Renat Abramov has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for conspiring to launder more than $8 million in health care fraud proceeds through a U.S. bank on behalf of a foreign-based transnational criminal organization.
Abramov worked as a relationship manager at a U.S. bank branch in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where he used his position to assist those involved in the health care fraud and money laundering scheme. Court documents state that he opened accounts for nominee owners of several medical equipment companies, which were used to deposit more than $8 million in health care fraud proceeds.
The nominee owners and their handlers transferred money deposited into those accounts to offshore accounts. Abramov also assisted nominee owners with wire transactions and provided information about the status of accounts. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in February 2026.
The underlying scheme involved a transnational criminal organization based in Russia and elsewhere. The U.S. Department of Justice said the organization orchestrated a multi-billion-dollar health care fraud and money laundering scheme targeting Medicare and private health insurance companies through fraudulent claims for durable medical equipment.
Those claims were submitted through dozens of medical equipment companies. The companies were owned on paper by nominee owners in arrangements that disguised their true beneficial ownership and control by the foreign-based organization. Many of the nominee owners were not lawfully present in the United States.
The Department of Justice described the wider matter, uncovered through Operation Gold Rush, as the largest health care fraud case it has ever prosecuted. The Abramov prosecution brings the legal consequences of the scheme directly into the banking system, with account opening, nominee ownership, wire transactions and employee assistance all forming part of the conduct described in the case.
Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division said the sentence reflected the Fraud Division's commitment to holding accountable people who use the U.S. financial system to facilitate fraud or help conceal criminal proceeds.
HHS-OIG and the FBI investigated the case, while Homeland Security Investigations New York assisted in Abramov's arrest. Assistant Chiefs Shankar Ramamurthy and Kevin Lowell, Acting Assistant Chief Sara E. Porter and Trial Attorney Leonid Sandlar of the Criminal Division's Fraud Section prosecuted the case.
The prosecution also sits within a broader federal anti-fraud enforcement framework. On April 7, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division, which is focused on investigating and prosecuting fraud against the American people.
The Department's work supports President Trump's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a whole-of-government effort chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance targeting fraud, waste and abuse within Federal benefit programs.
The Department of Justice's Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program currently comprises nine strike forces operating in federal districts across the country. Since 2007, it has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $45 billion.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is working with the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services to hold providers accountable for their involvement in health care fraud schemes.
