Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

Today, the Department of Justice announced that it has filed a Statement of Interest in the case of Ferrier v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, which is currently pending in the state Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California. This case was brought by 60 homeowners who lost their homes in the devastating wildfires that occurred in southern California in January 2025. The homeowners allege that the defendants, 16 homeowner insurance companies, jointly conspired to cancel the homeowners’ fire insurance policies in the years leading up to the January 2025 fires. As a result, the homeowners claim that they were forced to obtain insurance from a state-run program that offers less protective coverage, resulting in much higher out-of-pocket expenses for rebuilding their homes.

“Nearly 16 months after the Eaton and Palisades Fires, the homeowners who lost everything are still trying to rebuild their lives,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Charlie Beller of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “The last thing the fire victims need is the improper use of certain legal doctrines to deprive Angelenos of their day in court. The DOJ Antitrust Division is monitoring insurer conduct across the country to ensure that an improper understanding of federal law does not preclude state or federal antitrust claims.”

While this case was brought under California state antitrust law, the insurance carriers have argued that the homeowners’ claims should be dismissed on the basis of the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, an exemption from antitrust liability under both federal and California antitrust laws that protects petitioning and advocacy directed at government agencies. The Department’s Statement of Interest argues that the Noerr-Pennington doctrine should not apply to the insurers’ alleged group boycott of the homeowner policyholders, as the alleged boycott was separate and distinct — and caused separate and distinct harms — from any government petitioning activity by the insurers.

The Statement of Interest also notes that the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which limits certain federal antitrust claims regarding insurance conduct subject to state oversight, does not necessarily bar group boycott claims of the type alleged by homeowners in this case.

The Antitrust Division routinely files statements of interest and amicus briefs in federal and state courts where doing so helps protect competition and consumers, including by encouraging the sound development of the antitrust laws. A collection of these statements of antitrust and amicus filings is publicly available on the Division’s website.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A Latvian national was sentenced today to 102 months in prison for his role in a major Russian ransomware organization that stole from and extorted over 54 companies.

“With this sentence, a cruel, ruthless, and dangerous international cybercriminal is now behind bars,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Deniss Zolotarjovs helped his ransomware gang profit from hacks of dozens of companies, and even on a government entity whose 911 system was forced offline. He also used stolen children’s health information to increase his leverage to extort victim payments. The Criminal Division will continue to investigate and prosecute international hackers and extortionists from around the world, no matter where they live or operate.”

“Ransomware groups disrupt victims’ lives, cruelly extracting money through psychological manipulation and fear. And they create lingering security issues,” said U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II for the Southern District of Ohio. “Cybercriminals might think they are invulnerable by hiding behind anonymizing tools and complex cryptocurrency patterns while they attack American victims from non-extradition countries. But Zolotarjovs’s prosecution shows that federal law enforcement also has a global reach, and we will hold accountable bad actors like Zolotarjovs, who will now spend significant time in prison.”

“Cybercriminals like Deniss Zolotarjovs may try to hide in the shadows, but the FBI will find them,” said Special Agent in Charge Jason Cromartie of the FBI Cincinnati Field Office. “This case demonstrates the relentless pursuit by our FBI special agents, working with partners across the globe, to hold this criminal accountable for the millions of dollars he extorted from U.S. organizations.”

According to court documents, Deniss Zolotarjovs (Денисс Золотарёвс), 35, of Moscow, Russia, was a member of a ransomware organization led by former leaders of the Conti ransomware group. Brands used to identify the organization in ransom notes to their victims during the time of his involvement include Conti, Karakurt, Royal, TommyLeaks, SchoolBoys Ransomware, and Akira, among others.

During the time of Zolotarjovs’s active participation in the organization, approximately June 2021 to August 2023, the organization stole data from over 54 companies, including many in the United States. 

Zolotarjovs was primarily responsible for escalating pressure on victims who initially resisted prompt payment of the organization’s ransom demands. Zolotarjovs analyzed stolen data, researched victim companies, and exploited his access to particularly sensitive and extremely personal information.

In one attack on a pediatric healthcare company, Zolotarjovs deliberately leveraged children’s health information for extortion. When he failed in extracting a ransom from this victim, he urged coconspirators to be “DESTROYERS” and to leak or sell copies of these pediatric health records to sow fear among future victims. When one of his co-conspirators suggested sending each pediatric patient their own data, Zolotarjovs instead sent a “general pack” of sensitive data to “hundreds of patients,” noting that taking the time to send each victim only their own data would be “routine work” that he had no time for.

Of the more than 54 companies attacked, attacks on just 13 of those companies resulted in over $56 million in losses, including approximately $2.8 million in ransom payments. This loss estimate only includes known victim companies and does not include an additional 41 victim companies that made $13 million in ransom payments during that same period but for whom the government does not yet have detailed loss statements. Due to widespread underreporting of ransomware attacks, true loss numbers are uncertain, but, extrapolating from the known victims and known losses, the government estimates total losses for the period of Zolotarjovs’s participation to likely be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

These loss estimates omit the cost, both psychological and financial, to tens of thousands of individual clients whose data was stolen from these victim companies. Attacks during this period resulted in the theft and exposure of Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, home addresses, healthcare information and the shutdown of a government entity’s 911 system, placing lives at risk.

