DOJ’s July 17 press release on The Scoular Company’s $10.2 million FCPA resolution led with one line: bribes paid by the Omaha grain company’s customs brokers “benefited persons associated with the criminal operations of a cartel operating at the U.S.-Mexico border.” I read the 52-page deferred prosecution agreement this week. That sentence appears exactly once, tucked into the “Relevant Considerations” section, word for word identical to the press release.
The underlying conduct is plain vanilla. Between 2013 and 2019, Scoular’s brokers paid Mexican officials roughly $2,000 per train to wave through corn shipments that failed dirt and impurity inspections, then invoiced the bribes back as “reinspection fees.” Total bribes topped $400,000; Scoular avoided more than $6.5 million in costs. Under the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions, that’s a straightforward books case: one conspiracy count, a three-year DPA, a $9,769,521 penalty plus $414,351 forfeiture.
Old yardstick: FCPA resolutions get read for bribe totals and monitor terms. New yardstick this month, per the FCPA bar’s reaction: hunt the word “cartel” and call it a policy pivot. Except the nine-page Statement of Facts never mentions one, and the same broker conduct surfaced in a 2025 case against Carlos Leopoldo Alvelais with zero cartel language either.
The DPA’s own arithmetic doesn’t hold up. It cites a $30-60 million Sentencing Guidelines range, applies a 25% cut, and somehow lands at $9.8 million.
Worth reading the DPA’s Statement of Facts yourself before you cite this one as a cartel-enforcement precedent.
Rebecca Lauren