George Hall, 55, died while serving a 10-year sentence for assaulting another inmate with a dangerous weapon, according to a news release from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Hall arrived at the outside of Florence on Aug. 6, prison officials said.

Prison employees found Hall unresponsive and started life-saving measures shortly after noon Monday, according to the release. Paramedics later pronounced Hall dead.

Officials did not specify in the release where Hall was found or announce his cause of death. No employees or other inmates were injured, prison officials said.

Hall was of attacking another inmate from behind with a weapon constructed from a sock and a metal combination lock, . At the time of that attack, Hall was serving a 25-year sentence for the 1993 attempted murder of a U.S. Postal Service worker in Florida, federal prosecutors said.

The penitentiary where Hall died is separate from , a supermax prison in the same federal complex.

Lucy Nelson, 43, asked U.S. District Court Judge Nina Wang to dismiss the federal charges against her because of selective prosecution — claiming she is facing up to 20 years in federal prison not because of the scope of her alleged crimes, but because federal prosecutors are abusing their power to punish her for her political beliefs.

Nelson is accused of vandalizing a Loveland Tesla dealership on three occasions in early 2025 by spray-painting graffiti on the building, including the phrase “Nazi cars,” and by throwing Molotov cocktails at empty vehicles parked at the dealership.

She was arrested Feb. 24, 2025, when she visited the dealership with a container of gasoline and wicks that were similar to the material used in the prior incidents, authorities said at the time. Loveland police used Flock surveillance cameras to tie Nelson to the crimes, according to court records.

Nelson was charged with 10 felonies in state court, and then was also indicted on federal charges — two counts of possessing illegal destructive devices and a single count of attempted arson. The attempted arson charge carries a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum 20-year term.

Both the state and federal cases are pending.

Nelson’s attorneys early on sought a plea agreement in the federal case, but were informed that Colorado prosecutors had been ordered by higher-ups in the Department of Justice to reject “offers on these Tesla cases,” according to the motion.

Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado said they could not dismiss any count that carried a mandatory minimum sentence — but the same office dismissed such counts for other defendants in contemporaneous arson cases that did not have political ties, Nelson noted in her motion.

Tesla is owned by Elon Musk, who was a strong Trump ally and drew controversy around the time of the vandalism for making a motion that appeared like a Nazi salute after the president’s January 2025 inauguration.

Amid a wave of vandalism and protests against Tesla and Musk, Trump labeled vandalism at Tesla dealerships “domestic political terrorism,” and White House staff blamed “radical Leftist activists” for the crimes, according to Nelson’s motion. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to come after anyone who vandalized Tesla property with severe consequences, saying federal prosecutors and would not negotiate on the cases.

“Through these direct admissions, Executive Branch officials expressly revealed the administration’s intent to federally prosecute Tesla vandalism for a constitutionally impermissible reason — i.e., to punish these specific defendants for targeting a political ally and supporting a disfavored political cause,” Nelson’s federal public defenders wrote in the motion filed Friday.

The U.S. Constitution protects people from being prosecuted because of their political affiliations, viewpoints and beliefs, the attorneys wrote. They noted Colorado federal prosecutors in December dismissed arson charges against a man who used explosives to break into two ATMs in metro Denver — causing at least $100,000 in damages — as part of a deal in which the man pleaded guilty to bank robbery. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

In March, federal prosecutors dismissed arson charges against a man who filled a cooler with gasoline, strapped explosives to the cooler and lit it on fire at Fort Lewis College in Durango, starting a blaze that caused more than $200,000 in damages. The man pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered destructive device, court records show.

Nelson’s attorneys noted that Nelson has no prior criminal history, that the Molotov cocktails did not cause “any actual damage” at the Tesla dealership and that no one was hurt or physically threatened by the vandalism. The dealership estimated that the vandalism collectively caused between $5,000 and $20,000 in damages. Nelson’s defense attorneys also noted that she continues to face felony charges in state court.

“Only in these Tesla-related cases has the administration publicly claimed that the attempted property damage of a private business constitutes ‘domestic terrorism,'” Nelson’s attorneys wrote. “And only in these cases has the administration expressed an intent to seek the 20-year statutory maximum sentence upon conviction. Other than political animus, there is no other plausible explanation for why the administration would treat Ms. Nelson so differently, and so much more harshly, than other individuals who engaged in far more serious crimes.”

