Highlights
- The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on July 8, 2025, a whistleblower rewards program to encourage reporting of antitrust offenses that harm consumers, taxpayers and free market competition.
- Individuals stand to qualify for monetary rewards of up to 30 percent of any criminal fines recovered for violations of antitrust and related laws affecting the U.S. Postal Service. Criminal convictions from whistleblower reports that result in fines of at least $1 million may qualify for rewards.
On July 8, 2025, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in partnership with the United States Postal Service (USPS) and U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (USPS OIG), announced the launch of a first-of-its-kind Whistleblower Rewards Program for antitrust violations. Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater stated that the program is meant to increase detection of crimes that "harm free market competition [and] often occur in secret" by encouraging "individuals with firsthand knowledge of criminal antitrust and related offenses" to come forward. This marks a shift toward collecting information about wrongdoing from whistleblowers rather than relying upon self-disclosures by violators, which has been historical practice at the Antitrust Division. Inviting and rewarding whistleblowers can be incredibly successful in rooting out potential fraud; the qui tam whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA) result in the majority of civil fraud cases and FCA recoveries by the DOJ across all sectors.
This initiative is designed to encourage individuals to report antitrust crimes – such as price-fixing, bid rigging and market allocation – that impact the USPS and its procurement processes. Crimes subject to this program include violations of the Sherman Act (or crimes committed to effectuate, facilitate or conceal Sherman Act violations), violations "targeting or affecting federal, state, or local public procurement," and violations "targeting or affecting the conduct of federal competition investigations or proceedings." USPS often supports a broad range of procurement fraud investigations beyond its own procurements. From the Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Whistleblower Rewards Program and Procedures (MOU), it is not clear whether or how directly a violation must correspond to USPS procurements to qualify. Eligible crimes must be those that were not already known to the Antitrust Division, U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), or USPS OIG and result in a criminal conviction and fine of at least $1 million.
In the MOU, the DOJ, USPS and USPS OIG note that rewards will be made at the sole discretion of the Antitrust Division, in consultation with the USPIS and USPS OIG and that the "presumption will be that the total reward will be at least 15 percent of the recovered criminal fine," with a "maximum total reward" of 30 percent of the recovered criminal fine.
Whistleblowers must voluntarily provide sufficiently specific and credible information based on facts derived from their "individual knowledge" (in other words, not directly from publicly available sources or allegations from judicial proceedings or audits). Individuals who led or coerced others to commit the violation are not eligible for rewards. The Antitrust Division has set up a website for whistleblowers.
Growing Trend
The program is the latest in a many-year trend of increased encouragement and protections for whistleblowers – a policy shared by both the first Trump Administration and Biden Administration. Under the Biden Administration, the DOJ in August 2024 announced the Corporate Whistleblower Pilot Program to incentivize whistleblowers. In 2020, during the first Trump Administration, the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act was passed, which increased protections for employees reporting criminal antitrust violations.
The current administration has signaled a shift toward a more targeted approach to white collar criminal enforcement. In May 2025, the DOJ issued a memorandum regarding "Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White Collar Crime." The first priority identified for enforcement was procurement fraud, and another priority identified is any fraud related to markets. Though reaffirming its commitment to combating white collar crime, the DOJ expressed concerns about overly expansive enforcement actions against U.S. businesses and cautioned against prosecutorial overreach that could "punish risk-taking and hinder innovation."
These recent developments indicate that although the Antitrust Division's strategy has evolved from the Biden Administration's broad and aggressive enforcement, businesses should not expect a hands-off approach. Instead, the DOJ will likely continue vigorous antitrust enforcement in specific industries – as Slater and others in the Trump Administration have highlighted, industries important to everyday Americans such as housing, healthcare, agriculture and groceries, transportation and insurance. Businesses operating in industries subject to DOJ scrutiny, especially those contracting with the USPS, should ensure their antitrust compliance programs are robust and up to date.
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