With the change of presidential administrations in January 2017,\u00a0it was expected that the priorities of the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) would shift away from white-collar crime enforcement and towards\u00a0immigration, violent crime, and narcotics enforcement.\u00a0 But recent data actually show a significant uptick in both prosecutions and convictions of individuals by the DOJ Criminal Division’s Fraud Section in 2018 over the previous two years.\u00a0 Moreover,\u00a0the amount of money the DOJ\u00a0recovered\u00a0from companies through Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) or Non-Prosecution Agreements (NPAs)\u00a0skyrocketed in 2018 .<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Fraud Section’s 2018 year-in-review report<\/a> shows that the\u00a0Section charged 406 individuals in 2018, a\u00a0roughly 35 percent increase over the number charged in both 2016 and 2017.\u00a0 258 individuals pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial in 2018, a 28 percent increase over 2016 and a 10 percent increase over 2017.\u00a0 While much of the increase in prosecutions is attributable to the Section’s focus on individual prosecutions related to opioids, the number of prosecutions \u00a0was up in each of the Section’s units–Health Care Fraud, Securities and Financial Fraud, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act .<\/p>\n In addition, in 2018 the DOJ entered\u00a024\u00a0DPAs or\u00a0NPAs with companies, where the Government\u00a0agrees to forego prosecution in return for\u00a0the company’s payment\u00a0of fines and\u00a0penalties.\u00a0 Monetary recoveries in 2018 totaled $8.1 billion<\/a>, a huge increase from $2.7 billion in 2017, and close to the high of $9 billion recovered in 2012.<\/p>\n Changes in presidential administrations\u00a0often\u00a0lead to predictions about\u00a0DOJ enforcement trends that turn\u00a0out to be dead wrong\u00a0.\u00a0 So far, this appears to have happened in the\u00a0corporate fraud enforcement arena.\u00a0 If anything,\u00a0the data suggest that DOJ corporate fraud enforcement has picked up rather than slowed down in the past two years.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the change of presidential administrations in January 2017,\u00a0it was expected that the priorities of the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) would shift away from white-collar crime enforcement and towards\u00a0immigration, violent crime, and narcotics enforcement.\u00a0 But recent data actually show a significant uptick in both prosecutions and convictions of individuals by the DOJ Criminal … <\/p>\n