Melissa Brandon, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, declined to comment Thursday.

Nelson had been scheduled to go to trial on the federal charges in October, but Wang canceled that setting in order to have time to address Nelson’s motion.

Lopez and his running mate, lieutenant governor hopeful Taralyn Romero, submitted 11,948 valid signatures, surpassing the state’s requirement of 1,000 from each of Colorado’s eight congressional districts. Lopez, who will be listed as unaffiliated, can now join Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser and Republican newcomer Victor Marx on the general election ballot in November.

Lopez spokeswoman Anna Garza said Lopez intends to carry his campaign through November.

“This campaign is giving voters an independent choice grounded in People Over Politics, Do No Harm, and Do What Works,” Lopes said in a statement. “We look forward to debating the issues, presenting practical solutions, and earning the trust and support of Coloradans across the state.”

A former mayor of Parker, Lopez’s independent run is the latest turn in his decades-long quest to serve in higher office in Colorado. He’d twice mounted unsuccessful GOP primary campaigns for governor before this election cycle. He also ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 but dropped out.

After then-U.S. Rep. Ken Buck resigned in 2024, Lopez won a special election to represent the 4th Congressional District for six months ahead of that year’s general election.

He also served as the Colorado director of the Small Business Administration and later paid a $15,000 settlement after he was accused of trying to “improperly influence actions of the SBA in violation of federal law,”

This year, Lopez initially filed to run for governor as a Republican, then announced that he’d left the party and would run as an unaffiliated candidate instead. The ballot will also include some third-party candidates.

Lopez’s candidacy will likely further complicate the narrow path to victory for Marx, the first-time political candidate who won the GOP nomination earlier this month. He’s struggled initially to pull together the disparate wings of the party.

Lopez was not popular enough among Colorado Republicans to win the party’s gubernatorial nomination when he ran in 2018 or 2022. But he still earned more than 292,000 votes in the later contest. Given Colorado’s decidedly blue hue, Marx will need every conservative and unaffiliated vote he can get if he hopes to pull off a seismic upset against Weiser in November.

In a statement Tuesday, Marx spokeswoman Rachael Flick said the candidate “isn’t (focused) on other campaigns” or “internal party politics.”

“Our campaign is focused on building the broadest possible coalition of Republicans, unaffiliated voters, and anyone who believes Colorado can do better,” she wrote.

The race also echoes the 2010 gubernatorial contest, when former Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo mounted a third-party bid against Republican nominee Dan Maes and Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper, then the Denver mayor.

, with Tancredo pulling in more than 36% of the vote. Maes finished a distant and dismal third, with just over 11%.

Manuel went after the dog in their Colorado Springs neighborhood. A stranger ran with him, trying to help, and when they reached the startled animal, the dog bit the stranger.

Law enforcement showed up. Manuel was given a court hearing for the dog bite.

The case was later dismissed. But when Manuel left the courthouse in September, he said two cars followed him. The 23-year-old stopped for gas and was quickly surrounded by federal agents from .

The undocumented immigrant, who had come with his parents from Mexico when he was 3 years old and had never been in trouble with the law before the dog bite, was detained in the state’s only immigration facility in Aurora for the next two months.

“It was not very pleasant,” he said. He spoke on condition that he only be identified by his middle name to speak candidly about his experiences with the federal government. “I’ve never been in trouble before. It really takes a toll on you mentally.”

As federal authorities pursue President Donald Trump’s goal of arresting and deporting millions of immigrants without legal status, they moved last summer to block longtime U.S. residents from requesting bail in immigration cases, and they have kept others, who would have been released under previous administrations, detained indefinitely.

Caught in that cycle, Manuel was only released after his attorneys filed — and a judge granted — a habeas petition in federal court.

Once a technically complicated legal rarity used to challenge improper incarcerations, habeas corpus petitions have become the predominant avenue for immigrants seeking release from detentions that increasingly end only with a deportation order.

