Introduction

On October 1, the Department of Justice’s National Fraud Enforcement Division (the Fraud Division) issued a Directive governing its approach to “Corporate Enforcement in the Fight Against Fraud.”¹ The Directive builds on the Fraud Division’s August 2026 enforcement priorities memorandum,² which identified healthcare, public trust and financial integrity (including government procurement and public programs), internal revenue, global trade and commerce, and corporate misconduct as principal areas of focus for fraud enforcement. According to DOJ, the Directive seeks to promote efficiency, transparency, and appropriate incentives while ensuring the Fraud Division’s resources are deployed in support of an “aggressive, all-tools approach” to its enforcement priorities.³

While the Directive largely echoes priorities DOJ has announced over the past year, it also provides meaningful insight into how the Fraud Division intends to put those priorities into action. Among other things, it centralizes oversight of corporate fraud matters, provides additional guidance regarding the types of matters and enforcement considerations that prosecutors should prioritize, and directs the development of new incentives for whistleblowers. Together with DOJ’s growing emphasis on data analytics and proactive lead generation, these developments suggest an increasingly coordinated effort to identify, investigate, and pursue misconduct in the Fraud Division’s priority areas with greater speed, consistency, and impact.

A Centralized Corporate Enforcement Structure

The Directive follows DOJ’s creation earlier this year of the Fraud Division to operate alongside the Criminal Division, Civil Division, and other DOJ components. The new Division was established primarily to focus on complex fraud involving federal programs and taxpayer funds. The Fraud Division’s August 2026 enforcement priorities guidance, which also outlined the Fraud Division’s operating structure and surge in resources, described a dedicated Corporate Enforcement Section designed to help ensure the consistent and effective prosecution of corporate crime across the Division’s fraud portfolio.

The Directive further defines the Corporate Enforcement Section’s oversight role within the Fraud Division. Fraud Division prosecutors must report ongoing corporate investigations to Corporate Enforcement Section leadership and promptly notify the Section of new investigations and major developments. The Section will participate as appropriate from intake through resolution and will have primary responsibility for evaluating compliance with corporate criminal resolutions, including remediation, reporting obligations, and compliance program enhancements. The Directive thus seeks to route corporate enforcement decisions and monitoring through a centralized group of “corporate enforcement experts,” even where individual cases are handled by subject-matter prosecutors or in partnership with U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country.⁴

According to DOJ, this centralized structure is intended to promote efficiency, consistency, and effective allocation of resources across the Fraud Division’s corporate enforcement matters. Nonetheless, the Directive also emphasizes the need to distinguish serious corporate fraud from less culpable conduct and avoid overbroad enforcement against “law-abiding companies.”⁵ Centralizing oversight within the Corporate Enforcement Section appears designed to advance both objectives.

Additional Guideposts for Corporate Enforcement

The Directive largely reinforces priorities DOJ has repeatedly emphasized since the first half of 2025 and through the Fraud Division’s August 2026 guidance. Those priorities include healthcare fraud, fraud affecting government programs and procurement, significant revenue evasion, and tariff- and customs-related fraud. Recent enforcement initiatives confirm the commitment of resources to these priority areas, including the expansion of DOJ’s Health Care Fraud Strike Forces and creation of the DOJ-HHS False Claims Act Working Group, DOJ’s largest-ever healthcare fraud takedown in June 2026,⁶ and the DOJ-DHS Trade Fraud Task Force’s announcement in July 2026 that it had surpassed $1 billion in recoveries, penalties, forfeitures, and publicly charged losses.⁷

More significant than the substantive priorities themselves, however, is the Directive’s provision of additional guideposts regarding which corporate matters warrant particular attention and resources. The Directive identifies considerations that prosecutors are directed to give “great weight” to when making corporate charging and resolution decisions, including:

• Management knowledge or participation;
• Concealment from agencies, auditors, or other obstruction;
• Schemes lasting at least three years;
• Conduct affecting multiple federal programs or at least three federal districts;
• Losses of at least $25 million or harm to at least 25 victims;
• Threats to public safety, national security, or military readiness;
• Movement of American funds to support foreign adversaries; and
• Conduct involving immigration offenses.⁸

While this list is expressly non-exhaustive, these considerations provide companies with a clearer sense of the types of factors the Fraud Division believes justify heightened scrutiny and commitment of enforcement resources. Unlike many of DOJ’s traditional corporate enforcement considerations, several of the identified factors provide relatively concrete benchmarks (e.g., three-year duration, $25 million in losses or 25 victims), while others more directly incorporate the Administration’s broader priorities concerning tariffs, immigration, foreign adversaries, and national security.

