DOJ Declines Prosecution of Eye Care Group Under Corporate Enforcement Policy, Indicts CEO

The Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division declined to prosecute Campus Eye Management Holdings LLC and its subsidiary Campus Eye Management LLC for health care fraud, kickbacks, and conspiracy under Part I of the department’s corporate enforcement policy, according to a July 29 announcement from the Office of Public Affairs. The department separately unsealed a seven-count indictment against the company’s founder and chief executive, E. Bruce DiDonato, 71, of Princeton, New Jersey.

Campus Eye, a management services organization that provided billing and other services to an optometry practice and an ambulatory surgery center, agreed to pay $1 million in restitution to victims as part of the resolution. The department said the company voluntarily self-disclosed the misconduct, fully cooperated with investigators, and timely and appropriately remediated the wrongdoing.

The declination is one of the earliest publicly announced applications of the department-wide corporate enforcement framework rolled out earlier this year. The Justice Department released its first-ever department-wide corporate enforcement policy for criminal matters on March 10, 2026, consolidating what had previously been a Criminal Division policy into a uniform standard across the department.

What the Declination Covers

The department declined to prosecute Campus Eye for health care fraud, illegal kickbacks and bribes, and conspiracy. The resolution reflects the terms set out in Part I of the Criminal Division’s corporate enforcement policy, which offers a path to declination for companies that voluntarily self-disclose criminal misconduct, fully cooperate with the ensuing investigation, and remediate the conduct within a reasonable time.

“The fraud division is committed to robust and fair corporate enforcement, which aids our prosecutions of individuals who defraud the government,” Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division said in the announcement. “The department’s policies afford companies that take responsibility for their misconduct with a clear path to a declination. Businesses that ignore the law and profit from their executive’s lies and deceit will be held accountable.”

The $1 million payment is characterized in the department’s announcement as restitution to victims, not a penalty.

The Charges Against the Founder

The indictment charges DiDonato with orchestrating diagnostic testing and kickback schemes both before and after he and outside investors formed Campus Eye in December 2021, when he became chief executive. According to the department’s announcement, from at least 2015 through March 2023, DiDonato allegedly conspired with others to defraud Medicare by billing for unnecessary diagnostic eye tests.

The indictment alleges that DiDonato paid kickbacks and bribes to ophthalmologists in exchange for referrals of patients who needed eye surgeries and then subjected those patients to diagnostic tests. The seven counts comprise one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute, two counts of health care fraud, and three counts of paying illegal health care kickbacks. The announcement records no plea, and the charges are allegations that the government must prove at trial.

How the Corporate Enforcement Policy Works

The corporate enforcement policy that governed the Campus Eye resolution was announced in March by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as the first department-wide framework of its kind. Blanche said the policy “creates incentives for companies to come forward and do the right thing when misconduct occurs so that we may hold accountable the individual wrongdoers.” Companies that self-disclose, cooperate, and remediate are, in the department’s framing, rewarded; those that do not face the prospect of prosecution alongside the individuals involved.

Part I, invoked in the Campus Eye resolution, is the section that governs declinations where the policy’s conditions are met. The policy sits within the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and was previously oriented toward Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters before being broadened.

The Federal-State Enforcement Backdrop

The Campus Eye announcement follows the Fraud Division’s disclosure earlier this summer of what it described as unprecedented fraud enforcement actions in the Southeast arising from federal-state partnerships. Health care billing conduct, and Medicare billing in particular, has been a recurring focus of the division’s public enforcement announcements this year.

The DiDonato case is being prosecuted by the National Fraud Enforcement Division. The department did not identify a trial date in the announcement.