Customs Fraud Is Now a Criminal Case, Not a Penalty Notice: What Florida Importers Face

If your company brings goods into the United States through PortMiami, Port Everglades, or Port Tampa Bay, the government's view of a bad entry filing has changed. For most of the last two decades a misdeclared country of origin drew a penalty notice from Customs, a lawyer's letter, and a negotiated payment. That path still exists. It is no longer the only one. The Justice Department now says plainly that it treats customs violations as economic crime, and it has the numbers to back the claim.

The Trade Fraud Task Force passed $1 billion in recoveries and charged losses in under a year. The Southern District of Florida is one of its 35 masthead districts.

Key Takeaways

• The Justice Department reports its Trade Fraud Task Force passed $1 billion in recoveries and charged losses in under a year.
• Criminal customs charges run through 18 U.S.C. § 542 for false entry statements and 18 U.S.C. § 545 for smuggling, which carries a twenty-year maximum.
• Parallel civil exposure arrives under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729, with treble damages and competitor-filed whistleblower suits.
• The Southern District of Florida sits among the 35 task force masthead districts, and a Lacey Act import prosecution resolved there in April 2026.
• Liability reaches past the importer of record to customs brokers, distributors, and end users who knew goods entered contrary to law.

What the Trade Fraud Task Force Actually Announced

On July 14, 2026, the Justice Department announced that the Trade Fraud Task Force, stood up with the Department of Homeland Security in August 2025, had surpassed $1 billion in civil and criminal recoveries, penalties, forfeitures, and publicly charged losses in less than a year. The Department called the milestone a pivot from administrative fines toward criminal and civil accountability across the supply chain. That framing is the part importers should read twice.

The same announcement created a Global Trade and Commerce Enforcement Section inside the National Fraud Enforcement Division. A dedicated prosecution section is not a press release. It is headcount, a docket, and internal pressure to produce cases. The Department also published a joint resource guide setting out how it intends to charge these matters.

Where the Enforcement Risk Is Concentrated Right Now

The Department has named its priorities: evasion of Section 301 tariffs, antidumping and countervailing duties, forced labor in supply chains, and imported goods that threaten health and safety. Transshipment sits at the center of most of it. Goods manufactured in one country, routed through a second, relabeled, and entered as though the second country were the origin.

The government does not start with the factory. It starts with the entry summary, the commercial invoice, and the packing list you filed yourself. Every transshipment case is proved out of the importer's own paperwork.

The resolutions tell you what the government can prove. An aluminum extrusion matter resolved in May 2026 for $549.5 million under the False Claims Act after a Homeland Security Investigations criminal inquiry. A tungsten carbide importer paid $54 million in December 2025 over duties evaded on Chinese product. A timber company pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Florida in April 2026 to Lacey Act violations for illegally imported birch plywood on a willful blindness theory.

"Willful blindness should worry anyone who ever decided not to ask a supplier a hard question."— Aaron M. Cohen, AMC Defense Law

Two points from the July announcement change where a case can be brought and who can be charged. An offense involving an imported object may be prosecuted in any district from, through, or into which the object moves. And federal law reaches down-chain conduct involving merchandise entered contrary to law when the actor knew of the illegal entry. The port of entry is the starting point, not the boundary.

The Statutes and the Real Exposure

Two criminal statutes carry most of this. Entering merchandise by means of a false statement or invoice is charged under 18 U.S.C. § 542, a two-year maximum per count. The heavier charge is 18 U.S.C. § 545, knowingly importing merchandise contrary to law, which reaches twenty years. Counts are pleaded per entry. An importer with several hundred entries is not looking at one count.

The rest of the charging menu is familiar to any white collar defense attorney. Conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 371, including the Klein theory of defrauding the United States of duty revenue. Wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343. False statements under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 for what gets said to agents. Obstruction under 18 U.S.C. § 1519 when a mill certificate is altered after the inquiry starts.

Running alongside all of it is civil liability under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729, on a reverse false claim theory: the importer avoided an obligation to pay money to the government. Treble damages, per-claim penalties, and a qui tam bar that has learned this niche. Many of these investigations begin when a competitor files under seal. The civil customs penalty statute, 19 U.S.C. § 1592, remains available to CBP, which assessed more than $2.1 billion in trade penalties this fiscal year.

Counts are pleaded per entry. That arithmetic is why a routine origin question and a federal indictment can describe the same shipments.

The same pattern shows up in adjacent import cases. Our analysis of federal counterfeit trafficking prosecutions covers the parallel charging theory when the goods themselves are the problem rather than the duty rate.

The Mistakes That Turn a Customs Problem Into an Indictment

Treating an HSI visit as a compliance meeting. Homeland Security Investigations special agents are criminal investigators. When they arrive with questions about country of origin, they usually already have entry summaries, shipping records, and supplier communications. Anyone who talks it through without a federal investigation defense attorney in the room is generating evidence.

Producing documents to look cooperative. Rolling productions without a hold, a privilege review, and a considered scope position hand the government its exhibit list and occasionally create an obstruction count that did not exist before. Federal grand jury subpoena defense starts before the first page goes out.

Assuming the corporate resolution covers the people. It does not. Recent matters include individual charges alongside corporate resolutions. A corporate officer under federal investigation needs separate counsel before the company's outside counsel finishes the internal review.

How These Cases Are Actually Defended

Knowledge is the fight. Sections 542 and 545 both require a culpable mental state, and most importers do not personally inspect a foreign factory. The government builds knowledge circumstantially: pricing that does not match the declared origin, supplier emails about routing, a duty savings figure sitting in a margin model. Engaging that record early, with a forensic accountant and a customs specialist, can move a matter out of the criminal column.

Reasonable care is a real position, not a slogan. An importer who ran supplier audits, kept origin documentation, used a licensed broker properly, and escalated red flags has a story worth telling to a line prosecutor before charging. The same file, produced after indictment, is worth far less.

Why the Window Is Open Now

A new prosecution section with a public billion-dollar milestone needs cases. Inquiries that would have stayed administrative two years ago are being referred, and the Department has an incentive to reward the importers who come in first and cleanly.

Limitations periods here are long enough that conduct from 2020 is still chargeable, and this year's resolutions involve entries going back five and six years. Companies that changed sourcing in response to tariff increases should assume those decisions are documented somewhere. If a target letter has arrived, the calendar is short. If it has not, the useful work is the audit nobody has asked for yet.

Common Questions

Facing a Federal Trade or Customs Fraud Investigation?

AMC Defense Law represents companies, executives, and professionals in federal investigations and prosecutions in Florida and nationwide. If your company has received a grand jury subpoena, a target letter, a CBP inquiry, or a visit from federal agents about import filings, the response in the first weeks shapes what follows. Consultations are confidential.

Aaron M. Cohen has more than 30 years of experience representing individuals and entities in complex federal criminal investigations and prosecutions nationwide.

If you or your loved ones have been arrested or are under federal investigation for customs or trade fraud, call Aaron M. Cohen, 24 hours a day to get help.