Quarterly Cartel Catch-Up – The Trump Administration’s Criminal Antitrust Enforcement Posture Takes Shape

As previously predicted, the new year and change of administration in the U.S. brought a series of notable developments in criminal antitrust enforcement. Recent actions indicate that the new antitrust leadership in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division (Division) is likely to maintain an aggressive posture despite a proposal by a top DOJ official to close two of the four Division offices that focus on criminal enforcement.

On the litigation front, on April 14, 2025, the Division won its first jury trial in a wage-fixing case, which is likely to breathe new life into criminal enforcement efforts in labor markets. The Division also achieved another criminal monopolization resolution when eight individuals pleaded guilty in a case involving the used car transmigrante industry. In addition to these victories in more novel enforcement areas, the Procurement Collusion Strike Force (PCSF), which was created during President Trump’s first term, continues to be active by filing new indictments and has secured more guilty pleas. Meanwhile, the Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the launch of an online portal spotlighting international fugitives charged with antitrust offenses, which underscores the reach of the Division’s criminal enforcement efforts.

Around the world, international competition enforcers continue to ramp up their enforcement efforts. Canadian authorities are joining the fray against algorithmic pricing tools. In the EU, enforcers are seeking more aggressive fines and prison sentences, and Portugal pursues another labor market case. And, after years of inactivity, Indian authorities are preparing for more dawn raids.

These updates and more are in this latest edition of the Quarterly Cartel Catch-Up.

Leadership Changes and New Initiatives Signal New Enforcement Trends at the Division and FTC

Key Point: The assistant attorney general (AAG) for the Antitrust Division and the new chair of the FTC begin to lay out their robust approach to enforcement across sectors.

On March 11, 2025, the U.S. Senate confirmed Abigail Slater to lead the Division by a vote of 78–19. During her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Slater described antitrust law as “a scalpel” for “targeted enforcement” against anticompetitive conduct, and discussed her commitment to prioritize efforts that protect consumers. She also raised concerns about non-compete agreements in concentrated markets and identified “agriculture, healthcare, and tech” as key focus areas.

AAG Slater also appointed Omeed Assefi, the former acting AAG for the Division while her confirmation was pending, to be the interim successor to Manish Kumar as the top criminal attorney in the Division. Assefi has expressed the need for aggressive antitrust enforcement.

On February 26, 2025, FTC Chair Andrew N. Ferguson established a Labor Markets Task Force that aims to prioritize issues such as no-poach agreements, noncompete agreements, and wage-fixing practices. In light of the overlap with the Division’s criminal labor market enforcement efforts, Ferguson likely coordinated the announcement of this task force with the Division. This renewed focus indicates that labor markets will continue to receive antitrust scrutiny, especially now that DOJ has established that it can convince a jury that this kind of conduct is per se illegal and constitutes a criminal violation. (See United States v. Lopez, infra.)

It is common practice for antitrust enforcement leadership from across jurisdictions to discuss policy priorities and changes at the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Antitrust Law Spring Meeting, which takes place annually in Washington, D.C. However, the new DOJ and FTC leadership opted to not participate in the conference. Specifically, in March, AAG Slater informed the Division that political appointees would not participate in ABA events, which echoed Chair Ferguson’s directive to FTC staff on February 14, 2025. In the alternative, the Division and FTC participated in a Capitol Forum seminar at a conference venue across the street from the Spring Meeting conference, and the Division hosted a forum on censorship, during which Assefi moderated a panel about individuals personally affected by censorship and market power.

Prior to leadership changes, both the Division and FTC had published reports highlighting their achievements. The Division’s 10-Year Workload Statistics Report, released on January 17, 2025, covers antitrust enforcement from 2015 to 2024. Regarding criminal prosecutions, the data shows that over the past four years, the Division has filed criminal cases at a fairly consistent rate, aside from a slight drop in 2023 as the Division only filed nine cases that year. However, the following year the Division filed 20 cases—signaling a recommitment towards criminal antitrust prosecutions.

DOJ Secures First Wage-Fixing Conviction of Executive in Home Healthcare Staffing

Key Point: After a long string of losses at jury trials, the Division gets its first win in its labor market enforcement campaign.

