Source: United States Department of Justice
Remarks as prepared for delivery.
Good afternoon and thank you to Global Competition Review for convening this conference and bringing together such an experienced cross-section of the global cartels bar.
Today, I want to cover three topics: First, where criminal antitrust enforcement in the United States stands right now — what is constant and what is evolving. Second, why our Procurement Collusion Strike Force model continues to produce results. Third, our new Antitrust Whistleblower Rewards Program, what it changes, and what it does not change.
In the past year, I have served in three different roles: Director of the Procurement Collusion Strike Force, Acting Director of Criminal Enforcement, and now, the acting Criminal DAAG. That means my responsibilities spanned criminal antitrust enforcement across all markets in the United States — public and private; procurement and commercial; local, national, and global.
Different markets, same rule: competitors must compete. When they secretly agree not to, that is not sharp business practice. That is a crime. That is fraud on the market. And in the procurement space, that is fraud on the public. That is not a new concept,[1] and ATR’s resources and enforcement energy reflect our longstanding commitment to that fundamental premise. Because these crimes are serious, and their impact ripples out beyond the direct purchasers. Indeed, during a recent sentencing, a judge referred to these offenses as “thievery” that steals from the American dream and distorts competition.[2]
In terms of activity, ATR’s workload statistics show a program that is active and investigation-focused. In FY 2025, the Antitrust Division initiated nearly 100 criminal investigations. Of our current open matters, 54% involve private markets and 46% are part of the PCSF. We filed 24% more criminal cases in FY2025 compared to the year prior.
Amidst that significant uptick in charged cases, ATR’s emphasis on individual accountability is as strong as ever. When we are going up against the world’s wealthiest and most powerful corporations, we know even a statutory maximum criminal fine can seem like the cost of doing business. And we also know that price fixing doesn’t only happen as a corporate act — antitrust crimes are designed and carried out by executives who make deliberate choices, often motivated by greed or disregard for the free-market system at the core of our democratic institutions.
Bid rigging is not a crime of passion; price fixing is not done in hot blood. These are calculated decisions by sophisticated people: “years of decisions that [steal] from the American people, from our economy.”[3] People sit in conference rooms and fix prices. People send collusive bid signals. People agree to divide customers. And people can be moved by incentives.
General deterrence only works if the people making those decisions understand the personal consequences. General deterrence is not achieved through press releases. It is not achieved through compliance slide decks. It is achieved when market participants understand that cartel conduct can lead to prison. Fines matter. Corporate penalties matter. Restitution matters. But prison changes behavior, both for the individual sentenced and for the industry watching.[4]
So, we are laser focused on individual accountability, including seeking significant prison sentences. And courts are increasingly agreeing with our view. In Fiscal Year 2025, the total number of prison days imposed in Antitrust Division criminal cases increased by more than 1,200 percent compared to the prior year.
That is not a rounding error. That is not statistical noise. That is a signal. It reflects a pipeline of cases where courts imposed real custodial sentences. The Antitrust Division sought those sentences because the conduct warranted them, and because the idea that defendants in ATR’s cases deserve preferential treatment at sentencing is anathema to our justice system. As one sentencing judge recently put it, “when I get a white-collar defendant…they expect better, more lenient treatment than the blue-collar defendants…. One of the goals [of criminal justice] is to create respect for the law, and to not only treat white-collar criminals the same, but also to treat blue-collar defendants the same.”[5]
We agree. For defense counsel, the practical takeaway is straightforward: if your client is an individual with exposure in a cartel case, prison is not just a theoretical risk. It is central to the Antitrust Division’s deterrence model. When you’re thinking about how to advise corporate clients on how to calibrate their antitrust risk tolerance, be aware that what’s on the line isn’t just a fine — it’s their executives’ liberty.
The risks and consequences of detection are no less severe when it comes to procurement collusion and cartel offenses, thanks in large part to the work of the Procurement Collusion Strike Force. The PCSF was built on a simple operational insight: procurement systems are vulnerable to collusion, but that collusion is highly detectable when the right people know what to look for. Procurement collusion remains a priority because the harm is direct and visible. It is not some esoteric crime where the only victim is “the system.” It is a real crime with real victims — the taxpayers — who are being robbed by colluding contractors.
