The Trump Administration continues to surprise many observers by taking antitrust enforcement seriously. The latest initiative, announced on July 8, 2025, creates an avenue for rewarding individuals who report antitrust crimes and related anti-competitive conduct that leads to successful prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (the “Antitrust Division”) working in concert with the United States Postal Service.[1] Dubbed the “Whistleblower Reward Program,” the initiative represents the first time a federal antitrust enforcer has established a system for rewarding whistleblowers for their role in uncovering evidence of violations of the antitrust laws. The program, while narrow in scope given its focus on postal-related antitrust crimes, could signal the development of a more extensive whistleblower program whereby persons who provide the government with evidence that leads to convictions, fines or forfeitures under the antitrust laws could be incentivized to come forward with that evidence to assist prosecutors. Indeed, given the launch of a broader DOJ whistleblower pilot program on August 1, 2024 focusing on specific areas of corporate fraud,[2] which was recently updated on May 12, 2025,[3] the prospects for expansion of such DOJ incentive programs seem high.
What You Need to Know:
- The Trump Administration has launched the first antitrust whistleblower program, which will reward persons who report antitrust conspiracies and violations that utilize the U.S. mails.
- If the program is as successful as the Department of Justice’s Amnesty Program in helping prosecutors identify violations of the country’s antitrust laws, it likely will be expanded over time.
- Now more than ever companies need to focus on antitrust training and compliance.
Since the Antitrust Division published its revised Corporate Leniency Policy in 1993,[4] rewarding companies that come forward and report their own participation in conduct that violates the antitrust laws in exchange for amnesty from prosecution, it has proven to be a powerful tool for prosecutors. Numerous price-fixing, bid-rigging and other unlawful conspiracies have been discovered and successfully prosecuted based on tips from participating companies themselves. Enormous fines have been assessed on companies engaged in illegal, anti-competitive conduct and a record number of individuals have been sent to jail for their roles in cartels. But, unlike in other areas of the law, as in the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act, which reward individuals with a share of the proceeds recovered by prosecutors for civil fraud, or the well-known whistleblower programs run by U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (“SEC”), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”), and the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), the Antitrust Division lacked a mechanism to similarly incentivize whistleblowers to report evidence of antitrust crimes.
The new program changes all of that, at least for antitrust claims involving the use of the U.S. mails. The new program is modeled on the DOJ Criminal Division’s Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program which, as noted above, the Biden Administration launched in August 2024. That program provides monetary awards to persons who report corporate misconduct involving (1) crimes by financial institutions and their employees; (2) foreign corruption by privately-held companies and others that are not issuers of U.S. securities; (3) domestic corruption; and (4) health care fraud schemes targeting private insurers not subject to qui tam recovery under the False Claims Act. The Division uses a “net proceeds forfeited” model to calculate the award to the whistleblower who reports these corporate crimes. Under the program, whistleblowers may receive up to 30 percent of the first $100 million in net proceeds forfeited, and up to five percent of any net proceeds forfeited between $100 million and $500 million from successful prosecution by the Criminal Division.
The new Whistleblower Reward Program of the Antitrust Division and the Postal Service will utilize a similar approach to encourage the reporting of illegal antitrust behavior that utilizes the U.S. mails. Details of the program are set forth in a detailed Memorandum of Understanding, executed in early May 2025 by the heads of the Antitrust Division, the Inspector General, and the Chief Postal Inspector.[5] The stated purpose of the program is “to enable whistleblowers to report specific, credible, and timely information about possible federal criminal violations, and promote cooperation among the Antitrust Division, the United States Postal Inspection Service (“USPIS”) in its capacity as the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service, and the Postal Service Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) in the prosecution and resolution of matters identified through the [p]rogram.”[6] The statutory authority for the program derives from 39 U.S.C. § 2601, which authorizes the Postal Service “to collect fines, penalties and forfeitures arising out of matters affecting the Postal Service,” and 39 U.S.C. § 404(a)(7), by which the Postal Service is “to pay one-half of all penalties and forfeitures imposed for violations of law affecting the Postal Service, its revenues, or property, to the person informing for the same.”
