DOJ’s First Healthcare Declination Under the New Corporate Enforcement Policy: Campus Eye Provides an Early Roadmap

Key Takeaways

• DOJ’s first healthcare declination under its 2026 CEP provides the clearest roadmap yet for companies seeking to avoid criminal prosecution through prompt self-disclosure, full cooperation, meaningful remediation, and victim restitution.
• Campus Eye demonstrates that DOJ may decline to prosecute a company, even in a significant healthcare fraud case involving alleged founder misconduct, while aggressively pursuing criminal charges against responsible executives.
• Healthcare providers, life sciences companies, government contractors, and other federally funded organizations should reassess their internal investigation, compliance, and voluntary disclosure protocols in light of DOJ’s first public healthcare declination of the new CEP.

In March 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced its first department-wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (“CEP”), promising a more uniform framework for criminal corporate resolutions and a clearer path to declination for companies that voluntarily self-disclose, fully cooperate, and timely and appropriately remediate misconduct.¹ On July 29, 2026, DOJ applied that framework in the healthcare space, issuing a declination to Campus Eye Management Holdings LLC and its wholly owned subsidiary, Campus Eye Management LLC, while simultaneously announcing a criminal indictment against the company’s founder, E. Bruce DiDonato.²

The Campus Eye declination carries implications beyond healthcare. Although there have been other DOJ declinations pursuant to various divisions’ earlier corporate self-disclosure programs, Campus Eye is the first healthcare company to receive a declination under DOJ’s new department-wide CEP. This resolution offers one of the earliest public examples of how DOJ will weigh self-disclosure, cooperation, remediation, restitution, and aggravating circumstances under the new policy. It also reinforces a point that companies in all sectors should now treat as settled: DOJ is prepared to decline prosecution of the corporate entity while pursuing the executives allegedly responsible for the misconduct.

This update builds on AGG’s earlier discussion of DOJ’s March 2026 policy rollout, available here.

DOJ’s First Healthcare Declination Under the Corporate Enforcement Policy

According to DOJ’s July 29 press release, the National Fraud Enforcement Division resolved a criminal healthcare fraud investigation into Campus Eye pursuant to Part I of the CEP. DOJ describes Campus Eye as a management services organization that provided billing and other services to an optometry practice and ambulatory surgery center. At the same time, DOJ announced a seven-count indictment charging Campus Eye’s founder with healthcare fraud, conspiracy, and kickback-related misconduct tied to diagnostic eye tests billed to Medicare and private insurers.

DOJ alleges that from at least 2015 through March 2023, the company’s founder orchestrated a scheme involving unnecessary eye tests and illegal kickbacks to surgeons who referred patients for those tests. According to the government, the tests were not reviewed by the founder or any optometrist, and in most instances the ophthalmologists did not review or rely on the tests before surgery. DOJ further alleges that approximately $3.4 million in fraudulent Medicare claims were submitted and that Medicare paid about $1 million on those claims.

The charges against Campus Eye’s founder make the corporate declination especially notable. The allegations involve a founder-level executive, a multi-year scheme, medically unnecessary testing, kickbacks, and claims submitted to a federal healthcare program. Yet DOJ declined prosecution of the corporate entities and instead resolved the matter under the CEP, coupled with a $1 million restitution payment to victims.

Why DOJ Declined to Prosecute Campus Eye

The Campus Eye resolution is particularly useful because DOJ expressly identifies the factors it considered in reaching a Part I CEP resolution. DOJ cited six considerations:

1. Campus Eye’s timely and voluntary self-disclosure;
2. its full and proactive cooperation, including an agreement to continue cooperating in ongoing investigations and prosecutions;
3. the nature and seriousness of the offense;
4. the company’s timely and appropriate remediation;
5. the absence of aggravating factors sufficient to warrant a disposition other than a Part I CEP resolution; and
6. the company’s agreement to compensate victims by paying $1 million in restitution.³

The remediation discussion is particularly important. DOJ credited Campus Eye with conducting an internal review and revision of its billing, payment, and compensation policies and with substantially improving its compliance program through ongoing risk assessments and monitoring, hiring personnel with compliance responsibilities, and implementing compliance trainings. That description provides a more concrete picture of what DOJ currently views as declination-level remediation in a healthcare fraud matter.

