CHICAGO — The Department of Justice (DOJ) has officially launched a new global trade enforcement section within its National Fraud Division. The specialized unit is tasked with investigating and prosecuting criminal import, trade, and customs fraud offenses.
The creation of this unit highlights a broader strategic shift by federal agencies away from administrative fines and toward active criminal prosecutions for import violations. The crackdown is already yielding massive financial results: since the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the Trade Fraud Task Force in August 2025, the agencies have surpassed $1 billion in civil and criminal recoveries, penalties, forfeitures, and publicly charged losses.
The newly formed unit will specifically target criminal schemes that violate U.S. product safety and anti-forced labor laws, as well as operations that misreport import values and other data to evade tariffs.
“For too long, fraud actors have viewed customs violations as a mere surcharge or cost of doing business,” Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald said in a statement. “By utilizing the Department’s full weight, we are making it clear that trade fraud is a serious economic crime.”
DOJ and DHS officials announced the unit at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection warehouse near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport—a major global import hub—surrounded by boxes of confiscated illegal drones and vaping devices.
Underscoring this new enforcement push, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois simultaneously announced criminal charges in two separate Chicago-based gold jewelry import cases. Defendants in both cases are accused of falsely declaring the country of origin to evade tariffs. According to prosecutors, the jewelry carried a combined import value of $933 million and successfully evaded $51.6 million in customs duties.
