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Congressional Sledgehammer Drops On DHS Cyber Insecurity

Client Alert | 1 min read | 09.27.07

Following a series of tough investigations and oversight hearings on cybersecurity in April and June with more to come, the House Homeland Security Committee dropped the hammer on DHS and its contractors in a letter on September 21, 2007, finding that cyber attacks on federal and contractor IT systems "have resulted in the loss of massive amounts of critical information," characterizing DHS and contractor responses as "misleading" and subject to potential criminal penalties under 18 U.S.C. 1001, and demanding a DHS IG investigation -- and referral for "criminal investigation" if appropriate. With contractors operating over 1,100 federal IT systems subject to the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), future security breaches virtually assure Congressional investigations, as the Homeland Security Committee promised: "The Committee will continue to investigate security breaches, particularly those occurring among commercial contractors."

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Client Alert | 4 min read | 05.18.26

(Not) All’s Weld That Ends Weld: Duty Evasion Scheme Ends in Historic $549.5M FCA Settlement

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the cross-agency Trade Fraud Task Force have upped the ante by an order of magnitude in the government’s pursuit of customs fraud. On May 1, 2026—only a few months after setting its previous record-high customs-related False Claims Act (FCA) settlement of $54.4 million with Ceratizit USA, LLC—the DOJ shattered that record with a $549.5 million settlement with Perfectus Aluminum Inc., its subsidiary Perfectus Aluminum Acquisitions LLC, and a set of four affiliated warehousing companies. The Perfectus settlement resolves allegations that the defendants violated the FCA by evading antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD). The settlement resolves three separate qui tam complaints filed by two individual relators and the Aluminum Extruders Council, an international industry association. Defendants were previously criminally convicted on charges related to the same scheme, and those convictions were affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in 2024....

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