The PCSF is not just an Antitrust Division project. It is an interagency partnership — including U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the FBI, and multiple federal Inspectors General — organized to deter, detect, investigate, and prosecute collusion and related schemes that target procurement, grants, and program funding at all levels of government. And it is producing measurable results.
Since its founding, the PCSF has[6]:
- Trained more than 46,000 agents and procurement officials;
- Opened more than 195 investigations;
- Obtained more than 75 guilty pleas and trial convictions; and
- Secured more than $70 million in fines and restitution.
These numbers reflect a pipeline: training leads to detection; detection leads to investigations; investigations lead to charges; charges lead to convictions; and convictions lead to prison time.
Procurement collusion cases are especially likely to produce individual charges and custodial sentences. Why? Because we know how to put together the evidence and have trained countless agents and procurement officials to spot bid rigging, price fixing, and frauds that target the public purse. Even when competitors attempt to conceal their crime, they cannot help but leave behind a paper trail of bids, communications, pricing patterns, and contracting records. And increasingly, judges and juries recognize the real victims of these crimes: the taxpayers, whose money is being stolen.
The throughline is consistent: when collusion targets public funds, the investigative partnerships are broader and the cases tend to move faster, because the detection network is wider. When you combine ATR’s emphasis on individual accountability with the PCSF model, you get something defense counsel should take seriously.
As strong as ATR’s recent results have been, we also seek to avoid complacency at all costs. To channel Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson, we’re not just striving to be good at what we do. We’re striving to be the best at what we do.[7] To that end, we’ve readily embraced new tools and new programs to enhance our abilities to detect and prosecute antitrust cartels. Most significantly, in July 2025, the Antitrust Division announced a first-of-its-kind program, through which whistleblowers who report tips, leads, and other information that results in a criminal monetary recovery of more than $1 million can receive a monetary reward.[8]
We are already seeing a surge in whistleblower submissions. The program has brought in a substantial number of credible tips that the Antitrust Division’s prosecutors are working quickly to assess and build toward chargeable cases. The program is creating exactly what we intended: a new pipeline of leads from individuals with firsthand knowledge of criminal antitrust conduct that often occurs in secret. ATR is prioritizing moving these as quickly as possible, recognizing the difficult position whistleblowers are in and the need to move these expeditiously to resolution.
Just a short six months after the program’s inception, we announced the first-ever whistleblower reward, a $1 million payment to an individual whistleblower whose information led to criminal antitrust charges pertaining to a scheme involving bid rigging and “shill bidding” in online used-vehicle auctions — conduct that affected used-car prices nationwide.[9]
Three aspects of that announcement are worth emphasizing for this audience. First, it is proof of concept that the program’s eligibility rules are designed to create real incentives. Whistleblowers who voluntarily report original information that results in criminal recoveries of at least $1 million are eligible for an award in the presumptive award range from 15% to 30% of the amount collected. Second, the announcement also highlighted the breadth of the Antitrust Whistleblower Rewards Program and the requirement that to be eligible for a reward, the crime must be one affecting the postal service. Here, that was as simple as sending car titles through the mail. Thus, it implicates every industry, even in 2026.
The USPS is the only part of the federal government that reaches every single home in America six days a week. That means that many things can “affect” the USPS, from rigging bids to USPS to sending price-fixed prices or products through the mail to sending or receiving invoices or payments through the mail. Thus, our partners in the program, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the USPS Office of Inspector General, are instrumental in this effort. These agencies are currently working active investigations across the broad spectrum of the U.S. economy, including healthcare, food supply, road building, infrastructure, construction supplies, automotive equipment and supplies, mail delivery, chemicals, and office and school supplies.
Third, the announcement made clear that because of the interplay between leniency and the Whistleblower Rewards Program, the race is faster now. I know that many in this room asked when we first announced the Whistleblower Program, “What about leniency?” Historically, the corporate leniency policy has been the Antitrust Division’s most-powerful detection tool and most-compelling incentive. The premise of leniency, since its modern inception in 1993, is straightforward: first-in-the-door reporting by a company involved in a cartel. The primary race was company versus company, who gets to leniency first.
