DOJ Fraud Division Issues Directive Setting Corporate Enforcement Priorities
On October 1, 2026, Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald issued Directive 26-12 through DOJ's newly created National Fraud Enforcement Division, formalizing corporate fraud enforcement priorities across health care, government contracting, tax, and trade. For health care, the directive targets billing practices, medical necessity documentation, referral relationships, and controlled substance prescribing/dispensing, and extends to FDA-regulated companies with no federal reimbursement exposure. The directive sets quantitative thresholds guiding prosecutorial decisions: conduct spanning three or more federal districts, twenty-five or more victims, or $25 million or more in losses. It builds on the Fraud Division's August 2026 launch of a data-analytics-driven detection center, signaling greater cross-agency visibility into outlier billing patterns.