In the footsteps of similar initiatives by the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) Criminal Division, the Antitrust Division has announced its first-ever Whistleblower Rewards Program. Extending an established program with the U.S. Postal Service (“USPS”), the program purports to focus on “postal-related antitrust crimes” that “that harm consumers, taxpayers, and free market competition across industries from healthcare to agriculture.” While the exact scope of the covered conduct is unclear, the Antitrust Division has signalled it remains focused on the incentives for the reporting of cartel offenses at a time when traditional leniency applications have been declining globally. 

Why the partnership with USPS? 

As things stand, there is no statutory mechanism in place that would allow the Antitrust Division to issue rewards. As reflected in a Memorandum of Understanding, the Antitrust Division announced this program in partnership with USPS. To get around this hurdle without establishing new law, the Whistleblower Rewards Program leverages USPS’s authority to collect fines, penalties and forfeitures arising out of matters affecting the Postal Service and to pay “one-half of all penalties and forfeitures imposed for violations” to the informant.  Given how frequently mail is used in antitrust matters, it should not be difficult for the agencies to identify mailings made in furtherance of a cartel, and therefore justify the involvement of USPS.

The Postal Service is already a key partner of the Antitrust Division’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force, and the two agencies have collaborated closely in the past. For example, USPS assisted the Antitrust Division’s federal antitrust investigation into price-fixing, bid-rigging and other anticompetitive conduct in the generic pharmaceutical industry.

The new Whistleblower Rewards Program complements the Antitrust Division’s longstanding leniency program, which provides self-reporting individuals and organizations with the opportunity to avoid criminal charges for participating in an illegal conspiracy if they are the first to self-report. 

The Highlights

• The DOJ’s reporting lines are now open to qualified individuals: Individuals (not companies) can submit a whistleblower report online or anonymously through an attorney. Informants must provide information that is voluntary, original (not previously known to the DOJ or USPS), and not public. While informants are not disqualified for participating in the criminal conduct, they must not have “coerced another party to participate in the illegal activity” or “clearly” have been the “leader or originator of that activity.” 
• The reported crime must have harmed USPS: Awards can only be issued for “Eligible Criminal Violations,” which must affect the Postal Service, its revenues, or property. While this suggests a narrow scope, significant amounts of business activity directly or indirectly relate to shipped goods and could therefore affect USPS’s revenue or property, and notably, the bar for harm is quite low. According to the MOU, there must be an “identifiable harm,” though the “harm need not be material or otherwise pose a substantial detriment to the Postal Service.” It remains to be seen how the DOJ and USPS will interpret the applicable requirements, though the DOJ’s press release (in particular, its reference to targeting conduct “spanning across industries from healthcare to agriculture”) suggests the agencies view the program as a broad one. 
• Monetary rewards may be significant, but are discretionary: If program requirements are met, whistleblowers may receive between 15-30% of the monetary sanctions collected if their information leads to criminal antitrust fines, penalties, or recoveries totalling at least $1 million. This includes recoveries from deferred prosecution agreements or non-prosecution agreements. While payments have the potential to be significant (as companies face steep fines for antitrust violations), they remain a matter of discretion for the Antitrust Division. The MOU provides the following example: “if the recovered criminal fine is $2 million, and the Antitrust Division determines that the appropriate whistleblower award is 20% of that amount ($400,000), the portion of the criminal fine remitted to the Postal Service will be $800,000, with the Postal Service paying the whistleblower $400,000.

The evolving U.S. approach to whistleblower rewards

Over the past year or so, the DOJ has been busy developing new initiatives to incentivize the voluntary disclosure of corporate crime through whistleblower rewards. Although the use of whistleblower rewards remains rare amongst the world’s major economies, they are increasingly common in the United States. 

Last year, the DOJ Criminal Division announced a new Whistleblower Rewards Program to report information about certain types of corporate crime with the prospect of a reward. The program was designed to “fill the gaps” left by the existing patchwork of whistleblower rewards programs in the U.S., originally focused on foreign and domestic corruption, crimes involving financial institutions, and healthcare fraud involving private insurers. The Criminal Division recently updated its Whistleblower Rewards Program in May 2025 to reflect the new administration’s enforcement priorities, including fraud against or deception of the U.S. government, trade, tariff and customs fraud, immigration offenses, and sanctions offenses (see our blog here). 

Whistle while you work: compliance implications for companies

While the impact of this new program remains to be seen, the prospect of a potentially very significant monetary reward may very well incentivize potential informants to pursue voluntary disclosure. In this context, companies should ensure their antitrust compliance programs are up-to-date and reflect the Antitrust Division’s Corporate Compliance Programs in Criminal Antitrust Investigations guidance, which notably indicates that an effective compliance program should allow employees to “report potential antitrust violations anonymously or confidentially and without fear of retaliation.” Beyond merely having a reporting hotline or similar mechanism in place, it is important for companies to ensure that their whistleblower procedures provide for timely review by legal personnel of any complaints that could foreshadow formal whistleblowing.