With bail sharply curtailed and other avenues of release all but closed off, Colorado has seen an explosion of habeas cases: In the first 100 days of 2026, more than 370 detained immigrants have asked federal judges to either grant them bail hearings denied by ICE, or to release them altogether. The surge is an unprecedented increase from 2025’s total of 104 and 2024’s total of a bare dozen.

In his first 19 years as a lawyer, Denver immigration attorney Hans Meyer said he’d filed six habeas cases. In the past six months, his firm filed 60. When ICE first moved to withhold bail from a broad swath of detainees last summer, few people in detention were aware that filing habeas petitions was an option.

“The first three months, very few people understood the issue,” Meyer said. “For the next three months, people might know it was an option, but didn’t know much more. But now people in detention always go to habeas first.”

So significant is the crush that attorneys from the , which oversees ICE, have stepped in to help federal prosecutors deal with the cases. The highest-ranking federal prosecutor in the state, U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly, has also personally handled some of the petitions. It’s the only time this century that a U.S. attorney has made personal appearances on such cases, The Denver Post found.

The declined to comment for this story. Jeffrey Colwell, the clerk for the , confirmed The Post’s case data.

“It does put a significant burden on our judges and chambers,” he said. “It’s 300-plus cases that we haven’t historically seen.”

In an unsigned statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it abides by court orders and was unsurprised by the habeas surge, claiming “no lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States.”

Peering inside the ‘deportation machine’

Habeas petitions have been a part of American law since the nation’s founding, and they’ve been used in immigration proceedings in past years, too.

They’re used generally to challenge someone’s detention or incarceration, though not necessarily the underlying case that led to that confinement. Immigrants who are released or given bail hearings through habeas cases are still subject to deportation proceedings — like Manuel, whose immigration case remains underway.

But these petitions offer an avenue out of detention, and their prominence is surging, particularly as — which fall under the authority of the federal government — bend to the Trump administration’s goals.

The assumption that immigration courts can resolve detention questions “no longer holds,” the . Instead, immigration lawyers are taking their arguments out of immigration hearings and into federal court, where appointed judges can’t be removed on a whim. Indeed, they’ve shown a “striking willingness to intervene” in detention cases, the association wrote.

Because habeas cases are complicated — but the need for them is now enormous — immigration attorneys have also worked to train more lawyers on how to file them. Laura Lunn, of the , said she’s hosting a “massive training” at the end of April with the to bring non-immigration lawyers up to speed on writing and filing habeas petitions.

For this story, The Post reviewed scores of habeas petitions and hundreds of pages of court filings, along with publicly available arrest and court data detailing ICE practices. If the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is a “deportation machine,” as Meyer describes it, then the habeas petitions provide a glimpse into that machine’s inner workings. The filings describe both how immigrants end up in detention as well as the efforts that Trump officials have undertaken to keep them detained.

One man was arrested at an Ace Hardware. A Colombian father was arrested in Lakewood the same day he and his wife were set to close on a house. Several said they were arrested after they showed up for routine immigration check-ins at ICE offices in Colorado. A man from Guinea arrived at his case worker’s office to have his ankle monitor removed and found ICE agents waiting for him instead.

One man showed up for work at the , where he was directed to wait for a new ID badge in a side room, his lawyers later alleged. ICE agents came instead.

Upending nearly three decades of federal law, Manuel and many of those who’ve filed habeas petitions were denied bail during their detention proceedings. That about-face is the primary cause of the habeas crush: Since the mid-1990s, federal immigration authorities and the court system that oversees them would release immigrants who had no criminal record and were arrested within America’s interior.

Under the Trump administration, however, ICE and the courts have moved to keep those immigrants in custody, denying them bail under a separate federal law previously reserved for people arrested at the border.

The that ICE is now employing to block many immigrants from bail also requires mandatory detention — which attorneys argue is the point. Detention centers are like prisons, and 65% of immigrants arrested in Colorado over the past year have never been convicted of a crime. They’re likely not used to facilities like the one in Aurora, where the lights stay on at all times and the food, Manuel said, is often soggy or inedible.

Without access to bail, many detainees choose to leave: Aurora has seen a jump in deportation orders in the past year, including an unprecedented surge in immigrants asking for immediate removal.

Surging cases tied to size of Aurora facility

The increase in Colorado habeas filings is also partially driven by the size of the Aurora detention center, which can hold more than 1,500 people at any one time. It’s one of the largest facilities in the United States and attracts arrestees from across the country — meaning more people seeking release.

