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Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A 33-year-old man has pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of and receiving child pornography, or Child Sexual Abuse Materials. This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. The initiative is led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices throughout the country and marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. 

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A California man pleaded guilty yesterday to engaging in more than 3,000 instances of manipulative trading and spoofing during a years-long scheme to manipulate the securities markets.

According to court documents, Mingran Wang, 52, of Fremont, California, orchestrated a scheme to defraud market participants using spoofing from 2021 through 2024. Spoofing is the manipulative trading tactic of placing a non-bona fide order, with the intent to cancel the order before it is executed, to give the false appearance of genuine supply or demand to other investors and move the price in the spoofer’s favor. Wang marketed himself as the founder and investment manager of Greenroots Capital Management, with extensive knowledge and trading experience, including algorithmic trading. The purpose of the scheme was for Wang to enrich himself by purchasing and selling illiquid and thinly traded securities through trading techniques he knew were manipulative and deceptive. These thinly traded securities were often traded in low volumes with limited numbers of interested buyers and sellers, which could lead to volatile changes in price when a transaction occurred. Using multiple accounts that he controlled, Wang manipulated the market and engaged in spoof trading to move prices in his favor on both the buy and sell sides.

To carry out his spoofing scheme, Wang coordinated trades between multiple securities accounts at different brokerage firms. Each spoof order that Wang placed was a non-bona fide order that he made to move the market price to benefit his own trading on the opposite side of the market. After Wang executed his desired bona fide orders on the opposite side of the market and profited, he canceled his spoof orders. Wang engaged in more than 3,000 instances of manipulative trading and spoofing.

Wang pleaded guilty to one count of using interstate commerce for the purpose of securities fraud and agreed to forfeit over $1.3 million in securities fraud proceeds. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 30 in the Northern District of California and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Inspector in Charge Eric Shen of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Criminal Investigations Group made the announcement.

USPIS is investigating the case. The Justice Department appreciates the substantial assistance of FINRA’s Market Abuse Unit.

Acting Assistant Chief Matthew Reilly and Trial Attorney Amanda Lingwood of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are prosecuting the case.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A federal grand jury in the Central District of California returned an indictment yesterday charging Andrew Dominguez, 37, of Los Angeles, California, with producing and distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Dominguez also faces charges for committing these offenses while registered as a sex offender. 

According to court documents, Dominguez attempted to entice three minors to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purposes of producing a visual depiction of such conduct in 2013, 2014, and 2023. He also distributed CSAM videos of a minor and used a facility of interstate commerce to entice minors to engage in sexual acts. 

Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division made the announcement.

Dominguez is charged with two counts of production of child pornography, one count of attempted production of child pornography, two counts of coercion and enticement of a minor, one count of distribution of child pornography, and one count of committing a felony offense involving a minor while being required to register as a sex offender. If convicted, Dominguez faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The FBI Los Angeles Office, Victorville Resident Agency is investigating the case, with assistance from the FBI Denver Office, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

Senior Trial Attorney Jennifer Toritto Leonardo of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Trial Attorney Slava Kuperstein of the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) are prosecuting the case. 

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

An indictment is merely an allegation. The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Source: United States Department of Justice

Thank you, Secretary Kennedy. Today’s record healthcare fraud charges and arrests makes clear that there is no case too big, no scheme too complex, and no hiding place too remote for our fraud-fighting team. In just 14 days, 455 defendants have been charged across the country for schemes involving over $6.5 billion in fraud. Under the leadership of President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Attorney General Blanche, the Department of Justice is aggressively scaling our offensive against anyone using health care as a front to steal from the American people.

But today’s cases allege more than the theft of taxpayer dollars. Many allege the theft of human dignity. Our sick, needy, and elderly — placing their faith in the gift of medicine — were neglected, ignored, and used for personal profit. 

For example, one defendant is charged with conspiring to submit approximately $89 million in false and fraudulent claims for cardiovascular tests. This defendant allegedly used marketing tactics designed to prey on fears that student athletes could die from sudden cardiac arrest. 

He then allegedly rubber-stamped test results as normal without reviewing them. Despite one patient’s test results showing an enlarged heart, the defendant allegedly signed off on the test results within approximately 11 seconds of accessing the 63 test result images. As a result, the student was cleared to play, and he suffered sudden cardiac arrest and died on the basketball court just weeks later.

That is why we cannot and will not tolerate fraud in health care.

How are we going about targeting fraud in health care? We are following the data. Data talks — and data doesn’t lie. It identifies where fraud is happening and unmasks the perpetrators driving it.

For example, our Data Analytics Team observed a dramatic spike in payments for allografts: from less than $1 billion in 2021 to over $14 billion just four years later. Our resulting investigations have led to criminal charges against 11 defendants across six districts for allograft fraud, including a company executive and eight medical professionals.

What happened here, to be clear, was not medicine. The defendants in these schemes purchased allografts for $30-$75 dollars, inflated the price up to nearly 50 times that cost — with the tab picked up by the taxpayers — and then secretly gave lucrative kickbacks for allografts applied. Marketers and nurses who took kickbacks targeted vulnerable hospice patients, making in many instances, over $1 million per patient.

These allograft fraud charges are the result of just one of our many data-driven initiatives. We are announcing today the first prosecution arising out of our Financial Intelligence Review Team, a cutting-edge effort to combine traditional data analytics with financial information. In less than 7 months, after identifying a suspicious behavioral health provider in Illinois, we brought charges against a defendant for a $67 million Medicaid fraud scheme. The defendant allegedly billed Medicaid for providing behavioral health services to patients who received no services and were actually even hospitalized at entirely separate health facilities at the time of the billings. 

