Overview
- The Justice Department and DHS said on July 14 that the Trade Fraud Task Force has surpassed $1 billion in recoveries, penalties, forfeitures and publicly charged losses and that DOJ is standing up a new Global Trade & Commerce Enforcement Section to pursue criminal cases.
- Roughly half of the $1 billion tally came from a roughly $549.5 million settlement with Perfectus Aluminum while the task force says about $150 million of the total is tied to pending matters rather than closed recoveries.
- Federal prosecutors announced criminal charges in two Chicago-area gold import cases that together involved about $933 million in imports and alleged avoided duties of roughly $51.6 million.
- Officials described the move as a deliberate shift away from handling many import violations with administrative fines toward using criminal tools to target tariff evasion, false country-of-origin claims, misclassification, forced-labor links and unsafe imported goods, and they held the announcement at a CBP inspection hub near O'Hare to underline Chicago's enforcement role.
- The new posture raises compliance stakes for companies that import goods because self-reporting, stronger audits, whistleblower tips and tougher prosecutions can lead to larger penalties or criminal charges and higher costs for firms with complex global supply chains.