It can happen with something as ubiquitous and unassuming as poultry.
A five-year price-fixing scheme inflated the price Americans paid for chicken. Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. pleaded guilty in 2021 to a conspiracy to fix prices and rig bids for broiler chicken products — with a sentence that included about $107.9 million in criminal fines.
The federal government hopes it can unearth a lot more of these schemes — which are notoriously difficult to detect and investigate (LINK TO PRIOR BLOG) — through a new Department of Justice whistleblower program. For the first time, the DOJ is offering financial rewards under its DOJ whistleblower programs to those who report antitrust crimes and related offenses. It takes a cue from other successful federal whistleblower programs, offering rewards of up to 30 percent of criminal fines recovered.
“When competitor companies conspire to set prices that benefit themselves, American consumers are cheated,” the Inspector General of the Commerce Department said at the time of the broiler chicken plea.
But it’s important to understand that price-fixing schemes can take place in any industry — even (or perhaps especially) those we don’t often think about. There have been conspiracies to fix prices for seatbelts, airbags and other auto parts. Price fixing happens in the pharmaceutical industry. It can take a different direction from consumers — a Sept. 16 announcement involved a scheme to fix the prices paid to fishermen for their harvests of stone crab claws and spiny lobsters. Or it could involve a more behind-the-scenes industry such as PVC pipe.
During the past decade, DOJ antitrust criminal enforcement has lagged: The division filed 60 criminal cases in fiscal year 2015, compared with 20 in FY 2024 and nine in FY 2023.
The DOJ hopes the new whistleblower rewards program will cut through the secrecy and unearth leads from people who have firsthand knowledge of antitrust and related offenses. This is a key part of the broader DOJ whistleblower programs designed to encourage insiders to step forward.
It seeks reports of “specific, credible, and timely information about illegal agreements to fix prices, rig bids, and allocate markets, as well as other federal criminal violations that impact, distort, or undermine the competitive process or market competition.”
If you know about or suspect antitrust violations — or other wrongdoing (there are a plethora of whistleblower programs involving different types of fraud and crime) — we recommend engaging an experienced whistleblower attorney early in the process to protect your interests and successfully present your information. Keller Grover offers free and confidential consultations; we can advise you about your case and about the best path forward. We are uniquely positioned to represent antitrust whistleblowers under DOJ whistleblower programs, with more than 30 years of combined experience litigating antitrust, fraud, and employment cases and billions in recoveries for our clients.