Violation Tracker

The 2025 Corporate Rap Sheet

The regulatory enforcement system is one of the many things the second Trump Administration has thrown into chaos. The DOGE assault decimated staffing at many agencies. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been all but dismantled. Regulators such as the Environmental Protection Agency are abandoning key parts of their mission. Independent agencies are losing their independence as Trump asserts a right to fire commissioners for no good reason. The Securities and Exchange Commission is dismissing investigations initiated under Biden in a manner that suggests cronyism. Convicted corporate criminals favored by Trump are receiving unjustified pardons.

At the same time, agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, now headed by MAGA zealots, are using their powers to pressure or punish companies perceived to be enemies of the administration. The Justice Department, at the behest of Trump, is extracting substantial monetary settlements from universities facing dubious allegations that they tolerated anti-Semitism.

The news is not all bad. Portions of the federal regulatory and prosecutorial system continue to operate in a fairly normal manner. For example, False Claims Act cases involving federal contractor abuses are getting resolved on a regular basis.

Even more encouraging is the fact that state and local enforcement remain strong in much of the country, while private litigation in the form of class action lawsuits remains robust. Below are some of the key cases of the year collected for our Violation Tracker database, as well as some major foreign cases collected for Violation Tracker Global.

Amazon’s Cancellation Policies. The FTC has not been solely occupied with ideological warfare. In September the agency ordered Amazon to pay a $1 billion penalty and provide $1.5 billion in refunds to customers who had difficulty cancelling their Prime subscriptions.

Discover Bank’s Credit Card Practices. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a bank regulator not usually associated with major enforcement actions, ordered Discover Bank, now owned by Capital One, to pay a $150 million penalty and $1.2 billion in restitution to millions of merchants. Discover collected improperly high interchange fees by misclassifying consumer credit cards as commercial.

Credit Suisse and Tax Evasion. Credit Suisse, now owned by UBS, pleaded guilty, entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department for other charges, and was fined $510 million for maintaining accounts in Singapore on behalf of U.S. taxpayers who were using those accounts to evade U.S. taxes and reporting requirements.

Walgreen’s Invalid Opioid Prescriptions. In one of the year’s most significant False Claims Act cases, which also involved alleged violations of the Controlled Substances Act, Walgreens Boots Alliance reached a $300 million settlement with the DOJ to resolve allegations that it illegally filled millions of invalid prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances and then sought payment for many of those invalid prescriptions from Medicare and other federal health care programs.

Hino Motors and Emissions Cheating. The biggest environmental case of the year was announced in January while Joe Biden was still in office. Hino Motors, a subsidiary of Toyota, paid criminal and civil penalties totaling $1.6 billion to resolve federal and California state allegations that the company submitted fraudulent emissions testing data for diesel engines imported into the United States.

Kimberly-Clark and Fraudulent Testing. Kimberly-Clark paid over $40 million in fines and compensation to resolve federal allegations that it conducted fraudulent testing on surgical gowns marketed as providing the highest level of protection against fluid and viruses.

Turning now to matters handled by state attorneys general and state regulatory agencies, there were more than 30 such cases which resulted in a penalty of $50 million or more. For example:

DuPont et al. and PFAS. DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva, all of which emerged from the old E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co., together agreed to pay $2.6 billion to remedy long-standing contamination stemming from PFAS originating from four industrial sites in New Jersey.

Google and Privacy. The Texas Attorney General announced that Google would pay $1.4 billion to resolve allegations it unlawfully tracked and collected users’ private data regarding geolocation, incognito searches, and biometric data.

UnitedHealth Group and Unnecessary Insurance. HealthMarkets Inc., a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, was ordered to pay $165 million in penalties and restitution in a case in which the Massachusetts Attorney General accused the company of misleading consumers into buying unnecessary health insurance products.

As for private litigation, more than 30 class action lawsuits with settlement amounts in excess of $50 million received final court approval this year. They include:

Blue Cross Blue Shield Anti-Competitive Practices. Blue Cross Blue Shield Association agreed to pay $2.8 billion to settle litigation brought by medical providers alleging that BCBS policies prevented its members from competing against each other.

