. As Rebecca explains, “[t]he second Trump term started with a splash in both the federal regulatory and enforcement
On January 28, 2026, Brenna Jenny, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, delivered comments to False Claims Act (“FCA”) practitioners about DOJ’s FCA statistics for the previous year and some of her office’s priorities for the years ahead. Jenny leads the DOJ attorneys that handle FCA investigations nationwide. Delivered at an American Conference Institute meeting in New York, Jenny touted DOJ’s record-breaking total of settlements and judgments exceeding $6.8 billion last year and confirmed there is more to come.
The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) recently released its 2025 statistics for federal False Claims Act cases. With settlements and judgments exceeding $6.8 billion last year, DOJ’s report shows that the False Claims Act (“FCA”) remains one of DOJ’s most potent and frequently-used investigation tools. The annual report also suggests that, after a year of change and turnover that touched virtually every corner and level at DOJ, the coming year will most certainly feature a historically high volume of FCA cases. Recipients of federal funds in the healthcare industry, federal contractors, and grant recipients should pay careful attention to every claim for payment or compliance certification submitted to any federal authority.