On May 12, 2025, Matthew Galeotti, who heads the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) criminal division, released a memo addressed to all criminal division personnel entitled “Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime.”
Galeotti begins his memo by stating that “white-collar crime [] poses a significant risk to U.S. interests,” and that “the criminal division is committed to rooting out such insidious conduct.” Galeotti’s memo goes on to state: “However, overbroad and unchecked corporate and white-collar enforcement burdens U.S. businesses and harms U.S. interests.”
The Galeotti Mmemo states that DOJ prosecutors “must avoid overreach that punishes risk-taking and hinders innovation” and that the criminal division’s policies “must strike an appropriate balance between the need to effectively identify, investigate, and prosecute corporate and individuals’ criminal wrongdoing while minimizing unnecessary burdens on American enterprise.”
Criminal Division’s Priorities and Focus Areas
The Galeotti Memo then lays out the criminal division’s priority areas for white collar investigations and prosecutions, in the following order:
- Healthcare and federal procurement fraud
- Trade and customs fraud
- Fraud perpetrated through variable interest entities (VEIs), which the memo states “are typically Chinese-affiliated companies listed on the U.S. exchanges that carry significant risks to the investing public for several reasons.”
- Investment fraud such as Ponzi schemes
- Conduct that threatens national security including threats to the U.S. legal system “such as financial institutions and their insiders that commit sanction violations or enable transactions by Cartels, transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), hostile nation-states, and/r foreign terrorist organizations.”
- Material support by corporations to foreign terrorist organizations, including Cartels and TCOs
- Complex money laundering “including Chinese Money Laundering Organizations”
- Violations of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act “including the unlawful manufacture and distribution of chemicals and equipment used to create counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl and unlawful distribution of opioids by medical professionals and companies.”
- Bribery and money laundering that “impacts U.S. national interests, undermine U.S. national security, harm the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, and enrich foreign corrupt officials.”
- Crimes involving digital assets (such as cryptocurrency) that victimize investors and consumers, that use digital assets in furtherance of other criminal conduct, and “willful violations that facilitate significant criminal activity” (emphasis in original).
The memo also instructs criminal prosecutors to prioritize efforts to “identify and seize assets that are the proceeds of, or involved in, such offenses.”
Expansion of the Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program
The Galeotti Memo also adds language to the criminal division’s previously-announced Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program, by adding the following to the list of subject areas that can lead to a whistleblower award:
- Violations by corporations related to international cartels or TCOs, including money laundering, narcotics, CSA violations, and other violations;
- Violations by corporations of federal immigration law;
- Violations by corporations involving material support of terrorism;
- Corporate sanctions offenses;
- Trade, tariff, and customs fraud by corporations;
- Corporate procurement fraud.
Galeotti’s memo also discusses the Criminal Division’s already-existing Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (CEP), stating that the criminal division developed the policy “because justice demands the equal and fair application of criminal laws to individuals and corporations who commit crimes.”
Continued Focus on Individual Culpability
In a move reminiscent of the September 2015 “Yates Memo,” the Galeotti Memo sends a warning to corporate employees and officers: “The Department’s first priority is to prosecute individual criminals. It is individuals — whether executives, officers, or employees of companies — who commit these crimes, often at the expense of shareholders, workers, and American investors and consumers. The Criminal Division will investigate these individual wrongdoers relentlessly to hold them accountable.”
Focus on Self-Disclosure and Cooperation
Galeotti’s memo also instructs criminal prosecutors to conduct “an individualized assessment of the facts and evidence in each case and make an appropriate determination” whether a corporation should be charged with a crime. The memo also instructs the Criminal Division’s Fraud and Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Sections (MLARS) to revise the CEP “and clarify additional benefits are available to companies that self-disclose and cooperate, including potential shorter terms [to their integrity agreements].”
Galeotti also directs the Fraud and MLARS section to “review the length of terms of all existing agreements with companies to determine if they should be terminated early.” In doing so, the memo instructs them to consider various factors, including “duration of the post-resolution period, substantial reduction in the company’s risk profile, extent of remediation and maturity of the compliance corporate program, and whether the company self-reported the misconduct.”
Shortening the Length of Investigations and Limiting Use and Scope of Compliance Monitors
Finally, the Galeotti Memo states that prosecutors “must move expeditiously to investigate cases and make charging decisions,” and that “independent compliance monitors must only be imposed when they are necessary,” and when imposed, “must be narrowly tailored to achieve the necessary goals while minimizing expense, burden, and interference with the business.”
Our Takeaways
While much of the Galeotti Memo simply reiterates and emphasizes already-existing DOJ policies, including a focus on individual culpability, the memo also contains several important and new directives, including prioritizing certain types of white collar crime including healthcare, procurement, and customs fraud; expanding the Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program’s “subject areas”; and limiting the DOJ’s use of corporate compliance monitors.
Relatedly, on the same day the Galeotti Memo was released, the FBI directed its agents to devote more time to immigration enforcement and less time to white collar enforcement. Because the FBI is typically the main law enforcement agency in white collar criminal investigators and prosecutions, it is likely that this directive will severely limit the number of such investigations and prosecutions that the DOJ is able to bring, regardless of the Galeotti Memo’s directives. This could result in the number of “specialized” white collar cases such as healthcare fraud — where HHS-OIG is typically the “lead” agency — increasing at the expense of other, more “generic” white collar cases such as money laundering or embezzlement. But, of course, only time will tell.
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The attorneys at Chilivis Grubman represent individuals and companies of all types and sizes in connection with White Collar Criminal investigations investigations and prosecutions. If you need assistance with such a matter please contact us.