Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
Cierra Charity Lee, 20 and Kayvon Edwards, 21, of the District of Columbia, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in connection with the Oct. 20, 2025, kidnapping and armed robbery of two female victims in Southeast. Co-defendant Robynn Danielle Bynum, 18, of Fort Washington, Maryland, pleaded guilty on Apr. 16, 2026, to the same counts.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
Tahj Rankine, also known as Biggz, 27, of Tucker, Georgia, a member of the GoodFellas criminal street gang, was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in prison and five years of supervised release for his participation in a drive-by shooting at a crowded gas station that injured an innocent bystander and others. Rankine pleaded guilty in January 2026 to discharging a firearm during a crime of violence — specifically, attempted murder committed in the aid of the GoodFellas’ racketeering enterprise.
“Gang shootings in public places are all too common,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The defendant and his gang terrorized customers at a gas station, unleashing more than 30 rounds, endangering innocent victims, and even hitting a car containing children. Violent gang activity that imperils innocent lives has no place in our communities. It must be rooted out entirely.”
“Tahj Rankine drove a vehicle while fellow gang members shot out of it, maiming an innocent bystander,” said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg for the Northern District of Georgia. “Our Homeland Security Task Force will continue to target gangsters who disregard public safety and drive violence in our community.”
“Drive-by shootings endanger entire communities, not just intended targets,” said Special Agent in Charge Marlo Graham of the FBI Atlanta Field Office. “Rankine’s actions — driving armed gang members into a public space and enabling gunfire — show a blatant disregard for human life that left an innocent bystander injured. The FBI, alongside our partners on the Homeland Security Task Force, will continue to prioritize dismantling violent gangs like GoodFellas and holding those who fuel this kind of reckless violence accountable.”
According to court documents, GoodFellas is an Atlanta-based gang that primarily recruits members in Atlanta neighborhoods and in jails and prisons within Georgia. The GoodFellas gang generates money for the gang through, among other criminal activities, drug trafficking, robbery, carjacking, fraud, and firearms trafficking. The gang uses violence and threats of violence, including murder, attempted murder, and obstruction of justice to protect its territory and reputation.
In February 2021, on the day of the shooting, Rankine drove fellow gang members to an open Quickmart gas station, where they believed members of a rival gang were present. A second car, also filled with armed GoodFellas members, accompanied Rankine’s vehicle.
Rankine drove through the Quickmart parking lot, turned around, and then drove through the parking lot again. As Rankine drove through the second time, gang members in Rankine’s vehicle and the other vehicle shot from the vehicles toward the gas station’s storefront. Several people were injured, including an innocent bystander whose children were traumatized when bullets hit the car they were sitting in. A Quickmart employee estimated that the shooters fired 30 to 40 times.
The FBI investigated the case.
Trial Attorney Sarah J. Rasalam of the Justice Department’s Violent Crime and Racketeering Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren E. Renaud for the Northern District of Georgia are prosecuting the case.
These arrests are part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. The HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. In performing this work, the HSTF places special emphasis on investigating and prosecuting those engaged in child trafficking or other crimes involving children. The HSTF further utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States. HSTF San Juan comprises agents and officers from the following federal partners: FBI, ICE-HSI, CBP (OFO, AMO and Border Patrol), the U.S. Marshals Service for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, DEA, ATF, IRS, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Department of State, and the U.S. Secret Service, the Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands HIDTA, TSA, FAA, and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Districts of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The HSTF also has the following state and local law enforcement partners as participating agencies: the Puerto Rico Police Department; the San Juan, Carolina, Guaynabo, Barceloneta, and Ponce Municipal Police Departments, the Puerto Rico National Guard – Counter Drug Program; the Puerto Rico Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; the Puerto Rico Internal Revenue Service (Hacienda); the Puerto Rico Port Authority; and the Virgin Islands Police Department.
Source: United States Navy
Exercise Obangame Express (OE) 2026 officially concluded during a ceremony in Douala, Cameroon, host nation for the 15th iteration, April 30. The ceremony marked the conclusion of three weeks of training for participants from 30 nations across Africa, Europe, South America and the U.S. reinforcing regional collaboration and maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea.
Source: United States Department of Justice
Good morning, my name is Colin McDonald, Assistant Attorney General for the National Fraud Enforcement Division at the Department of Justice.
I am joined today by U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian for the Northern District of California, U.S. Attorney Tim Courchaine from the District of Arizona, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah from the District of Nevada, members of the Department of Justice’s Health Care Fraud Unit, and our law enforcement partners from FBI, DEA, and HHS-OIG.