On April 14, 2025, a federal jury in Las Vegas convicted Home Health Agency executive Eduardo Lopez for conspiring to fix the wages of Las Vegas nurses—and then fraudulently concealing that conspiracy and the government’s investigation in order to sell his company for over $10 million. The initial March 2023 indictment, covered in a previous edition of the Quarterly Cartel Catch-Up, alleged that Lopez agreed with his competitors at each agency to fix the wages of nurses in a three-year-long conspiracy from March 2016 to May 2019. A jury convicted Lopez on one count of participating in a wage-fixing conspiracy and five counts of wire fraud. Lopez, who is scheduled to be sentenced on July 14, faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million criminal fine for the antitrust violation, and a 20-year prison maximum sentence for the wire fraud charges.

This verdict provides support for AAG Slater’s promise that the Division “will zealously prosecute those who seek to unjustly profit off their employees.” Fresh off a trial victory, and in light of the former head of the criminal program describing several open labor market investigations, this could signal a reinvigorated effort by the Trump administration to criminally prosecute labor market conduct. Without the victory, we would have expected the Division to more fully retreat from its efforts in this area.

Division Launches Online Portal Targeting Antitrust Fugitives

Key Point: The Division renews efforts to locate and extradite foreign nationals charged with competition crimes.

On February 13, 2025, the Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the launch of a new online portal publicizing and seeking information about international fugitives who have been charged with antitrust offenses and other competition-related crimes but have thus far not submitted themselves to U.S. jurisdiction.

The creation of the portal builds on the Division’s continued efforts to extradite fugitives from cartel charges. On January 13, 2020, the Division extradited a former air cargo executive who was indicted for price-fixing and then had been a fugitive for nearly 10 years, before finally being apprehended by authorities in Italy. Two months later, on March 3, 2020, the Division extradited Eun Soo Kim, a former key accounts manager who pleaded guilty for his role in a market allocation and bid-rigging conspiracy in the automotive parts industry. Typically, before surrender, fugitives from antitrust indictments have resolved their criminal charges by entering into plea agreements with the Division. For example, in March 2025, the Division entered into a plea agreement with a fugitive defendant in the South Korean Fuel Supply investigation. The plea agreement, which the Court will address in a hearing scheduled for April 30, 2025, is for a misdemeanor offense, which is reduced from the felony charges in the original indictment. (This willingness by DOJ to reduce the charges may reflect a compromise to avoid a protracted effort to extradite the individual or reflect that the evidence against the individual has weakened over time, as is not uncommon if several years have passed since the charges were originally filed.)

By launching this portal, the Division is renewing its efforts to extradite international fugitive executives accused of violating antitrust laws. Although the Division regularly works with foreign authorities and law enforcement agencies to locate and potentially extradite these fugitives, the Division now is enlisting the help of the public to provide information about these individuals and increase the pressure for these defendants to address the charges against them.

Procurement Collusion Strike Force (PCSF) Secures Guilty Pleas for Bid-Rigging on Contracts for Federal IT Services and Public Schools

Key Point: Companies, large and small, that do business with the federal and state governments, should continue efforts to ensure compliance with antitrust and procurement laws.

At the start of 2025, the PCSF secured guilty pleas for bid-rigging related to both federal and state government contracts. In January 2025, two defendants, an onsite government IT consultant and an IT sales executive, pleaded guilty for their involvement in a scheme between manufacturers, distributors, and resellers who provide IT products and services to the federal government, including the intelligence community. These defendants admitted to using inside information to rig bids for IT procurements and ensure one of the co-conspirators’ companies would win the bid from 2018 until at least May 2019. These charges are related to plea agreements announced in November 2024, when a government contractor and a federal government employee pleaded guilty to bribery for money exchanged between the two between August 2019 and October 2020 to ensure that the government purchased IT products at higher prices and then diverted the inflated portion of the payments.

In March 2025, four defendants, two companies and their owners, pleaded guilty for bid-rigging related to budget and procurement consulting services for New York City Public Schools between November 2020 and January 2023. The scheme involved one company submitting artificially high bids for services to make the other company’s lower bid to win and contravened the NYC Department of Education’s requirement for a competitive bidding process.