Attorneys for a Maryland man said he was arrested after ICE checked license plates in his neighborhood and discovered he had a “derogatory immigration history.” A teenager in New York, brought to the U.S. as a minor, was arrested after he got into a fender-bender in a snowstorm. Several men were arrested during traffic stops in Florida. All eventually were brought to the detention center in Aurora.

The filings detail myriad other ways the Trump administration has sought to keep immigrants detained.

When bail is granted, ICE appeals, prolonging detention for 90 more days. Some people with years-old removal orders have been re-arrested. For years, deportations could be indefinitely delayed if an immigrant successfully argued that they’d be tortured or persecuted if they were returned home. They would often be released and told to check in regularly with federal authorities.

Now, however, ICE will hold those individuals — who are often religious or political minorities, or members of the LGBTQ+ community — while they try to find another country to send them.

The Post reviewed more than a dozen habeas petitions filed in recent months by those immigrants detained in Colorado. Several detainees were transgender and feared they would be harmed or killed if they were returned home. One gay man from a country in North Africa was nearly deported to Cameroon, , before his habeas petition was granted.

If another country won’t take the detainees, then they languish in detention.

For those cases, as well as for detainees seeking bail, “habeas is the only way that most folks are getting out of detention, and more folks are being both arrested and held in detention than ever before,” said Shira Hereld, an attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.

Indeed, immigration arrests in Colorado surged nearly 300% during Trump’s first year in office. The Aurora detention center has also flexed to its maximum capacity, and by the end of 2025, the facility regularly housed more than 1,400 people at a time.

Federal judges push back

As the flood of habeas petitions washed into federal courtrooms in Denver, judges have repeatedly rejected ICE’s effort to rewrite federal law and have ordered bail hearings or the immediate release of immigrants. They’ve also ordered the release of some people held indefinitely while ICE searches for a country to take them.

Of the more than 100 habeas petitions that have already been closed this year, a federal judge rejected only one, The Post found, while a few dozen more were duplicates or were dismissed voluntarily.

One attorney wrote to a Colorado judge that ICE’s position has been rejected more than 1,500 times nationwide. In their petitions, some attorneys have taken to listing the individual habeas cases that the Trump administration has lost, a tally that stretches over multiple pages.

In its unsigned statement, the Homeland Security Department said it was “applying the law as written. If an immigration judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”

In January, U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote that “the court has concluded, many times over,” that ICE’s interpretation was incorrect. In March, U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez granted another petition and wrote that she was “once more (joining) the chorus of courts in this district and around the nation that have overwhelmingly rejected (ICE’s) position.”

“Sometimes it is difficult to arrive at conclusions or resolve issues, due, perhaps, to an issue’s complexity, or the lack of guidance available to help resolve it,” U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney wrote in another case from January. “Neither circumstance is present here.”

Still, the lower-court rulings have not shifted ICE’s posture, and immigrants arrested in Colorado are still routinely denied bail.

A class-action lawsuit challenging the practice, filed by Meyer, the Denver immigration lawyer, and the , earned an initial favorable ruling but is now awaiting a higher court’s intervention. A judge in California struck down ICE’s new bail policy in December, but that ruling has also been held up as a higher court considers it. Another federal appeals court has backed the policy.

The regional rulings point to a prolonged legal battle.

“This is an alley knife fight,” Meyer said. “It’s going to play out circuit court by circuit court, and then end up at the Supreme Court.”

Until the Supreme Court weighs in, “we’re all running around like chickens with our heads cut off every day,” Lunn said, “because the law changes every day depending on which court rules. And we’re having to bring individual challenges for each and every client when the fundamental issue is these massive policies that impact everybody across the country.”

‘A dream that ended up becoming a nightmare’

In the meantime, the number of habeas cases filed in Colorado will only grow. For people like Javier Campos, it offers the only way out.

In July, ICE agents pulled Campos over in Aurora and arrested him. He spent nearly 100 days in the Aurora detention center before he was released last fall. He lost weight because the food was inedible, he said in an interview. He struggled with Bell’s palsy, a neurological condition that causes paralysis in facial muscles.

