Earlier this year, we blogged about the DOJ’s decision to prioritize tariff evasion in its white collar enforcement program.  This Sidley memo says that the DOJ has been true to its word, with enforcement initiatives demonstrating its willingness to pursue trade and tariff-evasion misconduct through the False Claims Act (FCA), wire fraud, money laundering, and smuggling statutes, as well as under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when dealing with corrupt interactions with foreign customs officials. This excerpt summarizes the DOJ’s recent enforcement activities:

Recent DOJ actions underscore an increasingly active enforcement pipeline focused on customs- and tariff-evasion schemes, including matters involving customs brokers and other intermediaries. In 2024 and 2025, notable civil and criminal trade and customs fraud cases range from a large FCA settlement with a corporation to a criminal indictment of multiple individuals and companies alleged to have used fraudulent documents, shell companies, bribes to public officials, and kickbacks to Mexican drug cartels to smuggle billions of dollars’ worth of goods from the United States into Mexico, defrauding Mexico out of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of duties owed.

The memo also notes that the DOJ has relaunched its trade fraud task force, increased whistleblower incentives, and has used its data analytics capabilities to identify potential cases.

– John Jenkins