DOJ Announces Changes to White-Collar Enforcement Priorities: What to Know and What Actions to Take Today

Below, we highlight what to know about the new White Collar Enforcement Plan and the revised Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program Policy and what actions you can take today. 

Below, we highlight what to know about the new White Collar Enforcement Plan and the revised Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program Policy and what actions you can take today.

What to Know

• The plan underscores the US government’s “America First” priorities. Foreign organizations may be at increased enforcement risk.
• The DOJ is committed to investigating and prosecuting bribery, despite the temporary Foreign Corrupt Practices Act pause.
• The DOJ will focus on sanctions violations and money laundering offenses.
• The government still expects companies to have effective corporate compliance programs.
• The expanded Whistleblower Program is expected to lead to a dramatic increase in whistleblower complaints.

What to Do

• Ensure you have an effective compliance program, including robust anti-bribery and anti-corruption controls, especially non-US companies.
• Implement a whistleblowing mechanism. Make sure your workforce knows about your hotline and that you have an appropriate procedure for investigating credible complaints.
• Minimize risks that someone in your supply chain might engage in evasive customs practices.
• Conduct robust due diligence on third parties and understand whether your business has any inadvertent connections to cartels or TCOs.
• Evaluate whether you have appropriate compliance policies and procedures implemented to actively prevent and detect human trafficking activities within your operations. This is especially important for organizations with a global workforce who may use temporary workers or employees in countries where appropriate labor and employment protocols and laws are not followed.

White Collar Enforcement Plan

Read the plan here.

As previously announced, the DOJ is focused on prosecuting cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations, dismantling human smuggling organizations, and curbing the flow of dangerous drugs. Now, in a new white collar enforcement memorandum, “Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime,” (White Collar Enforcement Plan), the DOJ emphasized that white collar crimes pose a significant threat to US interests. According to the plan, the DOJ will be “laser-focused” on the most urgent criminal threats to the United and will prioritize investigations into corporate crimes in 10 high-impact areas:

1. Waste, fraud, and abuse, including health care fraud and federal program and procurement fraud.
2. Trade and customs fraud, including tariff evasion.
3. Fraud perpetrated through variable interest entities, including, but not limited to, offering fraud, “ramp and dumps,” elder fraud, securities fraud, and other market manipulation schemes.
4. Fraud that victimizes US investors, individuals, and markets including, but not limited to, Ponzi schemes, investment fraud, elder fraud, servicemember fraud, and fraud that threatens the health and safety of consumers.
5. Conduct that threatens the country’s national security, including threats to the US financial system by gatekeepers, such as financial institutions and their insiders that commit sanctions violations or enable transactions by Cartels, TCOs, hostile nation-states, and/or foreign terrorist organizations.
6. Material support by corporations to foreign terrorist organizations, including recently designated Cartels and TCOs.
7. Complex money laundering, including Chinese Money Laundering Organizations, and other organizations involved in laundering funds used in the manufacturing of illegal drugs.
8. Violations of the Controlled Substances Act and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, including the unlawful manufacture and distribution of chemicals and equipment used to create counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl and unlawful distribution of opioids by medical professionals and companies.
9. Bribery and associated money laundering that impact US national interests, undermine US national security, harm the competitiveness of US businesses, and enrich foreign corrupt officials.
10. Crimes related to digital assets, including those (1) involving digital assets that victimize investors and consumers; (2) that use digital assets in furtherance of other criminal conduct; and (3) willful violations that facilitate significant criminal activity.

The White Collar Enforcement Plan emphasizes the impact of harms to America posed by white collar crime. The plan further notes that the DOJ Criminal Division must focus resources on threats to the US economy, American competitiveness, and US national security.

The Department’s first priority is to prosecute individual criminals. “It is individuals—whether executives, officers, or employees of companies—who commit these crimes, often at the expense of shareholders, workers, and American investors and consumers. The Criminal Division will investigate these individual wrongdoers relentlessly to hold them accountable.” The plan instructs prosecutors to prioritize schemes involving senior-level personnel. 

Finally, the White Collar Enforcement Plan stresses that not all corporate misconduct warrants federal criminal prosecution. The effectiveness of a corporate compliance program will continue to be an important factor in determining how the DOJ resolves cases. 

Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program Policy

Read the program policy here.

In August 2024, the DOJ launched its Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program. According to the DOJ, the three-year program is intended to fill gaps in existing federal whistleblower programs.

The original pilot program sought whistleblower information related to four subject areas, including violations by financial institutes and abuse of the financial system not covered by other whistleblower programs, foreign corruption schemes, domestic corruption schemes, and heath care offenses not covered by the False Claims Act.

Pursuant to the program, whistleblowers may be eligible for a monetary award when they provide original, truthful information about criminal misconduct relating to one or more designated program areas that leads to forfeiture exceeding $1,000,000 in net proceeds and the whistleblowers meet the other requirements of the program.

The revisions to the Pilot Program expand the covered program areas to also include:

1. Fraud against, or the deception of, the United States in connection with federally funded contracting or federal programs.
2. Trade, tariff, and customs fraud.
3. Federal immigration law.
4. Sanctions offenses, material support of terrorism, or cartels and transnational criminal organizations including money laundering, narcotics, Controlled Substances Act, and other violations.

The revised version now encompasses health care offenses and related crimes involving both private and public health care benefit programs.