The Directive supplements, but does not replace, DOJ’s existing corporate enforcement framework. Prosecutors remain directed to consider the traditional, more qualitative enforcement factors in the Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations.⁹ Rather than creating a new charging framework, the Directive layers additional Fraud Division priorities and considerations onto DOJ’s existing corporate enforcement guidance.

Incentivizing Disclosure and Generating Leads

The Directive also reflects the Fraud Division’s continued embrace of DOJ’s Department-wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (“CEP”), implemented in March 2026.¹⁰ The Fraud Division’s first publicly announced declination under the CEP in the Campus Eye healthcare fraud matter in July 2026 demonstrated a willingness to extend meaningful corporate self-disclosure credit in a priority enforcement area. The Directive repeatedly directs prosecutors to apply and implement the CEP, signaling that voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation will remain central considerations in the Fraud Division’s approach to corporate enforcement.

At the same time, the Directive instructs Fraud Division leadership to develop programs incentivizing and protecting whistleblowers, including individuals who participated in the misconduct. Although the Directive provides few specifics, the emphasis on whistleblower incentives is notable. While the CEP seeks to encourage companies to self-report misconduct, the Directive contemplates additional mechanisms to encourage individuals to report that same misconduct directly to DOJ, consistent with the Criminal Division’s similar approach with its Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program.¹¹

The Directive also emphasizes that the National Fraud Detection Center and partner components are using technology, data analytics, and expanded resources to generate investigative leads. Indeed, the Fraud Division states that it is already “proactively generating leads and opening new individual and corporate fraud investigations at a rapid pace.”¹² Together, the CEP, whistleblower initiatives, and data-driven lead generation reflect an effort to identify potential misconduct through multiple channels rather than relying solely on traditional referrals or investigative leads. The practical implication is that companies operating in the Fraud Division’s priority areas may face increasing pressure to identify, investigate, and address potential misconduct before DOJ learns of it through a whistleblower, data-driven detection effort, or another source.

Practical Takeaways

Although the Directive largely addresses internal DOJ processes, its practical implications for companies are more immediate. In light of the Fraud Division’s stated priorities, additional charging and resolution guideposts, and increasing emphasis on proactive lead generation, several practical themes emerge for companies operating in priority sectors.

Assess risk through the Fraud Division’s priorities and guideposts.

Compliance assessments should address both the Fraud Division’s substantive priorities and the considerations to which prosecutors are directed to give “great weight” in charging and resolution decisions. Particular attention should be paid to long-running conduct, operations spanning multiple federal districts or involving several government programs, management involvement, significant financial harm, and communications or actions that could be viewed as obstructive.

Strengthen internal reporting and escalation.

Companies should ensure that complaints involving government funds, healthcare billing, taxes, customs, procurement, controlled substances, or supply chains reach legal and compliance personnel quickly. The Fraud Division’s emphasis on whistleblower incentives, proactive lead generation, and voluntary self-disclosure increases the importance of internally identifying and escalating potential issues before DOJ learns of them from another source.

Evaluate the company’s own data before DOJ does.

Businesses should consider whether billing, reimbursement, procurement, tax, import, or operational data could reveal anomalous patterns similar to those DOJ may use to generate leads. Identified anomalies should prompt a focused and privileged review before they become the subject of government scrutiny.

Expect greater coordination in corporate enforcement.

The Corporate Enforcement Section’s expanded oversight role suggests that significant corporate matters may increasingly be evaluated through a centralized review process. Companies should therefore expect greater involvement from Main Justice personnel in significant corporate matters, even when investigations are conducted in partnership with U.S. Attorney’s Offices.

Prepare for early disclosure decisions.

The Directive repeatedly reaffirms the importance of DOJ’s CEP and the potential benefits of voluntary self-disclosure, cooperation, and remediation. Whether to self-report remains a fact-specific and strategically sensitive decision, but meaningful disclosure credit depends on a company’s ability to identify potential misconduct, investigate promptly, assess management involvement, and implement appropriate remediation.