Through a translator, Campos described his experience in the immigration system as “disgraceful.” A citizen of Mexico, he’d been in the U.S. for 30 years. He worked in the construction industry. He had a wife, and four children who were U.S. citizens. In another time, detention would have been unlikely, and bail a given.

He was initially granted bail in August — $10,000, a sum far higher than what was typical in previous years, immigration lawyers said. Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security immediately appealed, blocking Campos’ release for three more months. That prompted the habeas filing.

He was finally released shortly before Thanksgiving, but his immigration case continues.

“A lot of the people would just give up their rights and leave because it gets really difficult to not have money to pay for an attorney,” Campos said. “A lot of people would just give up and leave and be deported. It was very sad seeing the things that went on there because a lot of guys came here for a dream that ended up becoming a nightmare — such a bad nightmare that it would cause stress and nightmares we couldn’t wake up from.”

Jean Torres-Ramon, 22, and Newman Castillo Delgado, 23, pleaded guilty to robbery and brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, federal officials said Thursday.

Torres-Ramon and Delgado are two of at least seven suspects facing charges in the June 2024 jewelry store at 5108 W. 38th Ave. in Denver’s West Highland neighborhood.

The group is accused of entering the store, aiming guns at employees, beating employees with weapons and stealing nearly $4 million in gold and jewelry, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

An indictment in a different federal case alleges the robbery was approved by Tren de Aragua leaders to enrich the gang.

Torres-Ramon was sentenced to 235 months, or nearly 20 years in prison, and Castillo Delgado was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Both men must pay $3.9 million in court-ordered restitution.

Attorneys for the men could not immediately be reached for comment.

Five other suspects in the robbery, Oswaldo Lozada-Solis, Jesus Daniel Lara Del Toro, Derek Alexander Dun-Vargas, Briley Ballera-Farias and Edwuimar Nazareth Colina-Romero, still have open federal cases, according to court records.

, an Englewood-based firm that manufactures and sells medical devices used for pain management and rehabilitation, entered into an agreement Tuesday with the U.S. Department of Justice to avoid prosecution.

The company, as part of the deal, agreed to pay between $5 million and $12.5 million in penalties — the final tally will depend on its earnings and profit during the settlement period — and will forfeit millions of dollars in unpaid claims.

Zynex admitted to participating in a conspiracy to commit health care fraud, securities fraud, mail fraud and other violations, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island announced in a .

The agreement comes a month after a federal grand jury indicted two former top Zynex executives who allegedly spearheaded the years-long scheme.

Zynex, in its deal with the government, also admitted to collecting more than $873 million for its products, including more than $600 million for supplies, “the vast majority of which were the result of fraud,” investigators said.

Have you used Zynex for medical devices? We want to talk to you.

The company acknowledged that it shipped and billed for medically unnecessary supplies in excess quantities and misled investors who were unaware of the fraudulent billing practices.

Zynex agreed to implement enhanced compliance and corporate governance reforms "designed to prevent future misconduct," the DOJ said, and will cooperate with the government's ongoing investigations.

“This resolution addresses the seriousness of the fraud committed by Zynex while recognizing the substantial turnaround in conduct implemented under new management,” U.S. Attorney Charles C. Calenda said in the news release.

The company, in a subsequent , said the resolution "represents the fulfillment of the commitments we made as a new management team when we arrived in August 2025: to break from the past, rebuild the company as compliant-by-design and create a new future for the company, its customers and employees."

Zynex leaders say they have completely overhauled their billing and supply replenishment practices, and enacted new marketing policies to ensure the company remains compliant with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The appointment fills an empty spot on the seven-member court left by the departure of Justice Melissa Hart, who retired Jan. 5 after taking a months-long personal leave that began in late October.

Blanco, , has served as a district court judge for nine years. A graduate of Colorado State University, the University of Colorado and Duke Law School, Blanco previously worked as a criminal defense attorney and as an attorney representing children in dependency and neglect proceedings — work that was “deeply meaningful” and allowed her to see firsthand the impact of court decisions, she wrote in her application.