Wage-Fixing. Tyson Foods paid $115 million and Perdue Farms paid $60 million to resolve allegations that they participated in a conspiracy among poultry companies to keep wage levels low.

Apple and Privacy. Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle litigation alleging its Siri voice-activated software violated the privacy of users by eavesdropping on conversations.

The largest penalty outside the U.S. documented in Violation Tracker Global this year was the $3.4 billion fine imposed on Google by the European Commission for distorting competition in the advertising technology industry. The EC also brought large fines against Apple ($575 million) and Meta Platforms ($230 million).

Major penalties were seen in the area of privacy. The Irish Data Protection Commission fined TikTok $599 million, while the French privacy agency CNIL fined Google $378 million and e-commerce giant SHEIN Group $174 million.

The biggest environmental case outside the U.S. was a $140 million penalty against Thames Water in the UK for serious wastewater violations.

The main conclusion from all these cases is that misconduct on the part of large corporations remains pervasive around the world. In the United States, the future of regulatory enforcement at the federal level is uncertain, yet state and local regulators, along with plaintiffs’ lawyers, seek to fill the gap.

SCOTUS-Style Deregulation

In another example of how the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has become all too willing to throw out well-established law, the rightwing Justices strongly signaled they are ready to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that protects members of independent government agencies from being fired for no good reason by the president.

The case focuses on Donald Trump’s capricious removal of a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, but the eventual ruling will likely have significant consequences for many other independent bodies.

It is worth keeping in mind that many of these bodies are responsible for oversight of business activities Allowing a president like Trump to remove commission members without good cause will allow him to fill the bodies with individuals who are loyal to him and hostile to the mission of the agency. It amounts to backdoor deregulation.

Here are some of the key business regulators that would be affected.

Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is the main agency responsible for enforcing laws against financial market manipulation. Violation Tracker documents more than 3,000 cases against companies brought by the agency since 2000, with total penalties of more than $45 billion. The agency has fined JPMorgan Chase 30 times and collected over $2 billion in penalties.

Federal Trade Commission. The FTC, with responsibilities relating to consumer protection and antitrust, has collected over $18 billion from corporations. Among the biggest cases are the $5 billion penalty paid by Facebook for violating a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information; a $4 billion penalty paid by Volkswagen as part of the emissions cheating scandal; and the $2.5 billion penalty paid by Amazon for making it difficult for consumers to cancel their Prime subscriptions.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC, which regulates derivatives markets, has collected $32 billion in penalties in 830 cases against companies. The biggest cases include a $12.7 billion fraud judgement against FTX Trading Ltd. and Alameda Research and a $2.7 billion penalty against Binance Holdings.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before it was all but demolished by the Trump Administration this year, the CFPB collected nearly $18 billion in penalties against financial fraudsters. Wells Fargo paid over $4 billion in penalties in its bogus accounts scandal. Just about every other large bank was fined for a variety of harms perpetrated against their customers.

Others include the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board.

Donald Trump has not waited for a green light from the Supreme Court to initiate his attack on these regulatory agencies. Unlike traditional pro-business conservatives, Trump is not interested in simply weakening these bodies to benefit corporations. He is also weaponizing some of them to carry out his ideological agenda.

Ardent MAGA loyalists appointed to head bodies such as the FTC and the Federal Communications Commission are using their authority to put pressure on Trump’s foes and promote Trump’s pet issues. A ruling by the Supreme Court affirming the president’s absolute control over the agencies will serve to legitimize Trump’s hijacking of the bodies.

In arguing the administration’s case before the Court, Solicitor General claimed that giving the president absolute control over the agencies will make them “more accountable.”

The truth, of course, is the exact opposite. The conversion of independent agencies into pawns of a ruthless president will derail their public interest mission, much to the delight of rogue corporations everywhere.

Can Federal Corporate Investments Be Used for Good?

Donald Trump takes pleasure in getting institutions of all kinds to bend to his will. That includes major corporations. In a move that contradicts the usual deference the public sector in the U.S. shows to big business, Trump has forced a group of large companies to allow the federal government to acquire significant ownership stakes.