That fundamental premise has not changed. Leniency remains reserved for the first corporation to self-report and meet the program’s requirements, preserving the powerful incentive for prompt voluntary disclosure. Moreover, corporations retain significant advantages under leniency, including protection from criminal conviction for the company and its cooperating employees, reduced collateral consequences, and greater certainty in resolution.
What has changed is that thanks to our new Whistleblower Rewards Program, there is another lane in leniency race: insider versus company. The race is now faster. Employees, former employees, consultants, and market participants have a financial incentive to report early with original information. That compresses timelines. For companies and counsel, slow internal deliberation is now riskier than it used to be. Delay can cost leniency opportunities. If a company learns of cartel conduct and treats it as a slow-moving internal matter — weeks of deliberation, months of committee process — it is taking a risk that its own employees will make the first report. And if an employee reports first, the company’s ability to secure the benefits of leniency can evaporate quickly.
For your clients, the best defense against whistleblower reports is to create a corporate culture where employees feel empowered to report concerns internally, where those reports are investigated promptly and thoroughly, and where companies self-report to us when they discover criminal conduct. Companies that do this can still benefit from our Leniency Policy and potentially avoid prosecution altogether.
I also heard concerns about the “trial risk” that ATR may be taking on with the Whistleblower Rewards Program. The argument goes something like this: a whistleblower who stands to gain financially from a conviction presents a biased witness who can be attacked on cross-examination and may undermine the government’s case before a jury.
Let us acknowledge reality: every cooperating witness the government calls at trial has baggage. Every single one.
Incentivized witnesses are not new in cartel cases. They never have been. Cartel cases, by their nature, are built in part on insider testimony. That has been true for decades. And the defense bar has been cross-examining cooperating witnesses about incentives for just as long. Courts allow it. Juries evaluate it. Prosecutors corroborate those witnesses with documents, data, and independent proof.
What is interesting — and I say this candidly — is that I never heard this kind of sustained criticism from the bar when it was your clients seeking leniency and taking the stand, despite incentives that were every bit as powerful. The whistleblower program does not introduce incentives into cartel testimony. Instead, it formalizes one category and makes it transparent. Transparency is manageable in litigation.
From my perspective, I will take a whistleblower who brings us documents, who can point us to where the bodies are buried, who helps us build a case with wiretaps and undercover operations and hard evidence. That whistleblower may indeed receive a monetary reward if we succeed. But they’re also putting a target on their back. They’re risking their career, their relationships, and potentially their safety by coming forward. The financial reward compensates them for taking that risk and provides an incentive to do the right thing, in the same way that the Leniency Policy was designed to create an incentive for companies to take a risk and do the right thing. The financial incentive also disrupts cartels, in the same way the Leniency Policy was designed to disrupt cartels.
When competitors agree not to compete, it’s not just a technical violation, and it isn’t a genteel crime. It is theft from the public. It undermines trust in our economy and corrupts the free-market system. The harm goes beyond the consumers or workers who are the direct victims. As a judge in Michigan recently noted, antitrust crimes “are serious offenses because they impede and prevent other companies from potentially earning the business of the consumers…. Companies that don’t get the business sometimes fold; they lose employees, and there’s a lot of loss that accompanies them not getting certain bids. And it’s not just the consumer that’s the victim, but it’s those companies.”[10]
Therefore, we will continue pursuing it with the partners, tools, and urgency it deserves. We will investigate, we will charge where the evidence supports it, and we will seek sentences that deter the next conspiracy, not just punish the last one.
Thank you.
[2]United States v. Melton et al., 4:20-CR-81 (S.D. Ga. Dec. 13, 2024), Transcript of Sentencing Hearing at 49-50.
[4] Indeed, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche recently stated that “companies do not go to jail—people do.” See Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement, “Deputy Attorney General Delivers Keynote at ACI FCPA Conference,” New York University School of Law (Dec. 17, 2025).
[5]U.S. v. Timothy Baugher, 2:24-CR-20504 (E.D. Mich. Apr. 16, 2025), Transcript of Sentencing Hearing at 27:2-9.
[10]U.S. v. Daniel L. Israel, 2:23-CR-20538 (E.D. Mich. May 22, 2025), Transcript of Sentencing Hearing at 45:14-21.