Press Releases

This week, the Justice Department announced that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted its motion to terminate a 1978 consent decree governing police and firefighter employment in Norfolk, Virginia.

Otilio Rodriguez Toledo and Alicia Aispuro Hernandez, husband and wife from Thermal, California, were sentenced for conspiring to smuggle and distribute Mexican pesticides and veterinary drugs that are not approved for use in the United States. Toledo was sentenced to five months in prison followed by 24 months of supervised release. Hernandez was sentenced to time served followed by 18 months of supervised release. Both were ordered to jointly pay $2.19 million in forfeiture.

Today, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division salutes the President’s decision to revoke Executive Order 14036. The Division will use this opportunity to continue its work to recalibrate and modernize the Federal approach to competition policy to suit the needs of our dynamic and innovative economy.

Today, the Department of Justice finds George Washington University (GWU) in violation of federal civil rights law by acting deliberately indifferent to the hostile educational environment for Jewish, American-Israeli, and Israeli students and faculty.

BWI North America Inc., BWI Indiana Inc., and BWI Chassis Dynamics (NA) Inc. (together, the BWI Entities), have agreed to pay $21,660,983 to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by submitting false claims to obtain Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans for which they were not eligible.

An indictment was unsealed today in U.S. District Court charging Jimmy Cherizier, also known as Barbecue, 48, of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Bazile Richardson, also known as Fredo, Fred Lion, Leo Danger, and Lepe Blode, 48, a naturalized U.S. citizen, with leading a conspiracy to transfer funds from the United States to Cherizier to fund his gang activities in Haiti in violation of the U.S sanctions imposed on Cherizier. 

The Justice Department today announced the settlement of litigation challenging former race-based admissions practices at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the U.S. Air Force Academy. The settlement results in dismissal of two lawsuits brought by plaintiff Students for Fair Admissions Inc. The lawsuits challenged race-based admissions at the two military academies as unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment.

The Justice Department announced today the successful completion of an agreement between Suffolk County, New York, Police Department (SCPD) and the Department of Justice. Entered into in 2014, the agreement called for SCPD to improve bias-free policing, increase community engagement, and develop additional policies and training, among other things. With support from the Justice Department, as set forth in a report issued today, SCPD has now achieved sustained substantial compliance with all of the agreement’s terms.

Mufid Fawaz Alkhader, 29, of Schenectady, New York, was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for conspiring to illegally straw purchase a firearm, obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs with a dangerous weapon, and brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

The United States announced today that it has taken into custody 26 fugitives from Mexico facing a range of federal and state criminal charges from around the country, including charges relating to drug-trafficking, hostage-taking, kidnapping, illegal use of firearms, human smuggling, money laundering, the murder of a sheriffs’ deputy, and other crimes. 

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs, with the assistance of the Department’s Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), transferred 14 Mexican nationals serving prison sentences for drug distribution-related convictions in the United States to their home country on Friday. 

A founder of the lender service provider Blueacorn pleaded guilty today in connection with a scheme to fraudulently obtain COVID-19 relief money guaranteed by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).