“I step into this role humbled by the weight of the responsibility and inspired by the promise of our democracy,” Blanco said during a news conference Tuesday. “The law is not an abstraction. It is the shield that protects the vulnerable, the guardrails that restrain power, and the enduring promise that justice does not depend on who you are, where you come from or what resources you have.”

Polis cited Blanco’s “strong track record of innovation” as one of the traits that set her apart from other applicants for the job.

“I was looking for somebody who would be a strong operator, somebody who showed an interest, yes, of course, in the judicial work of writing decisions and making decisions, but went above and beyond that,” Polis told reporters.

Blanco has, for the last half-decade, served as the chief judge for Larimer and Jackson counties, where she co-founded a special competency court designed to support defendants who are mentally ill or mentally disabled.

The daughter of Iranian immigrants, Blanco wrote in her application that the courts’ handling of her parents’ divorce and custody case when she was a child still impacts her approach on the bench.

“Ultimately, the court awarded my father all marital assets while granting my mother custody. My childhood was split between scarcity during the week and privilege on weekends,” she wrote. “This decision shaped my identity as a jurist, deepening my respect for the law and the courts’ power to shape lives.”

Chief Justice Monica Márquez welcomed Blanco to the court on Tuesday, noting that the justices had a “big pile of work” ready for her.

Newly appointed justices serve two-year terms before going before voters for retention and an additional 10 years on the bench. The Colorado Supreme Court issues roughly 60 to 100 opinions annually, and in most situations, the justices have the discretion to choose whether or not to take up a case.

The nominating committee also put forward two other finalists: Andrea Wang, a deputy solicitor general at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office who largely handles water law, and Christopher Zenisek, a longtime district court judge in Jefferson and Gilpin counties.

“We are taking names, we are making lists,” Crow said in an interview.

Crow, who represents an Aurora-centered district in Congress, said he had still not received any information from the Department of Justice or the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. He learned through news reports Tuesday night that a grand jury had rejected federal prosecutors’ attempt to charge him and his colleagues over a video the lawmakers released to U.S. troops last year.

In the November video, the Democrats — all of whom served in the military or intelligence services — told military members to follow existing protocol and not obey commands that would violate the law.

It’s unclear what charges prosecutors sought to bring against the lawmakers. Crow said he was “appalled” when he saw the news reports, and he and three of the other lawmakers targeted in the probe accused the Trump administration Wednesday of weaponizing the Justice Department against the president’s political enemies.

“But that is the moment that we are in,” Crow told The Denver Post. “And I think every American is starting to see that, and the tide is turning.”

He said he wasn’t aware of any similar attempts to indict members of Congress for political speech.

The Justice Department had opened an investigation into the lawmakers’ comments, and Crow said he was contacted by the FBI and the department late last year for an interview. He has not been interviewed.

After the video’s release, President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition that was “punishable by death,” and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth censured Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot and astronaut, for his role in the video. Hegseth has also sought to demote Kelly from his retired rank of captain.

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On Wednesday, Crow’s lawyer sent a letter to Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., instructing her to preserve records from the investigation into the lawmakers. The attorney, Abbe David Lowell, also warned Pirro that “further attempts to pursue these baseless allegations would be actionable.”

“The baseless and absurd allegations by Donald Trump, followed by your carrying out of the president’s political retribution campaign, has already gone too far and are evidence of yet another abuse of power directed to those who dare speak out and criticize this Administration,” Lowell wrote.

Pirro’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday afternoon.

that a dance photographer, who worked for Pirro when she was a county prosecutor in the 1990s, was one of the federal prosecutors who’d sought to secure the indictment. He joined the office after a mass exodus of staff, according to Bloomberg.

At a news conference earlier Wednesday, Crow and the three other participating lawmakers — U.S. Reps. Chrissy Houlahan and Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire — declined to say what next steps they planned to take or on what timeline.

“Actually, that’s a ball that’s in the Trump administration’s court,” Crow said. “We’ve been very clear about that position, and it needs to stop. If it doesn’t stop, then we’ll take all necessary options.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The indictments allege that Ashley Marie Stevens and Wesam Yassin separately participated in the transportation program and fraudulently collected seven-figure payouts — more than $3.3 million for Yassin alone, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado. The two drivers, who ran separate companies, allegedly fabricated rides for appointments that didn’t exist. Stevens is accused of billing for rides for her husband while he was incarcerated, and Yassin allegedly billed $165,000 for driving a patient who was dead.