These investments are being justified in the name of national security. The Administration is expected to use its holdings to influence the operating and financial decisions of the companies, which operate in areas such as rare earth minerals, semiconductors, steel, and nuclear energy.

It remains to be seen exactly what that influence looks like, but the willingness of Trump to press the private sector to serve his idea of the national interest raises the question of whether he could also get the companies to better serve the public interest.

The companies in the federal portfolio includes some with a significant record of misconduct. Take U.S. Steel, which received approval to be acquired by Japan’s Nippon Steel only after the parties agreed to grant the administration a so-called golden share, giving it extensive power over the company’s policies.

As shown in Violation Tracker, U.S. Steel has racked up over $300 million in fines and settlements since 2000, including $250 million for environmental offenses and $80 million for competition-related offenses. The biggest portions of these came from a 2020 settlement with the Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Health Department regarding air pollution violations and a 2014 class action suit regarding steel price-fixing.

Or take Intel, which Trump pressured to sell a 10 percent stake to the administration for about $9 billion. Intel has paid out about $112 million in penalties, most of which came from a 2015 settlement of private litigation alleging it conspired with other tech companies not to hire each other’s employees, thus suppressing salary levels. The company also paid $5 million to settle a suit accusing it of denying overtime pay and failing to provide meal and rest breaks.

Then there is Westinghouse Electric, which was pressed to enter into a partnership with the administration to build new nuclear power plants. In exchange for arranging financing and assisting with permits, the federal government would eventually receive a share of profits and would obtain a significant equity stake if Westinghouse, which is now majority-owned by Brookfield Corporation, is spun off.

Westinghouse Electric has received more than $5 million in penalties, including cases involving unfair labor practices, environmental offenses, workplace safety violations, and nuclear safety infractions.

The willingness of Trump to pressure corporations on decisions relating to investment raises the question of whether he would also use his leverage to address these types of misconduct. That is probably unlikely when it comes to environmental offenses, given his tendency to demonize the EPA. But what about practices such as wage theft and workplace safety deficiencies? Trump, after all, likes to portray himself as pro-worker.

There might also be some appeal in attacking price-fixing if it helps Trump given the impression he is addressing the affordability crisis. He has already made noises about cracking down on price-fixing in the beef industry.

Whatever Trump ends up doing, any steps he takes to use federal investments to change corporate behavior would serve as a precedent that a more enlightened president could put to better use.

The Other Sins of the Big Greenhouse Gas Emitters

As the COP30 climate talks take place in Brazil, the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has just published its latest list of the corporations that contribute the most to the global warming crisis in the United States. Unfortunately, PERI warns that this version of the Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index may be its last.

That is because the Trump Administration, as part of its effort to dismiss the climate crisis as a hoax, has suspended the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. Since 2018 PERI has collected facility data reported under the program and linked it to corporate owners in preparing its rankings of the biggest emitters.

This year’s index once again finds fossil-fuel based utilities, petrochemical producers, and petroleum refiners dominating the list. PERI points out that the top three companies (see below) are responsible for nearly 4 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from all sources.

It should come as no surprise that many of the top emitters also feature prominently on the Violation Tracker (VT) database of companies that have paid the most in regulatory penalties.

Yet that is not because they have been penalized significantly for their climate sins. Even before Trump 2.0, environmental regulations in the U.S. have largely ignored greenhouse gas levels. The companies at the top of the PERI list have, instead, been fined for other environmental offenses.

Vistra Energy, which tops the PERI rankings with over 86 million metric tons of annual CO2 emissions, has a total of $525 million in environmental penalties documented in VT. Most of that comes from a Clean Air Act settlement its power generation subsidiary Dynegy signed with the U.S. Justice Department, the EPA, and the State of Illinois designed to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from power plants. PERI’s data shows that Vistra’s plants are emitting large levels of greenhouse gases in Illinois and elsewhere.

Number two on the PERI list is utility giant Southern Company, whose operations account for about 76 million metric tons of CO2 each year. Southern’s VT environmental penalty total is $207 million. Most of this comes from a settlement its subsidiary Alabama Power reached with the DOJ and the EPA also involving reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. That settlement dealt with emissions from the James H. Miller Jr. plant, which PERI shows accounts for the largest portion of Southern Company CO2 emissions, at over 16 million metric tons. That makes it one of the largest greenhouse gas sources in the country.

