More than $1 billion. That is what the Justice Department says its Trade Fraud Task Force has recovered or charged in under a year, counting civil and criminal recoveries, penalties, forfeitures and charged losses. The department announced the milestone on July 14.
The task force is a joint effort of the Justice Department and Homeland Security, started in August 2025. Its targets are people and companies accused of cheating U.S. Customs and Border Protection: tariff evasion, goods routed through a third country, false country-of-origin declarations, mislabeled imports. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald, who leads the department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, put it bluntly. “For too long, fraud actors have viewed customs violations as a mere surcharge or cost of doing business,” he said, adding that trade fraud is “a serious economic crime.”
His warning was aimed at the whole chain. “This message should be heard loud and clear by all supply-chain actors,” McDonald said. The net reaches importers, customs brokers, distributors and end users alike, provided they knew the goods were brought in illegally. Officials said cases involving evasion of Section 301 tariffs, the penalties aimed at countries judged to be trading unfairly, get priority.
Two gold jewelry cases in Chicago
The same day, federal prosecutors in Chicago filed charges in two customs duty cases, both about imported gold jewelry. They described them as part of the wider crackdown.
In the first, Raj Kohli and Veena Kohli, who run Surya International in San Francisco, are accused of declaring that jewelry came from Singapore when, prosecutors allege, it really originated in India and the UAE. Prosecutors point to roughly 563 import entries filed from 2020 through 2024. Together they covered more than $693 million of jewelry, and prosecutors say more than $38 million in duties went unpaid.
The second defendant is Narain Gulabani, who owns Barkha Wholesale in Naperville, Illinois. He is charged with listing Oman or Singapore as the origin of gold jewelry brought in between 2016 and 2021. As alleged, the scheme ran through about 242 entries worth over $240 million, and more than $13.6 million in duties was dodged.
Why importers should care
Both agencies say the initiative is meant to protect American businesses and punish those who gain an edge through fraudulent trade practices. The department stressed both civil enforcement and criminal prosecution.
For an importer, the message is plain enough. A wrong origin label on an entry form is no longer a paperwork slip. In the Kohli case alone, the allegation covers four years of filings.
Sources
- DOJ Trade Fraud Task Force Tops $1 Billion in Recoveries, Forfeitures
- Winning: Fraud Task Force Passes $1 Billion in Recoveries