Both Stevens, of Mesa County, and Yassin, of Douglas County, were charged with multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering and health care fraud for their participation in the driving service.

The program pays drivers to ferry Medicaid patients to and from doctor’s appointments, but it became a haven for fraud in 2022 and 2023, after state officials increased the service’s reimbursement rates. State officials told The Denver Post last month that an estimated $25 million was lost in the broader fraud.

Yassin’s indictment was still sealed Tuesday evening. In a statement, federal officials alleged that Yassin billed Medicaid for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of rides that never occurred between March 2022 and October 2023. She raked in $283,000 from rides for just one patient, most of which was paid to Yassin after the patient had already died.

Yassin allegedly used the proceeds to buy a home and furnishings, along with luxury vehicles, jewelry and cosmetic surgery. She was released on bond earlier this week, according to court records.

Stevens billed the state for more than $1 million between July 2022 and February 2023, according to the indictment. More than $400,000 came from rides she provided to herself or to her family members, for which there were “very few” actual medical appointments, federal authorities allege.

The trips included rides for her husband, who was incarcerated during some of the time when Stevens claimed she was driving him to the doctor. Another $150,000 was billed for rides that either never took place or were for trips that didn’t involve Medicaid services.

She was also paid more than $450,000 for rides that were at least 400 miles long, authorities allege. From east to west, Colorado is roughly 380 miles wide. Stevens allegedly used the proceeds from the scheme for travel and to buy a luxury car.

Stevens was already in Mesa County jail when she was indicted in December, according to court records. She remains in custody.

Yassin and Stevens are the first drivers to face any criminal repercussions for allegedly bilking the program. The fraud was in its heyday in 2023, state officials previously told The Post: A rash of new drivers entered the program then, shortly after the state increased the rate paid to transportation companies. Unscrupulous drivers, who were paid on a per member, per mile basis, allegedly packed their cars with patients and drove them across the state.

Some targeted homeless people in Pueblo and Colorado Springs, driving them to methadone clinics in metro Denver. Some patients were bribed with cash or drugs, state officials have said. Kim Bimestefer, the executive director of the state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, told lawmakers last month that the fraud scheme was “international.”

A federal grand jury in Rhode Island indicted Thomas Sandgaard, 67, a Castle Rock resident, and Anna Lucsok, 39, a Denver resident, with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, securities fraud and mail fraud, among other violations, the U.S. Attorney’s Office .

The pair served as the chief executive officer and chief operating officer of Englewood-based Zynex Inc., respectively, a company that manufactures and sells medical devices used for pain management and rehabilitation.

From 2017 through 2025, Sandgaard and Lucsok “orchestrated a scheme to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars from government and private health care payors and patients, and to defraud investors in Zynex by concealing that the company’s billings and revenues were driven by fraud,” according to the indictment.

The Colorado executives collected more than $873 million for its products, including more than $600 million for supplies, investigators said. The company shipped patients excessive volumes of devices each month, using these fraudulent billings to artificially inflate the company’s financial reporting and its stock price, the government alleged.

When financial journalists began asking questions about Zynex’s business practices, Sandgaard hired someone to disrupt the reporters’ lives, the indictment states. These efforts included signing up reporters for therapy sessions and stating that they suffered from erectile dysfunction, and sending female underwear to a reporter’s spouse with a thank-you card.

Zynex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December. The company listed more than $45 million in assets and more than $86 million in total debts.

The company, in a statement Thursday, said the board of directors removed Sandgaard as director and chair of the board following the indictment and has worked with the Department of Justice and other regulators on the resolution of ongoing investigations.

Over the past six months, Zynex has executed a “complete overhaul of its leadership, compliance program, billing practices and operational controls,” said John Bibb, the company’s chief legal officer. “Under entirely new leadership, we have delivered on our commitment to the highest integrity in our business practices and implemented rigorous compliance oversight.”

Sandgaard, a dual citizen of the United States and Denmark, previously owned the southeast London football club Charlton Athletic. He also owns a professional hockey team in Denmark, according to his .

Lucsok is a dual citizen of the United States and Ukraine, according to prosecutors.