DOJ's Updated Playbook: New Rules for White-Collar Enforcement

On May 12, 2025, the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a memorandum outlining a recalibrated approach to white-collar criminal enforcement. The memorandum, titled “Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime,” is DOJ’s updated white-collar playbook, laying out new offensive and defensive strategies for the Department. It emphasizes a targeted approach to the most pressing threats while seeking to minimize undue burdens on legitimate American businesses.

Here’s how this new playbook changes the game and how to adjust your corporate game plan.

DOJ’s Core Strategy: Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency

The memorandum establishes three guiding principles for the Criminal Division's investigation and prosecution of corporate and white-collar crimes:

1. Focus: DOJ will focus on the “most urgent criminal threats to the country.” This means running signature plays in the 10 “high-impact” areas discussed below.
2. Fairness: DOJ’s first priority is to hold accountable individuals—executives, officers, or employees—who commit white-collar crimes at the expense of shareholders, investors, and consumers. Acknowledging that "not all corporate misconduct warrants federal criminal prosecution," the memo emphasizes transparency and provides clearer rules of engagement for companies that self-disclose, cooperate, and remediate.
3. Efficiency: Recognizing that federal investigations can be costly and intrusive, DOJ seeks to up the tempo by directing prosecutors to streamline corporate investigations. This includes moving expeditiously to make charging decisions and sparingly employing independent compliance monitors.

Priority Plays: DOJ’s Top 10 Enforcement Targets

DOJ’s playbook identifies 10 key areas that have the most significant impact on protecting American citizens and companies, and promoting U.S. interests. The Criminal Division will prioritize its white-collar enforcement resources on the following:

1. Waste, fraud, and abuse harming the public fisc: Including healthcare fraud (Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare), federal program fraud, and procurement fraud.
2. Trade and customs fraud: Including tariff evasion and aimed at ensuring a level playing field for American businesses.
3. Fraud perpetrated through Variable Interest Entities (VIEs): Targeting schemes involving VIEs, often Chinese-affiliated companies listed on U.S. exchanges that pose risks to U.S. investors, offering fraud, “ramp and dumps,” elder fraud, securities fraud, and market manipulation.
4. Fraud victimizing U.S. investors, individuals, and markets: Encompassing Ponzi schemes, investment fraud, elder fraud, servicemember fraud, and fraud threatening consumer health and safety.
5. Conduct threatening national security via the U.S. financial system: Focusing on gatekeepers like financial institutions and their insiders who commit sanctions violations or enable transactions by cartels, Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs), hostile nation-states, or foreign terrorist organizations.
6. Material support by corporations to foreign terrorist organizations: Including recently designated cartels and TCOs.
7. Complex money laundering: Referencing Chinese Money Laundering Organizations and others involved in laundering funds for illegal drug manufacturing.
8. Violations of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA): Including the unlawful manufacture and distribution of fentanyl precursors, counterfeit pills, and the unlawful distribution of opioids by medical professionals and companies.
9. Bribery and associated money laundering: Targeting conduct that impacts U.S. national interests, undermines national security, harms the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, or enriches foreign corrupt officials. Notably, the memorandum prioritizes foreign bribery notwithstanding Executive Order 14209, which paused Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement pending review.
10. Digital asset crimes: Prioritizing cases that victimize investors and consumers, use digital assets in furtherance of other crimes, or involve willful violations facilitating significant criminal activity, especially those impacting victims, cartels, TCOs, terrorist groups, or facilitating drug money laundering or sanctions evasion.

DOJ will also prioritize identifying and seizing assets derived from these offenses to compensate victims, focusing on schemes involving senior-level personnel, demonstrable loss, and obstruction of justice.

Consistent with these priorities, the May 12 memo amends the Criminal Division’s Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program to include tips leading to forfeiture in the following areas:

• Violations by corporations related to international cartels or TCOs (including money laundering, narcotics, CSA violations)
• Corporate violations of federal immigration law
• Corporate violations involving material support of terrorism
• Corporate sanctions offenses
• Trade, tariff, and customs fraud by corporations
• Corporate procurement fraud

This expansion aims to incentivize individuals to come forward with information on misconduct in these critical enforcement areas and will be a new intelligence-gathering play for the DOJ.