Third in the PERI ranking is another utility behemoth, Duke Energy, which accounts for about 73 million metric tons of CO2 emissions. Duke Energy’s VT environmental total is $2.5 billion. That figure reflects both air pollution and water pollution penalties. The latter includes a case in which three Duke subsidiaries pleaded guilty to nine criminal violations of the Clean Water Act at several of its North Carolina facilities and agreed to pay a $68 million criminal fine and spend $34 million on environmental projects and land conservation. Four of the charges were the direct result of the massive coal ash spill from the Dan River steam station.

The same pattern is seen in other top emitters on the PERI ranking, such as American Electric Power ($4.7 billion in environmental penalties) and Exxon Mobil ($2.2 billion).

Greenhouse gas pollution and “traditional” pollution go hand in hand. No amount of climate denialism or suppression of emissions data can hide the fact that the big fossil fuel companies remain a danger to the planet.

Taking Aim at Whistleblowers

Everyone in the Trump Administration seems hellbent on giving the president as much power as possible over nearly everything. Congressional Republicans are playing along.

Things are less clear in the courts, especially in the wake of the skeptical reception Trump’s tariffs just received in the Supreme Court. Yet there is a lower-profile judicial effort in the works that could further empower the executive branch at the expense of corporate accountability.

The effort concerns qui tam lawsuits filed by whistleblowers under the federal False Claims Act, which dates back to the Civil War era. The actions typically are brought by corporate insiders who expose fraudulent practices committed by government contractors in the provision of goods and services, especially healthcare.

Whistleblowers file their case on behalf of the federal government, and then one of two things will happen. The Justice Department can decide to take over the prosecution of the case, and the whistleblower receives a portion of any damages or settlement paid by the defendant. If the DOJ declines to intervene, the whistleblower can choose to pursue the lawsuit independently. Any financial recovery is then shared with Uncle Sam.

Both of those options may be in jeopardy. In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the DOJ could choose to dismiss a qui tam case even if it initially decided not to intervene in the matter. The dissenting vote was cast by Justice Clarence Thomas, who used his dissent to question the constitutionality of the entire qui tam system.

Now an appellate court judge is seeking to make that view a reality. Judge James Ho of the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a concurring opinion in a ruling that dismissed a qui tam case against Encompass Health Corp. for allegedly submitting false claims to Medicare.

Ho, appointed by Trump during his first term, urged his colleagues to revisit the constitutionality of qui tam by making the MAGA-style argument that whistleblowers should not be able to bring cases, given that they “are neither appointed by, not accountable to, the President.”

It is unclear whether Ho’s colleagues will go along with his suggestion, but it is troubling to think that other jurists will take up the call to abolish qui tam. Whistleblower lawsuits have played a major role in lawsuits exposing and punishing corporate fraud against the government and thus the public.

A substantial portion of the 3,000 False Claims Act cases we document in Violation Tracker were initiated by whistleblowers and taken over by the DOJ. When the DOJ declines to intervene, most qui tam cases collapse for lack of resources. Yet we document about two dozen that survived and which recovered substantial sums. For example, in 2023 Eli Lilly was ordered to pay $183 million in a qui tam case that accused the company of shortchanging the Medicaid program in its drug rebate calculations.

Preserving the ability of individuals to expose corporate fraud is especially important at a time like this, when the administration in power has exhibited an inclination to make prosecutorial decisions based on dubious criteria. Cases are being dropped, leniency deals are being offered, and pardons are being awarded to companies and executives with ties to the president and his family’s businesses.

If whistleblowers were to be blocked from initiating cases, more rogue corporations would go unpunished.

Banking and Genocide

Banks try to disavow responsibility for the misconduct of their clients, but that position has suffered a serious setback in a court in New York. A federal jury has just returned what is being called a landmark verdict against French banking giant BNP Paribas for complicity in the genocide committed by the regime of Omar al-Bashir in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The jury awarded $20 million in damages to three individuals, but it opened the door to further and much more costly legal action against one of the largest banks in the world on behalf of the tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees living in the United States.