Our message today and every day is simple: If you steal from the American taxpayer, the Department of Justice and our law enforcements partners will do everything possible to award you free housing in a federal prison. And we will not stop there. We will find the spoils of your fraud, take it from you, and give it back where it belongs: with the American people. No one, no one, should be allowed to rip off the United States of America – and we will not be shrugging our shoulders at those who do.
Already this week, alongside our law enforcement partners, we executed over 20 search warrants in fraud investigations in Minnesota; we indicted a bookkeeper in Florida for siphoning $3.9 million from her employer; we secured a guilty plea from a former Iowa nonprofit director who stole money meant to help Americans find work; and we obtained a prison sentence for a tax cheat in Texas who withheld, but did not pay, his employees’ taxes. And last week, among many other fraud enforcement actions, a judge sent a sex offender to prison for lying to receive SNAP benefits. We will continue to work around the clock to prosecute fraud.
We are not doing this work alone. Under the leadership of President Trump, the entire apparatus of the federal government is laser-focused on fraud as part of the President’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a whole-of-government effort chaired by Vice President Vance to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within the Federal benefit programs. The Task Force is rapidly on the move, identifying fraudulent actors, strengthening our country’s financial security protocols, and casting a clear vision that fraud against the American pocketbook will not be tolerated.
On April 7, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a memorandum on the creation of the Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. In his memorandum, General Blanche directed the Department to take “immediate action to expand the National Fraud Enforcement Division into a robust litigating division capable of reaching any fraud — large or small — perpetrated against taxpayer dollars.”
And we are springing into action.
Last week, the Fraud Division announced a historic $300 million grant program for state and local prosecutors to join the Department of Justice in our mission to combat fraud. We welcome all who share our concern for taxpayer dollars to join us in this mission.
And I am pleased to announce today a major new Fraud Division initiative to combat health care fraud: the creation of the West Coast Health Care Fraud Strike Force in Arizona, Nevada, and right here in the Northern District of California. The data shows that the need for this new Strike Force is urgent and undeniable. Health care fraud in these districts imposes an enormous and growing burden on American taxpayers as fraudsters exploit programs meant for the poor, needy, elderly, and disabled. Some of the most significant Medicaid, wound care, and digital health technology fraud cases have been prosecuted in these districts.
This new regional Strike Force will be staffed by at least ten prosecutors from the Fraud Division’s Health Care Fraud Section who will be a force multiplier for these U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to combat a health care fraud crisis that is robbing taxpayers and harming patients.
Since the creation of the National Rapid Response Strike Force in 2020, health care fraud prosecutors from Washington D.C. have been partnering with these U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to prosecute cutting-edge cases on the West Coast.
For instance, in Arizona, just last year we secured guilty pleas and sentences of 15.5 and 14 years for two wound graft company owners stemming from a $1.2 billion wound graft scheme. We seized $126 million in assets, including cash, luxury vehicles, and gold bars, returning needed funds to the taxpayers.
Separately, prosecutors have charged a $650 million Medicaid fraud scheme that exploited vulnerable substance abuse patients, who did not receive the care that they needed.
But partnering on cases from Washington DC is not enough for the amount of health care fraud in these districts, and it’s not enough for the vision that the National Fraud Enforcement Division is casting. We need more attorneys on the ground, across the nation, to combat this nationwide problem. That is why, only 22 days after the Acting Attorney General announced the creation of the Fraud Division, we are expanding our footprint here.
Today’s new Strike Force builds on a proud tradition that stretches back almost two decades. Over that period, this program, now comprised of nine strike forces operating in federal districts across the country — including the Central District of California—has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $45 billion. Our Health Care Fraud Strike Force is a model that powerfully combines data analytics with traditional investigative techniques to produce rapid results. This new West Coast Strike Force carries that legacy forward – with a sharper focus, expanded resources, cutting-edge data analytics, and the full weight of this Department’s commitment to protecting you, the American taxpayer.
This Strike Force will operate in close collaboration with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the FBI, HHS-OIG, DEA, and our other law enforcement partners. We will use data analytics, cross-district regional coordination, and every available legal tool to identify, investigate, and prosecute these crimes with speed and efficiency.
Let me be clear, to anyone who is committing fraud in the health care industry in Arizona, Nevada, and California: this Strike Force is coming for you, whether you are committing fraud on the street, in a medical office, or in a boardroom.
