President Donald Trump’s attempts to crack down on fraud are expanding to the Bay Area with the establishment of a new task force aimed at targeting health care fraud in the region.
Colin McDonald, the recently sworn-in U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Fraud Enforcement at the Department of Justice, announced the creation of the “West Coast Health Care Fraud Strike Force” at the Philip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco on Thursday.
“Under the leadership of President Trump, the entire apparatus of the federal government is laser focused on fraud,” McDonald said. “If you steal from the American taxpayer, the Department of Justice and our law enforcement partners will do everything possible to award you free housing in a federal prison, and we will not stop there.”
The task force includes prosecutors from the U.S. Districts of Northern California, Nevada, and Arizona as a part of the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division that was launched earlier this month under Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“There’s a range of conduct that goes into what fraud looks like,” McDonald said. “But at its essence, it’s someone lying to their patients and to the government as to the work that they are engaged in.”
In the Bay Area, fraud in the health care technology and biotech sectors has been a prominent issue, according to U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Craig Missakian, who was appointed to the position last year by Trump.
“This office has a long history of prosecuting complex, technology-centered health care fraud schemes that target investors, cheat federal health care programs and ultimately harm patients,” Missakian said.
Major cases include when Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the Silicon Valley-based startup Theranos, was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors by making false claims regarding the company’s blood testing technology.
Mark Schena, former president of the medical technology company Arrayit Corporation in Silicon Valley, was convicted in 2022 in a fraud and kickback scheme related to making misleading claims to investors about the company’s testing technology for allergies and COVID-19.
“Silicon Valley has become ground zero for technology-driven health care fraud schemes that seek to cheat taxpayer-funded programs like Medicare,” Missakian said in a statement.
McDonald said that the strike force will help accelerate investigations into health care fraud in the Bay Area by coordinating state and local prosecutors with the DOJ. The force will be staffed by at least 10 prosecutors from the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division.
“There are many active investigations underway,” he said. “This new strike force will turbo charge those efforts to ensure that anyone considering defrauding the American taxpayer in San Francisco and beyond are held accountable.”
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