William Chang of Crowell & Moring (Courtesy photo)

One of two federal prosecutors left in the U.S. Department of Justice's Corporate Health Care Fraud Strike Force after the group was gutted last summer, has joined Crowell & Moring's Health Care and White Collar & Regulatory Enforcement groups as a partner in Washington, D.C.

But William Chang, the new Crowell & Morning partner, pushed back against reports that the significant downsizing of the strike force represented a decreased emphasis by the DOJ on corporate health care fraud investigations. In the summer, sources told the National Law Journal, that there was a belief within the DOJ that the reduction had to do with a push by the Trump administration to shift health care fraud enforcement resources over to other priorities, including violent crime, drugs and illegal immigration.

In an interview Tuesday, Chang countered that this was not the case. In addition to posting for new hires, the strike force already has “added very terrific prosecutors with experience on the corporate [side]” and has more than one prosecutor remaining in its ranks, he said.

The DOJ “has invested a lot in the Corporate Health Care Fraud Strike Force,” Chang said.

Chang's work on the strike force, which he founded in the fall of 2015 to handle some of the most complex corporate fraud cases in the health care space, will inform his work at Crowell. There, the core of his practice, Chang said, will focus on health care fraud, including cases brought under the False Claims Act.

A seasoned litigator, Chang secured 24 criminal convictions in various complex cases during his five years as a DOJ prosecutor in Washington and Houston. One of those involved the largest “provider attendant services” (a category that includes home health care) fraud scheme in Texas history.

Chang also prosecuted a Sugar Land, Texas, woman who was sentenced to 75 years in prison for bilking Medicare—an apparent record sentence for the DOJ for health care fraud.

Chang's move to Crowell—which he described as an opportunity too good to pass up—reunites him with his former boss, Laura Cordova, who in her final year with the Justice Department led the Corporate Health Care Fraud Strike Force.

And it isn't Chang's first time in private practice. He previously was an associate at Kirkland & Ellis and an appellate lawyer at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.