Trade Fraud Task Force Publishes Enforcement Resource Guide: A New Compliance Benchmark for Customs and Trade Law

Last week, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) issued a Press Release to announce that the Trade Fraud Task Force (“TFTF”), a joint initiative with the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), had surpassed $1 billion in civil and criminal recoveries, penalties, forfeitures, and publicly charged losses in its first 11 months of operation. In the release, Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division emphasized that trade fraud is a serious problem and that DOJ was committed to aggressively pursuing violators through criminal prosecution and civil False Claims Act (“FCA”) enforcement. Underscoring DOJ’s commitment to this effort, AAG McDonald also announced that the newly-formed Global Trade & Commerce Enforcement Section (“GTCES”) within the National Fraud Enforcement Division would lead this effort.

While the $1 billion recovery figure¹ has attracted headlines, the more consequential development may well be DOJ’s parallel announcement and publication of A Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement (the “Guide”). Almost 15 years ago, the DOJ and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) announced similar guidance with respect to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). The FCPA Resource Guide revolutionized anticorruption compliance, as it became, in effect, the government-endorsed benchmark against which companies built their anti-corruption compliance programs.

The newly-released Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement looks to be DOJ’s attempt to elevate trade compliance, by codifying the conduct, controls, and self-disclosure factors the government will use to assess corporate culpability in the trade space. As discussed in our February 2026 Legal Update, DOJ has been signaling for months that it no longer views customs and trade compliance as a narrow matter of administrative filings, but rather considers it a frontline economic and national security priority backed by institutional investment. The Guide is the latest and clearest roadmap to DOJ’s approach.

A New Compliance Touchstone: Lessons from the FCPA Resource Guide

In November 2012, DOJ and the SEC published A Resource Guide to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, later updated in a second edition in 2020. That guide was the first comprehensive, government-issued articulation of how DOJ and the SEC actually enforce the FCPA, by defining who and what the statute covers, cataloguing proper and improper payments, and, critically, describing the “hallmarks of an effective compliance program” and the voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation factors that inform charging decisions. Over the following decade, the FCPA Guide became the de facto reference point for anti-corruption compliance: compliance officers built risk assessments, due diligence protocols, training curricula, and internal reporting channels directly around its guidance, and DOJ’s own Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs and Corporate Enforcement Policy grew out of that same framework.

The new Trade Fraud Guide follows a similar template. Like its FCPA predecessor, it is a joint government work product, a partnership of DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement, Criminal, Civil, and Environment and Natural Resources Divisions, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, DHS, ICE/HSI, and CBP. The Guide is intended to be read by companies, counsel, Customs brokers and other compliance professionals—not just prosecutors. Its opening chapter on “Duties of Candor” and corporate oversight, which signals that DOJ will scrutinize whether a control failure reflects negligence, reckless disregard, willful blindness, or intentional criminality, functions much like the FCPA Guide’s “hallmarks of an effective compliance program” chapter: it gives companies a government-endorsed checklist against which their own trade compliance programs are likely to be measured in future investigations, settlement negotiations, and declination decisions.

If the Guide follows the FCPA Guide’s trajectory, we expect it to become a standard reference that courts, prosecutors, and defense counsel cite when assessing the adequacy of a company’s customs and trade compliance program. The Guide may elevate trade compliance from a back-office customs-brokerage function to a board-level enterprise risk, just as the FCPA Guide did for anti-corruption compliance. Companies that have not yet mapped their compliance programs against the Guide’s five chapters should treat this as a priority workstream.

The Guide: Summary and Takeaways

The Guide is notable for its breadth and for explicitly linking enforcement theories to recent, named resolutions. The Guide tells the trade community exactly what conduct the TFTF considers actionable and how they intend to pursue it. Below, we highlight the points for each of the Guide’s five chapters we believe are most useful for businesses and their counsel in assessing compliance exposure.