Today is just the beginning of a new era of health care fraud enforcement. The Fraud Division’s Health Care Fraud Unit, which led today’s nationwide takedown, is one of the best investments across the government, saving $106 for every $1 spent. And with the whole-of-government laser-focused on rooting out fraud, under the leadership of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, we are rapidly enhancing our fraud-fighting capabilities:  

Today, we are announcing an agreement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to obtain dedicated cloud computing space in the CMS’s cloud environment to run real time advanced analytical models to detect fraud; 

We also are announcing agreements with the Federal Trade Commission and Customs and Border Protection to eliminate data silos and enrich our algorithms. 

And we’re coordinating with prosecutors, agents, and analysts from across state and federal government at a scale and scope that has never before existed until today.

The era of getting rich off America’s health care system is over. If you defraud the American people and put profit over patients, we will do everything we can to put you in prison.

I’ll now turn the podium over to a critical partner in our fight against fraud – Director Kash Patel. 

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, Special Agent in Charge of the Boston-New York Field Division of the Social Security Administration, Office of Inspector General (“SSA OIG”), Amy Connelly, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), Pete Gizas, and Special Agent in Charge of the Diplomatic Security Service (“DSS”) New York Field Office, Brian Wood, announced today the unsealing of a Complaint charging VERONICA YARASET MOLINA with theft of government funds, healthcare fraud, passport fraud, and aggravated identity theft.  

Source: United States Department of Justice

A 35-year-old man is in federal custody after being charged for possessing numerous illicit drugs intended for distribution. After his initial encounter with law enforcement, he fled the country. Authorities located him in Asia where he was arrested and extradited back to the United States.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

LAS VEGAS – A Mexican national was sentenced today by United States District Judge Richard F. Boulware to 51 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for illegally reentering the United States after having been removed from the country on three prior occasions.

Source: United States Department of Justice

Today, OIP and OGIS, in collaboration with the Department of the Interior (DOI), request input from federal FOIA programs in the creation of a central FOIA technology inventory.  Once completed, the inventory will serve as a living resource available to federal agencies to help inform FOIA technology acquisition and implementation decisions. 

We ask agencies to designate personnel familiar with your agency’s FOIA technology to work with Dr. Jeremy Frazier at DOI on recording your agency’s technology assets.  Contact information for Dr. Frazier and additional information can be found here. 

Source: United States Department of Justice

A former Army soldier pleaded guilty today to child exploitation crimes he committed while living in Alaska and Texas, including attempted production of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) depicting minors known to him, and trafficking of CSAM.

Herrera

According to court documents, beginning in March 2021, Seth Herrera, 36, previously of El Paso, Texas, started using The Onion Router (TOR) and multiple encrypted and/or privacy-enhancing applications to access, possess, receive, and transport CSAM on his cell phones. Herrera used these phones to browse the dark web and used encrypted messaging applications to seek out, access and receive CSAM. He created his own publicly accessible group on one of the platforms where he stored his preferred CSAM files. In six weeks, he uploaded over 100 files to this group. 

Across various applications, Herrera participated in hundreds of groups and channels dedicated to CSAM. At the time, the defendant belonged to over 400 Telegram groups and over 1,400 Telegram channels alone. Some groups focused on CSAM involving bestiality, incest, and infants/toddlers. Law enforcement seized Herrera’s devices in May 2024 and discovered tens of thousands of CSAM videos and images, depicting sadistic and masochistic content of boys and girls ranging in age from infant through pubescent.

Starting in December 2022, Herrera also used various AI chatbots on Telegram and other websites to create morphed CSAM. In some instances, Herrera would take non-explicit images of children, some known to him personally, and use AI to undress and morph bodies, and make it appear as if they were engaging in sexually explicit conduct. 

While fueling his desire for online CSAM, beginning in March 2021, Herrera started taking surreptitious photos and recordings of minors known to him in El Paso, Texas. In December 2022, Herrera captured screenshots of minors via security cameras around his home. In one instance, Herrera used AI chatbots to enhance and improve the quality of an explicit screenshot. In total, Herrera secretly produced at least 28 photos and two videos of one minor from security cameras.

Herrera moved to Alaska in August 2023 and transported all his CSAM files across state lines because they were stored in password-protected photo vaults on his phones. 

On Aug. 23, 2024, Herrera was arrested at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, where he served as a Specialist, after a federal grand jury indicted him on transportation, receipt and possession of child pornography. On May 14, 2025, a grand jury in the Western District of Texas indicted Herrera on production and receipt of child pornography related to his conduct in El Paso. Herrera entered his plea under a global plea agreement after the Western District of Texas transferred their case to the District of Alaska on June 15, 2026. 

He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 29 and faces a minimum penalty of 15 years in prison and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Michael J. Heyman for the District of Alaska, U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons for the Western District of Texas, Acting Special Agent in Charge April Miller of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Seattle Field Office, and Special Agent in Charge Michele Starostka of the Army Criminal Investigation Division’s (ARMY CID) Western Field Office made the announcement.

HSI and Army CID investigated the case.

Trial Attorney Rachel L. Rothberg of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Mac Caille Petursson for the District of Alaska are prosecuting the case. CEOS Trial Attorney Rachel L. Rothberg and Assistant U.S. Attorney Mallory J. Rasmussen for the Western District of Texas prosecuted the case in Texas. 

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit Justice.gov/PSC.