The FBI has posted surveillance photos and a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of an unidentified male who investigators say threw a “Molotov cocktail-style device” at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in downtown Atlanta on Tuesday night.
Federal authorities conducted predawn raids across Southern California on Thursday, busting suspected fraudsters, including a cardiothoracic surgeon, accused of stealing nearly $2 billion through sham substance abuse programs, unnecessary surgeries and phony hospice care.
In total, 15 people, including six medical professionals, were charged over $1. 8 billion in fraudulent claims submitted to government and private health insurance programs, the Justice Department said.
"These charges include the largest sober home fraud scheme the Department has ever prosecuted and a scheme involving unnecessary invasive procedures that was detected through data analytics," said Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division.
"Our message is simple: if you steal health care dollars from the American taxpayer or abuse your position to harm patients, we are coming for you — and the data will lead us to you."
Among the defendants are Dr. Harold Tabaie, 78, of Anaheim, a cardiothoracic surgeon, and his business partner, Hany Malek, 61, a Tarzana chiropractor.
Both are charged in an alleged $135 million scheme to bill Medicare for medically unnecessary atherectomies, invasive arterial procedures using a bladed catheter to clear plaque.
Prosecutors allege Malek posed as a medical doctor to diagnose patients with arterial disease and recommend atherectomies, even though the patients did not have the condition.
Tabaie then performed the procedures, sometimes repeatedly on patients for whom previous operations had already failed, according to officials. Authorities noted that several patients suffered extreme pain and discomfort as a result.
Malek also faces charges for allegedly submitting fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan applications in 2021. He allegedly fabricated a 25% revenue loss for his business to secure loan funds, which he then spent on personal expenses, family credit cards, other ventures and rare coins.
In a separate case, Nathan Young, 39, and his father, David Young, 71, were charged with operating a $1.6 billion substance abuse scam.
Authorities allege the father-son duo trafficked drug addicts from across the nation to dozens of Los Angeles rehab centers. Federal prosecutors said the vulnerable patients were recruited by "body brokers" Honey Phipps, 42, and Cody Phipps, 36, both of Greenville, Texas.
Body brokerage is the illegal practice of receiving kickbacks to refer insured individuals to specific rehab facilities. Once patients arrived, no actual treatment was provided.
Instead, the Youngs allegedly recycled patients through their facilities to continuously bill insurance companies, even ordering staff to drug patients with sedatives to "knock them out" if they attempted to leave.
The duo also allegedly offered drugs to patients, cut them off from communication with family members, prevented them from accessing their belongings and physically blocked them from leaving the facilities to continue billing their insurance policies.
When Nathen Young was informed that a patient wanted to leave detox so he could smoke marijuana, Young instructed that the patient should be given what he wanted, off-site from the detox, to keep him there, prosecutors said.
"It is especially egregious when doctors and other health care professionals, who pledged to do no harm, resort to petty greed and criminality," said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. "Every dollar drained out of our private and public health insurance systems is one less dollar available to those who truly need it."
The sweep also targeted several other major healthcare fraud schemes across the region. In one instance, defendants were charged with stealing more than $140 million by falsely certifying non-terminally ill patients for hospice care.
In a separate prescription fraud scheme, Christina Mareik, 61, of Whittier, was charged for her role in allegedly submitting thousands of bogus prescriptions for high-reimbursement generic drugs to Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program.
Additionally, Dr. Hassan Badday, 48, of Los Angeles, and Dr. Robby Ayoub, 52, of Huntington Beach, were charged with taking illegal kickbacks from a Houston laboratory marketer in exchange for ordering unnecessary Medicare genetic tests.
Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, one of the state's most powerful Democrats, was charged on Thursday in connection with what federal authorities alleged was a role leading a wide-ranging criminal enterprise that acquired and distributed large quantities of marijuana and laundered the proceeds.
Federal authorities allege state senator L Louise Lucas, a vocal Trump critic, led a ‘criminal marijuana enterprise’
Virginia state senator L Louise Lucas, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, was charged on Thursday in connection with what federal authorities alleged was a role leading a criminal enterprise that acquired and distributed large quantities of marijuana and laundered the proceeds.
An indictment unsealed on Thursday charged Lucas and six other defendants, including several of her relatives, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Lucas surrendered on Thursday, a justice department spokesperson said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts released a video of alleged sham marriage mastermind Jennifer Gonzalez detailing her pay-for-play scheme which officials say netted her over $6 million.
The U.S. Attorney's Office accused Gonzalez of orchestrating fake marriages between U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants, charging the immigrants up to $40,000 per marriage.
Gonzalez can be seen on a video recorded by a witness cooperating with federal law enforcement explaining how her scheme worked.
"They will come, I will present them to the wife, they're like, 'yes, I want them, not a problem, I'll be back in, I don't know, three weeks.' And they would leave and make me hold these girls for months," she explained.
"The payment, it's agreed by both parties, OK? This is the first initial payment for the total amount of $38,000. Now, let me calculate that real quick. So $38,000 minus $3,000," she continued, while using a calculator. "That's going to give us $35,000. And then the day of the wedding, you have to bring me, what? $12,000.
