The Justice Department announced Tuesday that a cross-agency task force targeting tariff evasion and customs fraud has passed $1 billion in criminal and civil recoveries, penalties, forfeitures, and charged losses in less than a year, unveiling the milestone at a Chicago press conference alongside charges in two jewelry-import cases valued at more than $930 million.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald, who heads the Justice Department's National Fraud Enforcement Division, said the figure covers cases resolved and pending since the task force launched in August 2025 with the Department of Homeland Security.

About $150 million of the total is tied to still-pending matters, CNN reported, citing figures the task force shared exclusively with the network.

"This billion-dollar milestone demonstrates that the United States and the National Fraud Enforcement Division will no longer allow the integrity of our country's borders and markets to be compromised for illicit profit," McDonald said.

The two Chicago cases announced Tuesday center on gold jewelry routed through third countries.

Prosecutors allege that Raj and Veena Kohli, operators of California-based Surya International, imported about $693 million in jewelry from India and the United Arab Emirates between roughly August 2020 and May 2024, falsely declaring Singapore as the country of origin and evading more than $38 million in duties.

A separate case charges Illinois wholesaler Narain Gulabani with importing roughly $240 million in jewelry while listing Oman or Singapore as the origin, dodging more than $13.6 million in duties from about May 2016 to October 2021.

The Gulabani charges pushed the task force past the $1 billion threshold.

The task force's largest resolution to date remains a $549.5 million False Claims Act settlement with Perfectus Aluminum and affiliates, which prosecutors said disguised Chinese aluminum extrusions as pallets to evade antidumping and countervailing duties.

Officials also cited a $54.4 million settlement with Ceratizit USA, a $6.3 million criminal fine against Boise Cascade for illegally imported birch plywood, and an $8 million penalty against Royal Sovereign International tied to defective air conditioners linked to more than 40 fires and one death.

Alongside the milestone, DOJ said it is standing up a new Global Trade and Commerce Enforcement Section and issued a joint guide with DHS on trade fraud laws, enforcement priorities, and voluntary self-disclosure options.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection separately reported more than $2.1 billion in commercial trade penalties assessed this fiscal year and 35 parties barred from federal business.

The task force was created just as President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs took effect, with rates as high as 50% on some countries.

The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled the president lacked authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose them, but McDonald said DOJ will prosecute duty evasion "regardless of when those duties were enacted or evolve over time."