BNP Paribas has been embroiled in controversy over its dealings with Sudan for the past decade. In 2015, after facing criminal charges of violating federal government economic sanctions against Sudan (as well as Iran and Cuba), the bank was sentenced to a five-year term of probation and ordered to forfeit $8.8 billion to the United States and to pay a $140 million fine.

In the new civil litigation, BNP Paribas was accused of propping up the Sudanese regime by providing letters of credit that allowed it to circumvent U.S. sanctions. Despite the bank’s previous guilty plea, its lawyers argued that there was no connection between its services and the genocide. They had the difficult task of separating admitted sanctions violations from the atrocities the sanctions were designed to stop.

The jury did not buy it, and the follow-on class actions are expected to go the same way. Bloomberg is estimating that BNP Paribas may end up paying out up to $10 billion in settlements.

BNP Paribas is not the only multinational bank that may face such costs. Among the more than 600 economic sanctions cases documented in Violation Tracker are numerous cases brought by federal and state regulators in the U.S. against other foreign banks for their activity in Sudan.

For example, in 2015 Germany’s Commerzbank agreed to forfeit $563 million, pay a $79 million fine and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department for sanctions violations in Sudan and other countries.

In 2018 France’s Societe Generale paid $420 million in a case brought by the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS).

In 2014 Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ paid $315 million to the DFS to resolve allegations of misleading regulators regarding its transactions with Sudan and other sanctioned entities.

In 2012 Britain’s Standard Chartered agreed to forfeit $227 million to the Justice Department for violations relating to Sudan and other sanctioned countries.

These banks and other financial institutions with similar penalties may not have had the same degree of involvement with Sudan as did BNP Paribas, but the fact that they were involved at all and faced criminal or civil charges would seem to make them possible targets for class action lawsuits.

The Sudan cases should serve as a reminder to major banks and other corporations that there will be a price to pay if they fail to comply with human rights norms in the pursuit of profit.

Private Litigation to the Rescue

It used to be the case that federal prosecutors and regulators were the first to bring action against a corporate abuse, and plaintiff’s lawyers followed that with a class action lawsuit designed to obtain additional relief for harmed parties.

In the new Trump era, the federal government is increasingly abdicating that role. As Public Citizen points out, the Justice Department and other agencies have dropped scores of investigations of corporate lawbreaking.

Or else the DOJ is employing leniency practices that let companies off easy. For example, federal prosecutors just notified Liberty Mutual that the company will not be charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act despite evidence that its subsidiary in India paid bribes to officials at six government-owned banks. Under the declination deal, no charges will be filed if Liberty Mutual disgorges $4.7 million in profits.

Future enforcement actions against companies are growing less and less likely as a result of deep staffing cuts at many regulatory agencies and because some of those agencies are now led by Trump allies pursuing a MAGA agenda.

The courts, especially at the appellate level, are doing little to impede this retreat from enforcement. The U.S. Supreme Court is, in effect, cheering it on.

Yet there is also good news from the courts: those plaintiff’s lawyers are not backing down. Here are some examples of their efforts:

A federal judge in New York just gave final approval to a settlement in which Mastercard agreed to pay $26 million to resolve allegations of racial and gender discrimination in its hiring practices.

A federal judge in Illinois gave final approval to a deal in which Cargill is paying $32 million to settle litigation in which it was accused of improperly sharing internal information with other turkey processors to limit price competition. In another case in the same court, a group of poultry processors agreed to pay $41 million for their anti-competitive practices.

Last month, a state jury in California awarded $314 million in damages to Android mobile device users who sued Google for transferring data from their devices without their consent for information harvesting and surveillance purposes.

DuPont became the latest chemical company to settle litigation relating to PFAS contamination when it agreed to pay $27 million to upstate New York residents whose drinking water was tainted.

General Motors agreed to pay $150 million to end a case involving the sale of vehicles with hidden engine defects that caused excessive oil consumption.

Capital One paid $425 million in a lawsuit alleging it deceptively advertised its 360 Savings accounts as high-interest products.