Campus Eye illustrates the CEP’s central bargain. A company that discovers potential criminal misconduct has a meaningful opportunity to avoid criminal charges if it discloses the misconduct before DOJ learns of it elsewhere, cooperates in building the case, remediates the underlying control failures, and makes victims whole. At the same time, DOJ’s parallel indictment of Campus Eye’s founder underscores that the company’s path to declination may depend on its willingness to assist the government in pursuing the responsible individuals.

What Campus Eye Reveals About DOJ’s New Corporate Enforcement Policy

Campus Eye is one of the first public tests of whether DOJ’s March 2026 policy announcement would translate into real declinations in difficult cases. It appears to answer that question in the affirmative. DOJ did not limit the CEP to lower-risk or technical misconduct; instead, it applied the policy in a serious criminal healthcare fraud matter and still declined to prosecute the company after weighing its cooperation and remediation against the facts of the case.

Just as important, Campus Eye shows that corporate and individual outcomes are no longer meaningfully tethered. The company received a declination, while the founder was indicted on felony charges arising from the same underlying conduct. For boards, audit committees, and in-house counsel, that is an operational point, not just an abstract idea: if a company wants the benefits of the CEP, it should expect DOJ to focus closely on individual culpability and should plan accordingly when structuring an internal investigation.

The resolution also refines how companies should think about aggravating factors. DOJ’s CEP identifies circumstances such as executive-level involvement, pervasive misconduct, and significant profits as potentially aggravating. However, Campus Eye shows that DOJ will make a holistic assessment rather than treating those considerations as automatic disqualifiers. The press release expressly states that DOJ found no aggravating factors that, when weighed against Campus Eye’s cooperation and remediation, warranted a disposition other than a Part I CEP resolution.

What Healthcare Companies Should Do Now

First, companies should treat credible internal allegations involving government reimbursement, kickbacks, billing manipulation, or similar misconduct as potential CEP events, not merely compliance or HR issues. The timing of self-disclosure remains critical, and the value of the CEP may disappear if the government learns of the issue from a whistleblower, a subpoena recipient, a relator, or another outside source first.

Second, companies should plan early for a separation between corporate and individual interests. Campus Eye reinforces that DOJ may reward the company while prosecuting the executive allegedly responsible, which means boards and in-house counsel should think carefully about independent oversight, separate counsel issues, privilege management, and how the company will approach factual cooperation where senior leadership is implicated.

Third, companies should expect restitution, disgorgement, or forfeiture to be part of the price of a declination. Campus Eye’s $1 million restitution obligation underscores that voluntary self-disclosure is not a no-cost option; it is a trade in which the company absorbs financial and remediation burdens in exchange for avoiding a criminal conviction.

Finally, companies should benchmark their remediation plans against what DOJ praised here: review and revision of billing, payment, and compensation policies; stronger compliance infrastructure; ongoing risk assessments and monitoring; additional compliance personnel; and training. For healthcare entities, life sciences companies, government contractors, and other organizations with substantial federal funding exposure, those are increasingly the features of a remediation package that DOJ is willing to credit in a meaningful way.

Why the Decision Matters for Healthcare Companies

Campus Eye does not rewrite DOJ corporate enforcement doctrine, but it does provide an early and practical demonstration of how the new department-wide CEP works in the real world. Even where the alleged misconduct is serious, long-running, and tied to a founder, DOJ may decline to prosecute the company if it self-discloses promptly, cooperates fully, remediates credibly, and compensates victims. For companies evaluating whether to disclose potential criminal misconduct, that is no longer a theoretical promise — it is now a public case study.

[1] Department of Justice Releases First-Ever Corporate Enforcement Policy for All Criminal Cases, U.S. Department of Justice Press Release, March 10, 2026.

[2] Fraud Division Resolves Fraud Investigation of Eye Care Group Under New Corporate Enforcement Policy; Health Care Executive Charged for Alleged Fraud and Kickbacks, U.S. Department of Justice Press Release, July 29, 2026.

[3] See U.S. Department of Justice National Fraud Enforcement Division Signed Declaration.