Members of the organization were Russian or based in Russia and operated for a time out of an office building on Lakhtinskaya Street in St. Petersburg, Russia. The organization relied on a hierarchical management structure and divided the work into separate teams, using a network of companies registered throughout Russia, Europe, and the United States to obfuscate its operations. In Russia, the organization fueled corruption and abused Russian public resources in pursuit of personal financial gain. Members of the organization included multiple former Russian law enforcement officers. These connections allowed members of the group to co-opt Russian government databases and law enforcement connections to intimidate and harass personal detractors, and to identify and evaluate potential new recruits to the organization. Corruption also ensured special treatment for members of the organization. Leaders avoided Russian taxes and regularly paid bribes to exempt members — draft-age men — from compulsory military service in Russia.

Zolotarjovs was arrested in the country of Georgia in December 2023 and transferred to U.S. custody in August 2024 after contesting extradition. In July 2025, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit both money laundering and wire fraud.

The FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office investigated the case. Law enforcement leaders commended the FBI offices in Cleveland, San Diego, Salt Lake City, and Richmond, Virginia, for their vital roles in the investigation and officials in Georgia for their role in the extradition.

Trial Attorney Benjamin A. Bleiberg and Senior Counsel Bryce B. Rosenbower of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant Deputy Criminal Chief Timothy S. Mangan for the Southern District of Ohio prosecuted the case.The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs worked with the Government of Georgia to secure Zolotarjovs’s arrest and extradition from Georgia. The United States thanks the Government of Georgia for its assistance extraditing Zolotarjovs to the United States.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – U.S. Attorney David I. Courcelle announced that LUCAS TINOCO-TIERES(“TINOCO-TIERES”), age 42, a native of Guatemala, was sentenced on April 29, 2026, for reentry of removed alien, in violation of Title 8, United States Code, Section 1326(a). 

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A federal jury in the Southern District of Texas convicted a Texas physician yesterday for unlawfully distributing more than a million pills of opioids and other dangerous controlled substances.

“Medical physicians who exploit their prescribing authority for profit over patient care break an inherent trust with their patients and we will hold them accountable,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “The Department of Justice remains committed to protecting the public from dangerous and unlawful distribution of controlled substances, especially when the drug dealer is a doctor.”

“Patients put their trust and their lives into the hands of our medical and health care professionals,” said DEA Assistant Administrator Cheri Oz. “The highly addictive, dangerous misused drugs in this case – oxycodone and hydrocodone – are meant to treat pain, not cause it. DEA remains relentless in our pursuit of those who poison our communities and exploit our health care system, all to line their own pockets with the profit from other’s pain.”

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Barbara Marino, M.D., 65, of Tomball, was the sole prescribing physician at Angels Clinica. From Angels Clinica, Marino prescribed the highly dangerous, addictive, and commonly abused opioids oxycodone and hydrocodone and the muscle relaxer carisoprodol. Marino prescribed these drugs from a clinic hiding in plain sight, behind mirrored windows, in a Houston strip mall:

Image of Clinic Where Marino Prescribed Drugs (Gov’t Trial Ex. No. 301)

Many of the patients who received prescriptions from Marino were brought to Angels Clinica by street-level drug dealers, often called “crew leaders” or “runners.” These crew leaders and runners brought patients to Marino for prescriptions, filled those prescriptions at Houston-area pharmacies, and then sold the pills on the street. Angels Clinica was a cash-only clinic, charging people based on what drug Marino would prescribe them. In less than a year, Marino received more than $400,000 from Angels Clinica’s owners for writing prescriptions that lacked a legitimate medical purpose and were outside the usual course of professional medical practice.

Marino’s prescribing exhibited many of the red flags of a pill mill, as published in the Texas State Board of Pharmacies “YOU MIGHT BE A PILL MILL IF…” checklist. The evidence at trial showed that Marino intentionally disregarded all the red flags and prescribed almost every patient she saw the dangerous combination of an opioid, like oxycodone or hydrocodone, and the muscle relaxer carisoprodol. More than 99% of the time, Marino prescribed only the strongest short-acting versions of oxycodone, hydrocodone, and carisoprodol.

Among Marino’s patients was a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy.  Marino prescribed this pregnant patient the dangerous drug cocktail of hydrocodone and carisoprodol. The patient’s OB/GYN testified at trial about how dangerous that drug cocktail was for both the woman and her unborn child, and that the patient missed an important follow-up visit with the OB/GYN. As the prosecutor said in her closing arguments, this patient “didn’t go to her doctor, she went to her drug dealer.”

Another of Dr. Marino’s patients was a man who had been diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic.  The patient’s mother testified that he often claimed to be former President Richard Nixon.  Nonetheless, Dr. Marino prescribed him the hydrocodone and soma cocktail at least three times.

The jury convicted Marino of one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and four counts of distributing a controlled substance. Marino faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for each count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

DEA investigated the case.

Trial Attorneys Drew Pennebaker and Yael Mash of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the Texas Attorney General’s Office Medicaid Fraud Control Unit are prosecuting the case.

On April 7, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division (“Fraud Division”). The Fraud Division is laser-focused on investigating and prosecuting those who commit fraud against the American people. The Department’s work to combat fraud supports President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a whole-of-government effort chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.

The Department of Justice’s Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program, currently comprised of eight strike forces operating in federal districts across the country, has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $45 billion since 2007. In addition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, are taking steps to hold providers accountable for their involvement in health care fraud schemes. More information can be found at www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/health-care-fraud-unit.