Phillips 66 is paying $12.5 million to resolve a lawsuit in which workers at its refineries in California claimed they were not given proper meal and rest breaks and were not compensated for time spent donning and doffing personal protective equipment.

These are but a small sample of the steady stream of class actions brought in federal and state courts on behalf of consumers, workers, and communities. Corporations and their allies have long disparaged such cases as frivolous lawsuits and have sought to limit them through so-called tort reform.

Today, nonetheless, they are increasingly the primary way in which corporate misconduct is being addressed.

Note: Violation Tracker documents more than 5,000 class action lawsuits in a dozen categories.

Debunking Debanking

There are plenty of reasons to be critical of the big banks. They hit customers with illegitimate fees. They misuse personal information. They pay meager interest on savings accounts. They do too little to help struggling mortgage holders. Some such as Wells Fargo have a history of creating bogus accounts to generate revenue. Many have been accused of manipulating foreign exchange markets, enabling tax evasion by the wealthy, and helping bring the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse in the late 2000s.

In Violation Tracker, Bank of America has by far the largest cumulative penalty total: $87 billion. JPMorgan Chase is second with $40 billion; Wells Fargo and Citigroup are also among the ten most penalized corporations.

Apparently oblivious to all this, Donald Trump recently launched a tirade against the banks that focused on a bizarre accusation: that they refuse to do business with people with right-wing political views, especially Trump himself.

In an interview with CNBC, Trump claimed that JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America had refused to accept deposits from his company after his first term as president. “The Banks discriminated against me very badly,” he moaned.

Trump’s account may very well have been fictional. If not, it conveniently ignores the idea that the banks may have shunned him because he was a bad credit risk, and for a period of time after January 6 there was a chance he would end up in prison.

Aside from his personal grievances, Trump’s comments appear to be connected to a move by his administration to address what right-wingers claim is a practice of “debanking” – denying banking services to people based on their political views. There is, of course, no evidence that banks apply an ideological litmus test to potential customers.

Instead, the debanking assault seems to be an effort to undermine rules governing transactions with individuals who might be connected to illegal activities such as money laundering and the financing of terrorist activities. As part of their due diligence, banks are supposed to consult lists of people who may be tied to such activities.

During the Obama and Biden Administrations there were also efforts to discourage banks from doing business with crooked operators in areas such as payday lending and cryptocurrencies. These efforts, known as Operation Choke Point, have come under frequent criticism from MAGA world.

The banks themselves would like to weaken their due diligence obligations. That probably explains why they chose not to scoff at Trump’s criticism. A JPMorgan spokesperson said: “We agree with President Trump that regulatory change is desperately needed.”

If anything, the regulations governing bank practices need to be more stringent. All too often, financial institutions are found to be deficient in their anti-money-laundering efforts. U.S. and foreign banks have paid out billions of dollars in fines and settlements to resolve cases brought by federal and state regulators.

Big banks have also been accused of doing business with disreputable individuals such as one very much in the news these days: the late Jeffrey Epstein. In 2023 JPMorgan Chase paid $290 million to settle a lawsuit brought by victims of Epstein who alleged that the bank turned a blind eye to indications of his sex trafficking because he was such a lucrative client.

If debanking means that financial services are denied to the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, I’m all for it.

The Real Healthcare Fraud

If you had to choose a single phrase to describe the Trump Administration’s policy positions, you might very well go with “false claims.” That includes false claims about the degree of criminality among immigrants, false claims about the way tariffs work, false claims about voter fraud, and much more. Congressional Republicans play the game too, defending their assault on Medicaid with false claims about fraud and abuse among recipients.

None of this is new, but what is surprising is the Administration stance toward another type of false claims—fraud committed by government contractors, especially those working in the healthcare sector.

The False Claims Act (FCA), which dates back to 1860s, is the primary tool used to prosecute companies that cheat Uncle Sam. Technically, they aren’t prosecuted, since the law does not provide for criminal charges. Instead, they typically face civil monetary penalties that can go as high as eight or nine figures.

