DOJ announces $10.6B takedown in Operation Gold Rush
By HME News Staff
Updated 8:00 AM CDT, Tue July 1, 2025
BROOKLYN, N.Y. - In the largest health care fraud case by loss amount ever charged by the U.S. Department of Justice, 11 individuals associated with a transnational criminal organization based in Russa and elsewhere have been charged with allegedly:
- Purchasing dozens of durable medical equipment (DME) companies
- Paying foreign nationals and others to serve as nominee owners
- Creating fictitious corporate records that falsely indicated that the nominee owners controlled the companies
- Once controlled by foreign-based leadership, rapidly billing billions of dollars in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare.
They did so by allegedly stealing the identities and personal identifying information of more than 1 million Americans in all 50 states, including elderly and disabled Americans.
The charges
Imam Nakhmatullaev, Svjatoslav Jakovlev, Eric Juergens, Jaan Juergens, Ilja Karunas, Juri Karunas, Jason Onoufrienko, Renek Tiku, Vladislav Turaskin, Kevin Valdhans, and Vjatseslav Zogolev were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Nakhmatullaev, Jakovlev, Eric Juergens, Jaan Juergens, Onoufrienko, Tiku, Turaskin, Valdhans, and Zogolev were also charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, and wire fraud, and Jakovlev, Valdhans, Jaan Juergens, and Onoufrienko were each charged with one count of health care fraud.
The cost
The organization submitted more than $10.6 billion in fraudulent Medicare claims for DME. HHS-OIG and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) successfully prevented the organization from receiving the vast majority of the money that it conspired to steal from Medicare. The fraudulent scheme nonetheless resulted in payments to scheme DME companies from Medicare Supplemental Insurers estimated to be nearly $900 million and Medicare payments to the scheme DME companies of approximately $41 million.
The alleged scheme – in detail
The DOJ says the organization engaged in a sophisticated money laundering scheme involving health care fraud proceeds. They exploited the U.S. financial system by using fake documentation and nominee owners—many unlawfully present in the U.S.—to open bank accounts under the names of fraudulent DME companies. These accounts received funds from Medicare and supplemental insurers, making the money appear legitimate. The organization then transferred the funds to shell companies and foreign banks in countries like China, Singapore, Pakistan, Israel and Turkey, and also used cryptocurrency to obscure the money trail.
To avoid detection and continue operations, the organization frequently changed identities, recruited new nominees and created new companies. They relied heavily on virtual private servers (VPSs) to hide their digital footprints and scale their fraud globally.
The bigger picture
The charges filed in the Eastern District of New York are part of the 2025 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, a coordinated law enforcement action across the United States led by the DOJ’s Criminal Division, Fraud Section Health Care Fraud Unit.
Another DME-related scheme part of the takedown:
Boris Manaev is charged with health care fraud and unlawful monetary transactions in connection with an $8.2 million scheme. As alleged in the indictment, Manaev, the owner of BB Medical Equipment Inc., billed Medicare $8.2 million for medically unnecessary DME that was shipped nationwide. He spent some of the proceeds of the fraud on improvements to his home. Trial Attorney Patrick J. Campbell of the Northeast Strike Force is in charge of the prosecution.
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