When the Justice Department’s new fraud chief gathered top prosecutors from across the South last month to announce “record fraud enforcement actions,” each official trumpeted a recent case that showed how the new effort was unfolding.
The division is under pressure to show quick results, but it has struggled to recruit prosecutors and has been slowed by an internal turf war that has caused some promising investigations to languish. Meanwhile, some of the victories the division has claimed predate its work. Prosecutors have sought support for a criminal settlement that would require Accenture Federal Services to pay tens of millions of dollars in restitution to resolve a probe focused on a former employee who allegedly misled federal officials about its cloud-computing services’ cybersecurity controls.
The Justice Department’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division, an initiative established by President Trump and touted by Vice President JD Vance, aims to address the $500 billion in federal funds lost to fraud every year. Because leaders of the old unit worried they wouldn’t receive recognition for enforcement actions in which they did all the work, according to people familiar with the matter, the rift hurt some longstanding investigations.
After the older unit’s leader reclaimed some prosecutors, he told some of his lawyers that he had “won” the fight, the people said. White House officials have recently been dissatisfied with the volume of criminal cases McDonald has produced, believing he spent too much time building the new division and that he should be producing more cases and arrests, people familiar with their thinking said. A White House spokeswoman said McDonald “is delivering with unprecedented speed on the president’s promise to root out fraud and hold fraudsters accountable. A spokesman for McDonald’s fraud division said it is “expanding fast, securing more resources and here to stay—relentlessly hunting every fraudster who steals from the American people. One case relegated to the slow lane involves a unit of the global consulting firm Accenture, some of the people said.
There is bipartisan agreement that fraud against the government is a problem—and a worthwhile focus for the Justice Department. But some prosecutors internally have been wary of joining the new fraud division out of concern its mandate is partisan. Vance has called for an investigation into Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and suggested that he and other Democrats are unwilling to address fraud in social-services programs. A spokeswoman for the U.S.
Because one remaining defendant will be sentenced in August, attorney’s Office in Oxford, Miss., said the case was chosen.
“Even where earlier enforcement actions existed, this administration drove the enforcement actions further,” the spokeswoman said.
Because it is unclear which fraud group would get credit for the case, the people said, but a legal resolution with Accenture hasn’t advanced. The former employee pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to face trial next year.