"You and I are the ones in this contract, not nobody else. Because we don't want to get your wife and yourself into a...putting in paper about a fake marriage. You know what I mean? Does that make sense to you? Because if anything happened, we don't want them to have any proof that this was fake," she said.
Gonzalez also explained to the witness, who she believed to be an illegal immigrant, that Massachusetts was the best place to go for illegal immigrants because of its sanctuary state status.
"Massachusetts is best place for you to be. That is a fact," Gonzalez said.
"You get health insurance. You get a lot of help as an immigrant here," she explained, adding, "Trump doesn't like this state because...the state defends us very much."
She also revealed that she stopped arranging the marriages around 2025 because of increased federal immigration enforcement.
Gonzalez further told the witness that she owned multiple properties in the Dominican Republic, which she called "my country," and in Puerto Rico.
"Miss Gonzalez got rich off selling the American dream, all the while investing her money in another country," Leah Foley, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, told reporters during a Wednesday press conference announcing the scheme.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., denied Wednesday that she married her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to commit immigration fraud and pushed back against claims that they are related.
But when asked if there's any familial relation with her ex-husband, Omar admitted, "Not to my knowledge."
The interview marked the Somali-born congresswoman's first time speaking with the media since federal agents searched her Washington, D.C., residence on Oct. 12. The congresswoman's office has not responded to Fox News Digital's repeated requests for comment regarding the investigations and raid on her home earlier this month.
"It all started with the Somali blog," Omar told MS Now host Chris Hayes regarding longstanding rumors that they are siblings. "Somebody put it there, that he had to have been my brother or something to that effect."
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents executed a court-authorized search warrant as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation into possible false statements in Omar's immigration and naturalization documents.
The Justice Department has not publicly detailed the allegations.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia approved the warrant, according to court-related reporting.
Omar has denied wrongdoing and called the investigation politically motivated. She appeared publicly for the first time since last Monday's raid with a video posted to social media from the back of a car where she asked supporters to keep sending her money.
Federal authorities issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to members of Omar's family, and seized her cellphone during the investigation, according to The Associated Press.
Fox News Digital reported that Omar's sister, Sahra Noor, spoke with federal investigators last week in the wake of the raid.
That investigation reportedly began during the Biden administration in 2024. The complaint about her massive wealth disparity in her disclosures was dismissed by congressional ethics hawks but is now being investigated by authorities outside the Capitol, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced last week.
One of the unfortunate quirks of the American system is that you can't lie to the government, but the government can lie to you. Samuel Tunick found himself on the receiving end of this setup last year at Atlanta International Airport. When agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for his phone password, he allegedly gave them a self-destruct code that wiped his data. Tunick now faces five years in prison for destroying evidence.
It turns out that the feds were lying to Tunick the entire time. A new court filing, first reported by 404 Media, shows that the DHS had sent out an order to seize Tunick's phone over his involvement in environmentalist protests in Atlanta. When he landed at the airport, however, agents told Tunick that they were looking for "kiddie porn" and he would be allowed to leave with his phone if he cooperated. They also repeatedly denied him access to his lawyer when he asked.
"There can be no real debate that if law enforcement had acted similarly elsewhere in Atlanta, their actions would be unconstitutional. But the government says it was entitled to act this way because Mr. Tunick was returning from an international vacation" in the Dominican Republic, his lawyers wrote in the filing, which includes internal DHS communications and excerpts from his interrogation video.
U.S. law recognizes a "border exception" to Fourth Amendment privacy rights, allowing federal agents to search incoming travelers for contraband. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) claims that this exemption also allows them to hold travelers for questioning and search their electronic data. Tunick's case reveals just how widely the agency stretches this loophole.
A few hours before Tunick landed, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Travis Mcghie emailed the CBP station in Atlanta with his photo and information, stating that he is under investigation for "suspected terrorist activities." (Tunick is involved in Save the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a local police training center.) The email asked CBP to "conduct a 100% baggage exam, retain all electronics and collect passcodes," stating that the HSI will be at the airport to conduct an interrogation.
Pulled into the secondary screening room, Tunick "almost immediately" told CBP officers that "I don't really want to speak without a lawyer any more," according to the filing, which cites the interrogation tape. He would ask for a lawyer multiple times.
The agents asked Tunick if he had "kiddie porn" on his phone and stated that "because you're refusing to talk, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for." One of them, Latoya Castro, told Tunick that "either you can give us your password so that we can go through it no problem, or you can refuse to do that, unfortunately, we will have to seize your phone."
Both of those statements were a lie, of course. The HSI's email had asked CBP to take Tunick's phone, whether or not he cooperated.
The lie about child porn may not only have been meant to intimidate Tunick. While there arecontradictory lower court rulings about the border search exemption, some courts have ruled that the CBP can only search electronics for "digital contraband," or files that are themselves illegal. A search for child sex abuse material would be on stronger legal ground than a search for mere evidence of other crimes.