Many observers assumed that the second Trump Administration would downplay FCA enforcement as part of its overall deregulatory campaign. Instead, it has been using the law in unusual ways. Earlier this year, the Justice Department began targeting grant recipients that were not adhering to Trump’s edicts on social issues such as DEI and transgender rights. DOJ also pressured universities that were supposedly failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. This turned the FCA into a weapon in the culture wars.

Now it appears that the Administration is focusing more on conventional FCA cases. Recently, the DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services announced the creation of a working group to pursue more enforcement actions against healthcare providers. Among the priority areas are: Medicare Advantage, kickbacks related to pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and defective medical equipment.

This initiative is consistent with the activity of federal prosecutors in the past few months. In collecting data for Violation Tracker, my colleagues and I have found that FCA actions account for more than three-quarters of the 147 resolved actions against corporations and non-profits announced by the DOJ since Inauguration Day.

Some of these, especially those against large corporations, are cases that were initiated under the Biden Administration. That’s true, for example, of a $59 million kickback penalty against Pfizer announced in late January.

Yet, during a period in which enforcement actions across the federal government have fallen off significantly, there has been a steady stream of FCA case announcements. Many of them involve smaller entities, but the penalties have not been insignificant. For instance, in June, the DOJ announced that NUWAY Alliance, a provider of substance abuse services, would pay over $18 million to resolve allegations it submitted fraudulent Medicaid claims.

It remains to be seen whether the Trump Administration will pursue legitimate FCA actions in a serious way. For now, it would be helpful if those politicians making baseless claims about Medicaid recipient abuse paid more attention to these cases of real healthcare fraud committed by providers. That is how taxpayer dollars are really being wasted.

The MAGA Makeover of the FCPA

The Trump Administration jumped at the opportunity to lash out at anti-deportation protesters, but for corporate criminals it continues to take a much more lenient position. In the latest in a series of steps that soften enforcement against business targets, the Justice Department just announced its new approach to prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The policy was announced by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously represented Donald Trump in the New York State hush money case in which Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Not long after taking office, Trump signed an executive order that paused all FCPA prosecutions, claiming that the law, enacted in 1977 in response to a series of foreign bribery scandals linked to Watergate, is detrimental to the competitiveness of U.S. corporations.

Blanche’s memo embraces that dubious argument by stating that FCPA cases should not put “undue burdens on American companies that operate abroad.” It also gives priority to investigations that could enhance overseas business opportunities for U.S. corporations or advance U.S. national security. This is effectively turning the FCPA, which was intended to promote honesty in business transactions, into an economic weapon against foreign competitors.

At the same time, Blanche’s policy is intended to weaken the FCPA in three ways. First, the memo directs prosecutors to give priority to cases involving transnational criminal organizations such as drug cartels. The typical FCPA case involves illegal payments by a corporate executive or agent to secure a procurement contract from a foreign government. Drug cartels do not compete for procurement contracts. Blanche’s policy seems like a way to divert resources from cases against corporations.

Second, the policy memo calls on prosecutors to “focus on cases in which individuals have engaged in criminal misconduct and not attribute nonspecific malfeasance to corporate structures.” This ignores the fact that individuals paying bribes are doing so in the interest of their employer and often with their knowledge. Blanche’s policy could enable companies to put the blame on a mid-level officials and escape consequences for both C-Suite executives and the corporation itself.

Violation Tracker documents more than 300 records dating back to 2000 in which corporations paid fines or reached settlements in FCPA cases. If Blanche’s policy had been in effect, most of those companies would have escaped punishment.

A third way in which the Blanche doctrine weakens enforcement is by directing prosecutors to take into account “collateral consequences, such as the potential disruption to lawful business and the impact on a company’s employees, throughout an investigation, not only at the resolution phase.”

This is another red herring. FCPA cases are typically brought against large companies that are easily able to deal with an investigation and the payment of penalties. The median penalty paid by companies in those cases documented in Violation Tracker is only $14 million. There were a handful of very large penalties against corporations such as Goldman Sachs, but there is no indication that the survival of those firms was put into question.

The enactment of the FCPA was a watershed moment in the campaign to promote corporate integrity. Trump’s Justice Department is both weakening its use against domestic corporations and weaponizing it against foreign companies to promote America First policies.