The Latest News about The Department of Justice

Two Ukrainian men have been charged for their roles in a large-scale, international conspiracy to hack into the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) computer systems and profit by trading on critical information they stole. In a 16-count indictment unsealed today in the District of New Jersey, Artem Radchenko, 27, and Oleksandr Ieremenko, 26, both of Kiev, Ukraine, are charged with ...

Severiano Martinez-Rojas, 53, of Mexico, was sentenced on Friday by United States District Judge Edward R. Korman to over 24 years in prison for his role in the sex trafficking of three victims. The amount to be paid in restitution will be announced at a later date. The defendant is the fourth member of an Atlanta-based Mexican sex trafficking ring convicted ...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday the University of Iowa violated First Amendment rights after deregistering a student Christian group. Business Leaders in Christ (BLinC) stopped receiving recognition from the public university in November 2017 due to the organization’s statement of faith, which the university found “unwelcoming,” according to the Iowa City Press-Citizen Friday. BLinC was created by the ...

President Donald Trump’s administration officially got rid of a lax discipline rule Friday instated by former President Barack Obama’s administration that wanted to ease racial disparities by discouraging student punishment. The Education and Justice Departments formally revoked the Obama-era policy, The Associated Press reported Friday. The removal comes after Trump’s safety commission, led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, released several ...

A federal grand jury returned a seventh superseding indictment Monday charging nine men in connection with a conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise known as La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. Charged in the seven-count superseding indictment are Junior Noe Alvarado-Requeno, aka “Insolente,” and “Trankilo,” 22, of Landover, Maryland; Michael Eduardo Contreras, aka “Katra,” and “Insoportable,” 24, of Silver Spring, ...

Eight Dallas, Texas-area pharmacy owners and marketers were charged in an indictment unsealed today for their roles in a scheme involving approximately $92 million in compound drug claims to TRICARE and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), which were allegedly the product of over $9.1 million in illegal kickbacks. Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal ...

The Department of Justice amended the regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), clarifying that bump stocks fall within the definition of “machinegun” under federal law, as such devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger. Acting Attorney General Whitaker made the following ...

Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal, 46, a resident of Arizona, was sentenced today to 12 years in prison for providing and conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization, aiding and abetting the receipt of military-type training from ISIS, and conspiring to receive such training. A jury convicted El Gammal ...

A Miami, Florida-area woman was sentenced to 78 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release today for her role in a $4.65 million health care fraud scheme involving three home health agencies that purported to provide home health services to Medicare patients. Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. ...

Three individuals in Las Vegas, Nevada, pleaded guilty this week to conspiring to steal more than $2 million in tax refunds from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), according to Justice Department officials. Chanh V. Trinh, Cannedy Trinh, and Elizabeth Trinh each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to defraud the United States by fraudulently obtaining the payment of income ...

A former congressional staffer was sentenced today to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $800,000 in restitution, to be followed by three years of supervised release, for participating in a multi-year scheme to defraud charitable donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars and secretly to funnel the proceeds to pay for personal expenses and to illegally finance campaigns ...

The Department of Justice is requesting that the justification of an FBI raid on a reportedly recognized whistleblower’s home remain secret, according to a letter from U.S. Attorney Robert Robert Hur. The letter was sent to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on Dec. 7 in response to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Nov. 30 request to unseal court documents that ...

Laith Waleed Alebbini, 28, of Dayton, Ohio, was convicted today for attempting and conspiring to join the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman for the Southern District of Ohio, Special Agent in Charge Todd Wickerham of the FBI’s Cincinnati Division ...

Pharmaceutical company Actelion Pharmaceuticals US, Inc. (Actelion), based in South San Francisco, California, has agreed to pay $360 million to resolve claims that it illegally used a foundation as a conduit to pay the copays of thousands of Medicare patients taking Actelion’s pulmonary arterial hypertension drugs, in violation of the False Claims Act, the Justice Department announced today. When a ...

The Justice Department declined prosecution of a senior agency official who allegedly sexually harassed female subordinates, sexually assaulted another, and lied about it to the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general. The official, who worked with DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs, is not identified in a summary of a report released Tuesday by the office of the inspector general (OIG). ...