Antitrust Whistleblower Rewards: Who Can Qualify Under the Justice Department and Postal Service Program?

The antitrust whistleblower rewards program can pay eligible individuals who provide original, voluntary information about criminal antitrust conduct and related crimes. If you know who set the bid ceiling, who could see another bidder’s offer or why supposedly competing businesses shared profits, you may know how the agreement worked. That knowledge can help turn an auction result or a suspicious price into an account of who arranged it and how.

Under the deferred prosecution agreement behind the first award, EBLOCK admitted that fake bids were intended to make real buyers pay more, using dealerships’ names without their consent.

What Is the Antitrust Whistleblower Rewards Program?

The program brings together the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, the U.S. Postal Service and its investigative offices to reward information that produces a qualifying criminal recovery. It reaches private markets as well as public purchasing, with an identifiable harm to the Postal Service among its requirements.

The agencies’ memorandum of understanding supplies the program’s eligibility conditions and award framework. The public launch was July 8, 2025. The Antitrust Division decides whether to make an award.

What Crimes Can I Report?

Price fixing, bid rigging and market allocation are central to the program. The Justice Department’s program page identifies these criminal agreements between competitors as the conduct whistleblowers can help expose.

The memorandum reaches further. It covers criminal violations of the Sherman Act, federal crimes used to carry out or conceal those violations, federal crimes affecting public procurement, and federal crimes affecting competition investigations or proceedings. That public procurement category includes federal, state and local purchasing.

How Do I Know If I Have Enough Original Information to Support a Successful Whistleblower Application?

Original information can come from your own business experiences, communications and observations, or from independent analysis of public or private data. Our whistleblower experts assess what that information adds and how it connects to the conduct.

The memorandum calls for truthful, complete information. A firsthand account can explain who agreed to a bid ceiling, which companies exchanged information and what happened afterward. The Justice Department also looks for how competition suffered, including effects on prices, the availability of better products and customer choice.

What the agencies already know, how you obtained the information and any earlier internal report belong in our assessment with you.

Can Anyone Be a Whistleblower?

The antitrust reward is for eligible individuals. The program has specific conditions concerning the person’s role and the source of the information, so understanding the business is one part of the assessment.

Your role and how you learned what you know shape the case. Our experts work through those questions with you and antitrust whistleblower counsel.

Questions about the antitrust reward exclusion for a leader or coercer, your own participation, cooperation duties or immunity are reasons to speak with our experts. We also address internal reporting, anonymity and retaliation with you.

Why Does the Postal Service Connection Matter?

The Postal Inspection Service must identify harm to the Postal Service, its revenues or its property. The memorandum says that harm need not be substantial.

The first announced award involved a private used-car auction business. In the government’s account of the criminal case, participants sent documents supporting the scheme through the U.S. Mail. A postal connection can therefore arise in the paperwork behind a private transaction, beyond contracts in which the Postal Service is the buyer.

How Much Money Can I Earn as a Whistleblower?

The usual total antitrust whistleblower reward is 15% to 30% of qualifying money the government recovers. The Antitrust Division decides the amount in consultation with its postal partners.

The antitrust whistleblower fine threshold is at least $1 million. The memorandum covers a criminal conviction and fine meeting that threshold, or an equivalent recovery under a deferred prosecution agreement or non-prosecution agreement. An antitrust reward can therefore follow a DPA penalty as well as a criminal fine recovered after conviction. The percentage applies to the qualifying money recovered, rather than the value of all sales affected by the scheme.

When multiple whistleblowers share an antitrust reward, the percentage framework applies to their combined award. The department allocates that total among them according to their contributions and the other award factors.

What Does the Justice Department Consider When Deciding a Whistleblower Reward?

The Justice Department considers the usefulness, reliability and completeness of the information, along with the whistleblower’s continuing assistance. The memorandum specifically recognizes help explaining complex transactions, interpreting key evidence and identifying productive lines of inquiry.

It also considers whether the information saves government resources and helps recover money, and whether the whistleblower has received another government award or a related civil recovery.

The First Antitrust Whistleblower Award Followed Rigged Auctions

The first announced payment was $1 million in EBLOCK’s case, announced on January 29, 2026, rather than a promise about another report.

EBLOCK’s admitted auction scheme combined coordinated purchases, fake resale bids and shared profits; its case page explains what the reported information exposed.

EBLOCK’s repeated efforts ultimately stopped the conduct in February 2022.

Knowing what continued after the system changed could explain far more than the system’s settings alone.

The conduct had ended before the reward program opened. In announcing the award, the Justice Department expressly said that new information about criminal activity that has already ended can still support a significant award.

Why Insider Knowledge Adds to Bid Data

An eligible report needs information about the conduct, and the evidence discussion explains how an insider can connect that conduct to the records.

The 2018 construction-bidding review proposes connecting bidder and subcontractor records with tender prices, winners, individual prices and quantities. That is a concrete view of the business behind a bid. Who appeared on the offer, who won the work and who participated as a subcontractor are different parts of the transaction. An employee familiar with those relationships can give the data meaning.

When Bid Rigging Also Supports a False Claims Act Case

Bid rigging that produces knowingly false claims for government payment can also support a False Claims Act case. A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

The Hanjin settlement identifies a qui tam case behind the military-fuel FCA investigation, a reporting route separate from the antitrust reward program.

The Justice Department’s separate Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program has its own covered conduct and award terms. We assess which reward program or whistleblower case fits the conduct and the evidence, including overlaps involving government payments.

The People Behind the Bids

If you know who agreed the price, controlled the bidding access or shared the proceeds, talk with our whistleblower experts about your antitrust whistleblower case. We bring the scheme into focus, find antitrust whistleblower lawyers suited to the conduct and stand beside you throughout the case.