Several penalties announced recently by the Department of Justice highlight the broad scope of the federal government’s ongoing increase in trade and customs enforcement.
- A U.S. company will pay more than $10 million (and implement a compliance and ethics program) as part of a deferred prosecution agreement resolving charges that for six years it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by authorizing multiple third-party customs brokers to bribe Mexican officials at the border to ensure that its shipments successfully crossed from the U.S. into Mexico despite inspections that found dirt, soil, and other impurities in them. In total, the company authorized bribes of more than $400,000 and avoided fees and costs of more than $6.5 million.
- A New York company and its CEO have agreed to pay a total of $7.3 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by misrepresenting on customs entry forms that the country of origin of polyethylene retail carrier bags manufactured in China was Hong Kong, thereby evading applicable antidumping duties of up to 77.57 percent. The U.S. alleged that the company and the CEO concealed the bags’ true country of origin by hiding information from others, including the company’s customs broker and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, by directing employees to cover up “Made in China” markings, directing the manufacturer to remove “Made in China” markings, and directing the cancelation of orders after learning they would be inspected by customs authorities.
- A former accountant for a gold jewelry exporter in the United Arab Emirates was sentenced to ten months in federal prison for conspiring to avoid nearly $1.9 million in U.S. duties on gold jewelry shipments imported by a U.S. company. Among other things this individual created and obtained false documentation indicating that the jewelry was manufactured in Oman.
- A U.S. company was sentenced to pay a $250,000 fine, placed on probation for three years, and ordered to implement an environmental compliance plan for violating the Lacey Act by designating Chilean salmon as salmon from Scotland or other European countries. The DOJ notes that this case was prosecuted by its Energy and Natural Resources Division, which is part of the department’s Trade Fraud Task Force (see below).
In early 2025 the DOJ announced that its Criminal Division’s enforcement priorities for prosecuting corporate and white-collar crimes would include “trade and customs fraudsters, including those who commit tariff evasion.” The DOJ subsequently put teeth into that effort by launching a “revitalized” Trade Fraud Task Force, which has been taking an aggressive and comprehensive approach to its work and has surpassed $1 billion in civil and criminal recoveries, penalties, forfeitures, and publicly charged losses in less than a year. Most recently the DOJ established a new Global Trade and Commerce Enforcement Section within its National Fraud Enforcement Division, which will investigate and prosecute criminal import, trade, and other fraud offenses that undermine U.S. industries, evade external revenue collection, threaten consumers’ health and safety, finance foreign adversaries, promote forced labor through illegal trade practices, and violate U.S. laws and regulations governing domestic and foreign commerce.
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