Also in March 2025, an owner of a contractor company that provided fuel truck services to the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire fighters pleaded guilty to rigging bids, allocating territories, and committing wire fraud for certain dispatch centers of the U.S. Forest Service’s Great Basin wildfire dispatch region from March 2015 to March 2023. The plea follows a judicially authorized wiretap investigation that led to the indictment of two executives in December 2023. Both executives pleaded guilty and are scheduled to be sentenced in June 2025.

Making clear that the PCSF will continue to be an essential part of criminal antitrust enforcement, AAG Abigail Slater stated in relation to one of the plea agreement announcements that “[b]id-rigging and other collusive, anticompetitive agreements are neither sophisticated nor lawful,” and that the DOJ “will not treat bid-rigging as business as usual.”

Transmigrante Services Defendants Plead Guilty in Rare Criminal Monopolization Case

Key point: Eight out of 11 defendants charged in connection with a violent conspiracy scheme have pleaded guilty to antitrust charges.

Eight individuals have now pleaded guilty to criminal monopolization and price-fixing charges in a joint prosecution of conduct involving money laundering in the used car shipping industry. The three remaining defendants are currently fugitives.

In United States v. Martinez, the Division continued its resurrection of criminal enforcement under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which concerns monopolization or attempted monopolization. This is one of three cases since the Division’s 2022 announcement that—for the first time in 50 years—it would pursue criminal charges for Section 2 violations. The charges alleged that defendants conspired to monopolize the transmigrante industry, which involves the transport of used vehicles and other goods from the U.S. to Central America, through threats of violence against competitors. In addition to the Section 2 charges, the indictment also included charges for a violation of Section 1 for fixing prices and allocating the transmigrante agency services market, as well as for extortion and money laundering. According to the Division, co-conspirators required market participants to pay money into a “pool” that divided revenues, and those who did not participate were fined and threatened with violence.

In the press release, Matthew Galeotti, AAG of the Criminal Division, connected the guilty pleas to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s directive for DOJ prosecutors to focus on international cartels. The Division’s Director of Criminal Enforcement Emma Burnham added that “[t]he Antitrust Division will continue to use every tool at its disposal to protect the public by prosecuting violent criminals—including those who aim to corrupt America’s free markets.”

The sentences for individual defendants have ranged from probation to 20 years’ imprisonment, with ringleader Carlos Martinez agreeing to serve 11 years in confinement and to pay a $2 million fine and full restitution.

Algorithmic Price-Fixing in the News: Canadian Competition Bureau Confirms Investigation of AI Software Use in Real Estate Rental Market and the Division Adds Horizonal Collusion Claims to Its Case Against RealPage

Key Point: Algorithms continue to be antitrust enforcement focus as Canada’s Competition Bureau has followed in the footsteps of the Division in investigating claims around the use of algorithmic tools to set rental prices.

The Competition Bureau in Canada recently confirmed that it had launched an investigation into the use of algorithmic software to set, and potentially artificially inflate, rental prices in the Canadian real estate market. The conduct under investigation concerns the use of software to track competitor pricing for rents. In November 2024, a media outlet reported that the Bureau was currently investigating this issue despite a failed vote in the House of Commons urging that result. Although a spokesperson declined to confirm the existence of an investigation because the Bureau’s work is confidential, the commencement of an investigation does not come as a surprise, in light of similar actions in the United States.

On January 7, 2025, the Division and its state co-plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in its civil antitrust lawsuit against RealPage. Although the Division had opened a criminal investigation of this conduct, in August 2024, it filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against RealPage alleging an unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing and to monopolize the market for commercial revenue management software that landlords use to price apartments. The amended complaint adds allegations of horizontal collusion and specifically names major landlords Camden Property Trust, Cortland Management LLC, Cushman & Wakefield, Inc., GreyStar Real Estate Partners, LLC, Livcor, LLC, Pinnacle Property Management Services, LLC, and Willow Bridge Property Company, LLC. The amended complaint claims that the named companies engaged in regular communications, directly sharing sensitive pricing topics with each other—a more traditional practice of information-sharing. The Division’s amended complaint signals that, while the verdict is still out on how algorithmic software impacts our understanding of price-sharing, the new administration is still focused on traditional methods of price-sharing and industry-wide coordination, despite how algorithms may facilitate or enable such interactions.