To qualify for a financial reward under the Whistleblower Reward Program, an individual must meet each of the following requirements:
- The Whistleblower must submit a report containing original information that is credible, timely and not publicly available or already known to the Antitrust Division, which is utilized in an antitrust investigation;
- The report must be from an eligible person (e.g., not a leader or originator of the illegal activity at issue, or a DOJ or Postal Service employee, or lawyer or compliance officer at the company in question);
- The report must by voluntary in nature (e.g., not compelled by a subpoena or preexisting agreement with the government);
- The conduct at issue must be a violation of Section 1, 2 or 3 of the Sherman Act, target or affect federal, state or local government procurement, or target a federal competition investigation or proceeding;
- The investigation in which the report was used must result in a criminal conviction and fine of at least one million dollars, or an equivalent recovery from a deferred prosecution or non-prosecution agreement.
The amount of the whistleblower reward will be determined solely by the Antitrust Division but presumptively will be on par with other whistleblower programs—i.e., 15 percent of the recovered criminal fine up to a maximum of 30 percent. Upon the determination of the amount of the reward, the Division will transfer the award to the Postal Service which will retain 50 percent for its role in the investigation and distribute the remaining 50 percent to the whistleblower. So, for example, if the Antitrust Division recovers a $50 million fine, after allocating $25 million to the Postal Service, the whistleblower presumptively would be entitled to a recovery of between $3.75 million and $7.5 million of the remaining $25 million. To ensure the program does not encourage whistleblowers to sue companies, the Whistleblower Reward Program makes clear that it creates no private right of action.
For putative targets of an Antitrust Division investigation, the roll-out of the Whistleblower Reward Program makes it more important than ever to adopt and implement antitrust compliance training programs for employees. Those employees are now potential whistleblowers who will be incentivized to report any anticompetitive conduct involving the company and the U.S. mails to the Antitrust Division or the Postal Service. And even if the resulting antitrust investigation does not produce an indictment or a civil lawsuit, the investigation itself can lead to enormous defense costs, distractions, and anxiety in the C-Suite. Moreover, this could be just the beginning. If the Whistleblower Reward Program has the same success as the Antitrust Division’s Amnesty program, the Whistleblower Reward Program is likely to be expanded, no matter the political stripes of the existing presidential administration, into areas of antitrust violations extending well beyond the Postal Service into the larger economy. Indeed, given the tremendous successes of the SEC’s whistleblower program, qui tam suits filed under the False Claims Act, and the broader DOJ Whistleblower Pilot Program, we anticipate the Antitrust Division’s new Whistleblower Reward Program to follow suit.
[1] See Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, “Justice Department's Antitrust Division Announces Whistleblower Rewards Program” (July 8, 2025), available at https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-departments-antitrust-division-announces-whistleblower-rewards-program (last visited July 15, 2025).
[2] See U.S. Dep’t of Justice, “Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program,” available at https://www.justice.gov/criminal/media/1362326/dl?inline (last visited July 28, 2025) (noting that “Starting August 1, 2024, whistleblowers can submit original information to DOJ’s Criminal Division about certain types of corporate crime”).
[3] See U.S. Dep’t of Justice, “Criminal Division Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program,” available at https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-division-corporate-whistleblower-awards-pilot-program (last visited July 15, 2025).
[4] The current and original policies, along with Frequently Asked Questions, and Model Leniency Letters, are available online. See U.S. Dep’t of Justice, “Leniency Policy,” available at https://www.justice.gov/atr/leniency-policy (last visited July 15, 2025).
[5] See Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Whistleblower Rewards Program and Procedures Between the Antitrust Division, United States Department of Justice and the United States Postal Service And the Office Of Inspector General, United States Postal Service (signed May 7, 2025), available at https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1407261/dl?inline (last visited July 15, 2025).
[6] Id. at 1.
