Trade Fraud Now Has Its Own Prosecutors
The Justice Department has stood up a section dedicated to import and trade crime, and the DOJ–DHS task force passed $1 billion in recoveries and charged losses in under a year. Country of origin is where most of these cases start.
On July 14, 2026 the Justice Department announced the creation of the Global Trade & Commerce Enforcement Section (GTCES) inside its National Fraud Enforcement Division — a group of prosecutors whose job is criminal import and trade fraud. The same announcement reported that the DOJ–DHS Trade Fraud Task Force, launched in August 2025, had passed US$1 billion in civil and criminal recoveries, penalties, forfeitures and publicly charged losses in less than a year. DOJ and DHS also published a joint Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement.
The department described the shift plainly: customs violations used to be treated as "a mere surcharge or cost of doing business." They are now being charged as economic crimes.
Where these cases actually come from
Announced the same day, two Chicago prosecutions show the pattern. One importer of gold jewelry was charged with declaring 563 entries as made in Singapore when the goods came from India and the UAE — roughly US$693 million of merchandise and about US$38 million in avoided duty. A second was charged over 242 entries declared as Oman or Singapore, about US$13.6 million avoided. Neither case turned on an exotic legal theory. Both were about the country-of-origin field.
The larger settlements follow the same logic: US$549.5 million from Perfectus Aluminum for evading antidumping and countervailing duties on aluminum extrusions, US$54.4 million from Ceratizit USA on tungsten carbide from China, and US$365 million from a carmaker that fitted temporary rear seats so cargo vans would enter as passenger vehicles at 2.5% instead of 25%.
Stated enforcement priorities are evasion of Section 301 tariffs and AD/CVD, forced labor in supply chains, and imported goods that threaten health and safety. Separately, CBP assessed more than US$2.1 billion in commercial trade penalties this fiscal year and debarred 35 parties from federal business.
Three things worth knowing even if you are confident about your own filings
1. Liability does not stop at the importer. The task force's mandate expressly covers importers, customs brokers, downstream distributors, and industrial and commercial end-users — anyone who knowingly profits from merchandise imported contrary to law. DOJ put it this way: the port of entry is only the starting point. A case can be brought in any district the goods moved from, through or into, including the district that feels the impact.
2. "Knowingly" is a lower bar than most people assume. Under the False Claims Act it covers not only actual knowledge but deliberate ignorance, willful blindness and reckless disregard. "We never asked the supplier how it was declared" is closer to the theory of liability than to a defense. In the Boise Cascade matter the company pleaded guilty and paid US$6.3 million on a willful-blindness theory about illegally imported birch plywood.
3. Competitors and employees can file the case themselves. The False Claims Act lets private parties sue on the government's behalf — qui tam — under seal, and keep a share of what the government recovers. Unpaid duty is a "reverse false claim," squarely inside the statute. The practical effect is that someone who knows what your paperwork says has a financial reason to report it.
What to check, and the way back if something is wrong
Three fields generate almost all of these cases: country of origin, classification, and declared value. If your goods route through a third country before reaching the United States, origin is decided by where the goods were produced or substantially transformed — not by where they were shipped from, and not by what the invoice says.
If you find a problem, the route back is voluntary self-disclosure rather than silence. DOJ's own guide points to a case resolved for US$6.8 million after importers disclosed unpaid duties themselves — a very different outcome from being found.
We do not file your entries, and we do not decide your classification or origin — that sits with you and your customs broker. What we can give you is the record on our side: entry numbers, dates, arrival and delivery documents for the containers we moved, pulled together so you or your counsel can check a period properly instead of guessing. Ask us for it.
Related: the customs enforcement executive order behind much of this is covered in our pieces on CBP voiding importer of record numbers and tighter rules for foreign importers of record.