Tunick was using GrapheneOS, a secure phone system that allows users to set both a real password and a "duress password" that wipes out all data when entered. The interrogation tape shows his phone appearing to reset after he gave the officers a passcode. HSI agent Nathan Burnham and FBI agent Andrea Coble then entered the room.
"You are not under arrest. Once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave," Burnham said, referring to the CBP officers.
Tunick's lawyers argue that the judge should throw out the phone password Tunick provided and everything that resulted from entering it as an "involuntary" response made under "unlawful interrogation," because the CBP agents did not read Tunick his Fifth Amendment rights and ignored his multiple requests to consult with his lawyer before answering their questions.
The CBP claims that secondary screening at the border doesn't count as a criminal investigation, so detainees don't have the same rights as criminal suspects. "Since the international arrivals inspection is an administrative function, CBP policy and federal regs do not permit the presence of lawyers during secondary examinations," a spokesmantoldReason earlier this year.
But Tunick's lawyers insist that his experience was "far outside" a normal border crossing: He was accused of a serious crime to his face, faced an investigation for a different serious crime he didn't know about, and clearly could not leave the situation until he gave information to government agents.
"I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy," Tunick told 404 Media.
Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that Tunick is involved with, has been amajor nuisance for authorities in Georgia. Protesters attacked and burned construction equipment throughout 2022, and police shot a protester in 2023 under unclear circumstances, claiming that they were fired at during a raid.
The Trump administration has brought down the federal government against the movement. In June 2026, the Department of Justice broughtfederal charges against two alleged arsonists, citingNational Security Presidential Memo 7, which directs the feds to go after left-wing domestic terrorism.
But beyond the email line about "suspected terrorist activities," there is no indication of what specific crimes the feds suspected Tunick of, or why they suspected him. And the whole setup of the interrogation was designed to hide those answers. In fact, instead of charging Tunick under typical obstruction or evidence-destruction laws, federal prosecutors chose ararely-used statute that doesn't require them to disclose what the underlying investigation was about.
"Many times the government wants to highlight what it was trying to investigate because that ups the stakes on what the defendant was doing," former prosecutor Daniel RichmantoldThe New York Times. "This is a case where I think they're trying to avoid exactly that by focusing only on the destruction, and not what the investigation was about."
Authorities have said the attack was thwarted by FBI agents after they monitored the 18-year-old for nearly two years and ultimately supplied him with the AK-47 he planned to use.
The investigation resulted in a dramatic 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago that recovered classified records and later produced an indictment in federal court in Florida charging then-former President Donald Trump with dozens of felony counts.
Federal authorities are investigating letters that have been mailed to congressional and election offices nationwide and are urging recipients to treat the mailings as "potentially hazardous."
The charges listed on the violation notice issued by the FBI are assaults within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke with the AP on condition of anonymity.
The music industry has once again been forced to dance to a tune set by drug trafficking. Ismael Zambada Sicairos, the subject of several narcocorridos (a subgenre of corrido, a type of Mexican ballad, that glorifies or narrates the lives of drug traffickers and organized crime), is now accused of being the head of a sophisticated criminal network that, through organizing concerts in Baja California and other front-business activities, allegedly served to launder money generated illicitly across the border by Los Mayos, the Sinaloa Cartel faction he has led for two years.
Water service failed in at least 300,000 Atlanta households on July 27. Taps ran, but only a trickle came out. After receiving several consumer alerts, the water company found that a pumping station had stopped functioning, affecting that city and others in the state. The loss of pressure led authorities to advise boiling water before drinking it to reduce the risk of contamination, sparking some panic among the population. It was not a technical fault: everything points to it having been orchestrated from a computer almost 7,000 miles away, in Iran.
The alarms raised by the relationship between a Spanish NATO commander and a woman of Russian origin he met on Tinder, the dating app, are the latest chapter in a new espionage battleground: web applications. Sharing content on social media, posting your morning run, or looking for love online has become a latent risk for militaries around the world.
David Kushner first met Anthony Curcio nearly two decades ago, to tell the story of how Curcio masterminded a $400,000 bank robbery and escaped on an inner tube. His latest on Curcio is every bit as outlandish: After his release from federal prison, Curcio waded deep into the trading card industry, dealing in top-rated Michael Jordan and Nolan Ryan cards and coming under scrutiny for suspected fraud. Curcio contends that the real villain is Collectors Holdings, a private company that owns Professional Sports Authenticator, which evaluates and assigns value to trading cards. A thrilling piece of reporting about authenticity—as an idea, a value, and maybe even a front.
Three months later, on the early morning of May 23, 2024, Curcio was walking through his neighborhood in Redmond. It was quiet — what he called “raccoon hours.” Then he heard cars coming up behind him. FBI agents stormed him, guns drawn; he counted around 20. “What the fuck is this about?” he said. “You’re here for sports cards?” He told them about the judgment he’d just won against Captain Ticket. They said they knew all about it.
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