Fair Calls: DOJ’s Approach to Prosecuting Corporations and Individuals

The memorandum seeks to balance the need to effectively identify, investigate, and prosecute corporate and individual criminal wrongdoing while minimizing unnecessary burdens on American enterprise. It underscores that “not all corporate misconduct warrants federal criminal prosecution,” suggesting that individual prosecutions and civil and administrative remedies against corporations may suffice for “low-level corporate misconduct.”

For companies, the most straightforward path to a favorable call involves executing key defensive plays: voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation. The memo recognizes that it is in America’s interest to “promote policies that acknowledge law-abiding companies and companies that are willing to learn from their mistakes and provide those companies with transparency from the department.” To that end, the Criminal Division is revising the Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (CEP) to provide greater transparency and clarity regarding the benefits available to corporations that self-disclose and cooperate. These revisions aim to make CEP’s core components—paths to declination, available fine reductions, and factors that determine corporate resolution contours—more easily understandable. The goal is for companies to make appropriate strategic calls when misconduct is discovered.

The terms of corporate resolutions for companies that self-disclose and cooperate will be appropriate and necessary in light of the severity of the misconduct, the company’s degree of cooperation and remediation, and the effectiveness of the company’s compliance program at the time of resolution, generally no longer than three years.

Additionally, the Criminal Division is reviewing the terms of all existing agreements with companies to determine if they should be terminated early. In making those decisions, DOJ will consider the duration of the post-resolution period, substantial reduction in risk profile, extent of remediation, maturity of the compliance program, and whether the misconduct was self-reported.

Game Clock Management: Efficient Investigations and Sparing Use of Monitors

Recognizing white-collar schemes take substantial time and effort to unravel, the memo calls on prosecutors to “move expeditiously to investigate cases and make charging decisions” to keep the game clock moving. Prosecutors must take all reasonable steps to minimize the length of their investigations and their collateral impact.

The memorandum also signals compliance monitorships are disfavored and will be used sparingly. It directs prosecutors to impose compliance monitors only when necessary—that is, when a company cannot demonstrate it has learned the rules of the game or cannot ensure it will not commit the same misconduct again without direct oversight. DOJ will provide guidance that clarifies the factors to be considered when determining whether a monitor is appropriate, and ensure, when necessary, prosecutors narrowly tailor the monitor’s review to address the risk of recidivism and reduce unnecessary cost. With these principles in mind, the Criminal Division will conduct an individualized review of existing monitorships to make case-specific determinations of whether monitors remain necessary.

Adjusting Your Corporate Game Plan: Implications for Businesses

DOJ’s May 12 memorandum signals a strategic refinement of its white-collar enforcement efforts, aiming for a more focused, fair, and efficient approach. While the commitment to combating corporate crime remains strong, particularly in areas deemed critical to U.S. interests and national security, there is also a clear intent to reduce unnecessary burdens on compliant businesses and to reward good corporate citizens who act responsibly when misconduct is identified.

This white-collar playbook gives corporations ammunition to argue for leniency if they find themselves subject to a federal investigation. Prosecutors are directed to strongly consider civil and administrative remedies for corporations and all forms of criminal resolutions, including non-prosecution agreements, deferred prosecution agreements, and guilty pleas. Additionally, businesses can expect shorter resolution terms, more efficient and expeditious investigations, and fewer monitorships.

Corporations must update their own defensive playbooks, especially if they operate in or adjacent to DOJ’s 10 primary offensive zones, as they can expect increased scrutiny in these “high-impact” areas. A robust, adaptable corporate compliance program is a company’s starting defensive line and a key factor in penalty reduction.

The expanded whistleblower program means more scouts on the field and more tips to DOJ, particularly in the newly prioritized areas. Companies should ensure they have internal reporting mechanisms and a team culture that encourages speaking up, allowing issues to be addressed internally first.

The revised CEP and the emphasis on transparency aim to encourage companies to come forward when they discover misconduct. Understanding the potential benefits and the processes for self-disclosure is crucial.

Woods Rogers is committed to helping clients develop and refine their corporate compliance playbooks to navigate the complexities of this evolving enforcement landscape. We will continue to monitor DOJ policy shifts and provide the most current and effective counsel to companies facing government investigations or looking to strengthen their defensive posture.