Competition Authorities Around the Globe Continue to Crack Down in Cartel Enforcement, and the First UK Cartel Class Action Case Proceeds to Trial

Key Point: International competition authorities continue to ramp up aggressive enforcement efforts and a recommitment towards abandoned administrative priorities.

International enforcers continue aggressive cartel enforcement efforts. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is expected to conduct more dawn raids as part of a reinvigorated antitrust enforcement effort following a period of inactivity. After the departure of CCI officials, the competition agency struggled to gain its footing following the overhaul to its Competition Act of 2023. The CCI did not conduct a single dawn raid in 2023 and, in 2024, conducted only an unannounced inspection of Ricard and Anheuser-Busch over allegations of price-fixing. However, in March 2025, the CCI reportedly raided the offices of several global advertising companies over alleged price-collusion. The raids come following the $8.5 billion merger between Walt Disney and Reliance’s India media assets, completed in November of last year, signaling the CCI may in fact be ramping up its enforcement efforts.

In the UK, on January 13, the first follow-on cartel class action trial began against car manufacturers for allegedly inflating shipping fees to consumers. The class action seeks approximately £100 million in damages. The exact size of the class is still to be determined, but the cartel is alleged to have affected nearly 17.8 million car purchases in the UK.

Portugal Continues to Pioneer EU Enforcement Against No-Poach Agreements

Key Point: The Portuguese Competition Authority announces a new enforcement action in the labor market for technology consultants but faces an appeal in its labor market case against football clubs.

On February 19, 2025, the Portuguese Competition Authority (AdC) fined Inetum Group, a multinational technology consulting group, over €3 million for entering into anticompetitive no-poach agreements involving bilateral commitments not to recruit or make unsolicited offers to employees of participating companies. The fine imposed by AdC was the second sanctioning decision that the AdC issued since it began intervening against anticompetitive practices in the labor market in 2020.

The AdC’s first-ever sanctioning decision against conduct affecting the labor market, an April 2022 fine against 31 Portuguese football clubs, is currently being appealed. The AdC issued a €11.3 million fine against the football clubs for agreeing to not recruit or hire football players who unilaterally terminated their employment contracts due to Covid-19. On appeal, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) held a hearing in February 2025 to consider the AdC’s sanction against the football clubs’ no-poach agreements. The AdC argued that no-poach agreements should be classified as “by object” restrictions (similar to a per se restriction under U.S. antitrust law). The football clubs contended that the AdC failed to consider the unique attributes of sporting situations in coming to its decision. The ECJ’s advocate general is set to deliver an opinion by May 8, 2025.

International Enforcement Trends: International Enforcers Harness Heightened Criminal Penalties

Key Point: Antitrust enforcers across the globe have stepped up enforcement this past quarter, harnessing heightened criminal penalties at sentencing. One agency levied rare prison sentences on 12 individuals and its first-ever public-procurement ban.

In February 2024, Spanish authorities convicted 12 company officials for dividing up markets and rigging public tenders for firefighting aircraft and related equipment. This verdict marked a rare instance of individual accountability for cartel conduct in the EU. In December 2024, New Zealand issued its first-ever criminal cartel penalty and sentenced a company official to six months’ community detention and 200 hours of community work for rigging bids for publicly funded construction projects.

Also, in December 2024, France’s competition agency announced fines against 12 companies for participating in a household appliance cartel. The €611 fines were for vertical price-fixing and targeted two distributors of household appliances and 10 manufacturers. This is the second round of penalties in this case, following a previous decision to fine six appliance manufacturers for a combined €189 million in 2018.

Meanwhile, Singapore’s Competition and Consumer Commission levied its highest bid-rigging fine on record, a sanction against two construction companies for over €7 million for rigging over €24 million of bids for interior fit-out construction services. This is the second bid-rigging enforcement decision this year, and Singapore authorities suggested that there are many more cases to come.

In Manitoba, Canada, five individuals pleaded guilty to conspiring to manipulate bidding for 54 contracts awarded by the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation, with a total value of approximately $3.5 million, between 2011 and 2016. The individuals were ordered to pay a combined amount of $196,000 in fines.