1. The $1 billion milestone
The Trade Fraud Task Force (TFTF) was stood up by DOJ and DHS to investigate and prosecute people and companies who defraud the government through material misrepresentations to U.S. Customs and Border Protection — transshipment, mislabeling, false country of origin, duty evasion, forced-labor supply chains, and unsafe imports.
In less than a year, DOJ says the force crossed $1 billion in combined recoveries and charged losses. Leadership framed the number as a “baseline, not a finish line,” and a pivot from treating customs violations as a cost of doing business to treating them as serious economic crime.
Resource: DOJ OPA release.
2. Flagship cases inside the total
High-impact matters DOJ highlighted include:
- Perfectus Aluminum (May 2026) — $549.5 million FCA settlement over alleged evasion of antidumping/countervailing duties on aluminum extrusions (largest trade-related FCA settlement publicly flagged in this package)
- Ceratizit USA — $54.4 million FCA settlement over alleged unpaid duties on tungsten carbide products from China
- Boise Cascade — guilty plea and ~$6.3M fine for Lacey Act / timber trafficking issues
- Chicago gold jewelry cases (July 2026) — charges against importers alleged to have falsely declared Singapore (or Oman/Singapore) origin for jewelry actually from India/UAE, avoiding multi-million-dollar duty bills on hundreds of millions in goods
Secondary analysis of the package notes that False Claims Act whistleblower (qui tam) actions make up a large share of the civil dollars.
3. New institutional muscle
Alongside the milestone, DOJ announced a dedicated Global Trade & Commerce Enforcement Section inside the National Fraud Enforcement Division, released a joint DOJ–DHS Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement for the private sector, and designated the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois as lead prosecutorial partner for the task force.
CBP separately reported more than $2.1 billion in commercial trade penalties assessed in the fiscal year and dozens of debarments — complementary to DOJ’s criminal/civil track.
4. Why trade fraud is a Scam Wire story
Trade fraud is document fraud at industrial scale: false invoices, fake origin certificates, shell importers, and duty-evasion schemes that move real money across the same rails as other white-collar crime. For banks and compliance teams, the signal is clear — tariff/duty evasion and forced-labor supply-chain risk are now full-spectrum DOJ priorities, not “just a CBP fine.”
- Know your importer / country-of-origin paperwork trail
- Watch for sudden routing through low-duty third countries (transshipment pattern)
- Whistleblowers have statutory incentives under the FCA
5. Related desk files
CF-029 fake LC issuance · CF-001 bank-instrument playbook · CF-043 Minnesota benefits / FinCEN.
Standards: Summary of public official sources. Settlements and charges are as stated by DOJ; not all defendants are convicted. Not legal advice. Tips: tip desk · About · archive.