Introduction and Duties of Candor

The Guide frames trade fraud as a “multi-faceted threat” encompassing fiscal harm, public-safety risks, and forced-labor/human-dignity violations. It emphasizes that “candor” is the touchstone of the customs system and that corporate oversight obligations extend throughout the supply chain. Notably, where companies fail to implement effective controls, DOJ will closely examine whether the failure was a result of negligence, reckless disregard, willful blindness to signs of fraud, or intentional criminality to determine legal exposure.

Takeaway: For businesses, the practical message is stark: the Guide states that “the era when a company can claim ignorance of its upstream partners’ activities is over” and directs companies to actively audit supply chains, verify partner representations, and build a culture of compliance from the logistics manager to the boardroom. The Guide also confirms that CBP is deploying an expanded administrative toolkit under a June 2026 executive order, including bond-based liquidated damages claims, restricted in-bond utilization, increased audits, and maximum penalties for noncompliant brokers. Businesses should expect to see these measures used more aggressively.

The Customs Entry Process

This chapter provides an overview of importers of record, customs brokers, CBP data requirements, post-entry activity, and external revenue authorities (Section 301, Section 232, safeguard tariffs, and AD/CVD duties). It highlights the key fields of Form 7501: HTS number, country of origin, entered value, and tariffs and duties. While CPB primarily oversees the import of goods, specific commodities are distributed across a network of partner government agencies, including the FDA, EPA, CPSC, USDA, USFWS, and NHTSA.

Takeaway: For importers that rely on a customs broker to prepare filings, the Guide is a reminder that the importer of record cannot “contract away” its ultimate responsibility for the truthfulness of an entry; courts have held that reliance on a broker does not relieve the importer of its own obligation to exercise reasonable care.

Anti-Fraud Enforcement Provisions

This chapter provides a detailed review of the government’s enforcement toolkit: CBP’s administrative authority under 19 U.S.C. §§ 1592 and 1595a(b); the civil FCA (including treble damages, qui tam mechanisms, and the “reverse false claims” theory for evaded duties); criminal customs fraud statutes (18 U.S.C. §§ 541, 542, 545, 548, 550, 551), with Section 545 characterized as DOJ’s “most expansive tool” (carrying up to 20 years’ imprisonment); money laundering; RICO; health and safety offenses; and federal securities law implications for public-company importers.

Takeaway: For businesses, the Guide makes clear that exposure is not confined to the importer of record: conspiracy and aiding-and-abetting theories under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 and 371 can reach anyone who “willfully causes” a violation, and RICO conspiracy charges may reach high-level executives who never personally committed the underlying fraud but agreed to further the scheme. Public-company importers face an added layer of exposure, as the Guide flags books-and-records, internal-controls, and disclosure obligations under the federal securities laws as an independent basis for liability.

Forced Labor Enforcement

The Guide notes that pursuant to Section 307 of the Tariff Act (Withhold Release Orders and Findings), the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (“UFLPA”), the FLETF and UFLPA Entity List, CBP has the authority to refuse admission of goods into the United States that are produced in whole or part with forced labor. It also explains that importers attempting to do so may become subject to criminal peonage-related penalties. There are 12 high-priority sectors that are the subject of forced labor investigations (including apparel, polysilicon, aluminum, seafood, and lithium-ion batteries).

Takeaway: Businesses should note that criminal peonage exposure under Title 18 extends beyond the importer to any down-chain distributor or retailer who knowingly benefits financially from forced labor.

Common Trade Fraud Typologies

Chapter five has an extensive catalog of enforcement theories with illustrative case examples, including manifest fraud, false country-of-origin declarations, false HTS classification, undervaluation, AD/CVD evasion, shell company fraud, customs broker fraud, drawback fraud, free trade agreement fraud, port shopping, forged certifications, failure to report defects, false declaration of regulated commodities, illegal timber/wildlife laundering under the Lacey Act, and importing adulterated drugs/devices.