Health care fraud steals from American taxpayers, corrupts the integrity of the programs that the most vulnerable among us rely upon, and puts patients at risk. The Fraud Division will track emerging fraud trends and follow the data, and the data in our possession shines an inescapable light on those committing health care fraud. The creation of the Fraud Division marks a new chapter in this effort. Our ability to prosecute these crimes will grow even more sophisticated with each passing day, and we will not rest in pursuing justice on behalf of taxpayers and patients.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
A 25-year-old man has pleaded guilty to his role in a drug trafficking conspiracy involving fentanyl pills shipped from Arizona to Ohio. This case is part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
Settlement is Second Largest Obtained by Department in an Individual Fair Housing Act Case
The Justice Department announced today a $750,000 agreement to settle allegations that Indian Oaks Apartments LTD, Russell Management Services LLC, H.J. Russell & Company, and The Russell Realty LP violated the Fair Housing Act by refusing to grant a mother’s requests for a ground-floor unit because her son had been diagnosed with a genetic disorder that causes permanent mobility impairment. This settlement is the second largest ever obtained by the department in an individual housing discrimination case.
“The defendants should have moved this family with a terminally ill child to a ground-floor unit without delay,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Americans with disabilities have the right to equal access to housing in the United States, and this Justice Department will continue to ensure the protection of this right.”
“Refusing to move a terminally ill child and his family, when ground-floor units were available, was a clear violation of both law and decency,” said U.S. Attorney William R. “Will” Keyes for the Middle District of Georgia. “Rental property owners and their employees must know and follow the Fair Housing Act, as denying reasonable accommodations is illegal, and our office will not hesitate to pursue those who break the law.”
The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 23, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, alleges that the owners and property managers of an apartment complex in Fort Valley, Georgia, failed to grant a mother’s requests for a reasonable accommodation, despite her repeated requests over a 14-month period and the existence of multiple available ground-floor units. The complaint alleges that the defendants’ actions made it impossible for the mother to carry her son in and out of the apartment without help from her older children, leading to profound physical, psychological, and emotional losses for her son and lost academic and social opportunities for her older children. The settlement requires the defendants to pay $750,000 to the family, comply with certain policy and training provisions, and report to the department on reasonable accommodation requests at any properties they own or operate.
The lawsuit arose as a result of a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). After an investigation of the complaint, HUD issued a charge of discrimination and the tenant elected to have the case heard in federal court.
If you have experienced housing discrimination, submit a report online or call the Justice Department’s Housing Discrimination Tip Line at 1-800-896-7743. You may also file a report with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by submitting a complaint online or calling 1-800-669-9777. More information about the Civil Rights Division and the laws it enforces is available at www.justice.gov/crt.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
An Oregon man who worked as a payment processing broker pleaded guilty today to wire fraud for his role in using fraudulent, unauthorized debits to steal money from victims’ bank accounts.
According to court documents, Jeremy Todd Briley, 46, of Oregon, worked as a payment processing broker. Acting on behalf of clients (merchants), Briley identified payment processors in the United States for his clients to use in processing charges. Briley’s two largest clients were sham companies that falsely represented that they provided online marketing services to businesses. Instead, they stole from victims by fraudulently debiting their bank accounts, causing over $14 million in unauthorized debits and attempted debits.
From February 2017 to December 2023, Briley obtained and maintained payment processing relationships for those sham companies so that they could process fraudulent debits, knowing that the sham companies were fraudulently debiting bank accounts. Despite repeatedly receiving information that the debits processed on behalf of the sham companies were not authorized by the victims, Briley concealed the fraudulent activities of the sham companies in various ways, and he arranged for a payment processor to deceive banks by manipulating return rates on the fraudulent debits.
Briley pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 20 and faces 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 Colin M. McDonald; U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida; Inspector in Charge Eric Shen of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Criminal Investigations Group; and Special Agent in Charge Vincent R. Zehme of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General (FDIC-OIG), Chicago Region made the announcement.
The USPIS and FDIC-OIG are investigating the case.
Trial Attorney Daniel Zytnick of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section is prosecuting the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Grosnoff for the Southern District of Florida is handling forfeiture.
On April 7, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the 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.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
ABINGDON, Va. – A Bristol, Virginia man who conspired with others to distribute more than 600 fentanyl pills was sentenced today to 10 years in federal prison.Briar Stephens, 25, pled guilty to one count of conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl and one count of using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to, and possessing a firearm in furtherance of, a drug trafficking crime.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, Julian Gonzalez was sentenced by United States District Judge William F. Kuntz II to 57 months’ imprisonment for attempted obstruction of justice. Gonzalez was convicted of this crime following a one-week jury trial in October 2024.
Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
After a four-day trial, a federal jury found three men guilty of involvement with an international email hacking scheme that defrauded more than 1,000 victims out of approximately $215 million. The scheme spanned 47 states and 19 countries. In total, 25 defendants have been convicted for their roles in this fraud and money laundering scheme, commonly referred to as a “business email compromise.”