Takeaway: Several of the Guide’s examples illustrate how seemingly mundane documentation failures can result in significant exposure: a Miami importer’s use of a genuine invoice for payment alongside a falsified, undervalued invoice for CBP resulted in a guilty plea and more than $1.9 million in evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on imported truck tires; an automaker’s subsidiary paid more than $1.6 billion after submitting falsified emissions data to obtain EPA Certificates of Conformity for diesel engines; and in one enforcement action, CBP seized more than 1,000 pounds of a banned pet treat that had been manifested as men’s sweaters. Businesses should treat these examples as reminders that even facially minor discrepancies between what is shipped and what is declared can carry outsized civil or criminal consequences.

Imposing Liability on Bad Actors Across the Entire Supply Chain

A common myth in the trade space is that the importer of record is the only entity that can be sanctioned. That was never true, but the Guide makes clear that DOJ will seek to impose liability on any person or entity that that buys, sells, imports, or transports products if they know that the goods will be or have been entered into the United States “contrary to law.”

Takeaway: The Guide’s focus on the entire supply chain builds on its recent prosecution in Boise Cascade. In that case, the DOJ secured a guilty plea from a corporation that played no role in the import process, but that knew or was reckless in not knowing that the wood products it purchased had been entered illegally. While that case was brought pursuant to the Lacey Act, the Guide makes clear that the same result could obtain under the smuggling statute (18 U.S.C. § 545), explaining: “Section 545 is not limited to the initial importer; it criminalizes conduct anywhere in the supply chain so long as the actor meets the knowledge requirement.”

Next Steps

Businesses involved in the global supply chain should treat the Guide as DOJ and DHS’s equivalent of the FCPA Resource Guide for trade compliance—a public benchmark against which their own programs are likely to be measured. Although the headline $1 billion recovery figure is overstated, the pace of new investigations, indictments, and settlements confirms that DOJ and DHS are devoting significant, sustained resources to trade fraud enforcement, consistent with the trajectory DOJ senior counsel Cody Herche described in his February 2026 remarks. Businesses should:

• Benchmark compliance programs against the Guide. Just as companies mapped anti-corruption programs against the FCPA Guide, companies should assess whether their customs compliance programs address the Guide’s core themes (candor, corporate oversight, and control failures attributable to negligence, reckless disregard, willful blindness, or intentional criminality) before DOJ or a whistleblower does it for them.
• Expect parallel criminal and civil exposure. The Perfectus matter illustrates that companies and individuals face cumulative liability across criminal restitution, civil FCA treble damages, CBP administrative penalties, and forfeiture. This exposure can dwarf the underlying duties evaded by orders of magnitude.
• Audit supply chains and import documentation now. The Guide puts companies on notice regarding the full range of conduct that the government treats as actionable. Importers, distributors, and customs brokers should review country-of-origin determinations, HTS classifications, valuation methodologies, AD/CVD exposure, and forced-labor compliance across their supply chains.
• Anticipate whistleblower and qui tam risk. The FCA’s qui tam mechanism continues to be a primary driver of trade fraud enforcement. In the Perfectus matter, relators will receive approximately $96 million (17.5% of the $549.5 million settlement). Competitors, trade associations, and former employees are active filers. Companies should assume that non-compliant conduct will be reported.
• Consider voluntary self-disclosure. DOJ has repeatedly emphasized that companies that self-disclose customs violations may receive more favorable treatment. Given the Task Force’s stated appetite for criminal prosecution and the escalating penalty environment, companies that identify potential violations should consult counsel regarding whether voluntary disclosure may be appropriate.

Given the Guide’s emphasis on both administrative and civil trade remedies and criminal exposure, navigating this new enforcement landscape effectively increasingly calls for coordinated counsel from both outside trade counsel and white collar defense counsel. This Legal Update reflects Mayer Brown’s collaborative approach, drawing on the combined insight of our International Trade and White Collar Defense & Compliance team, who regularly partner on matter spanning customs enforcement, FCA investigations, and parallel criminal and civil proceedings. Companies evaluating their exposure under the Guide should consider engaging experts in both areas early, particularly where a potential control failure may implicate both regulatory and criminal risk.

¹ More than half of this figure is attributable to a single settlement stemming from a decade-old qui tam matter against Perfectus Aluminum Inc. We explained this in our May Legal Update.