Filing an EAPA Allegation: What Customs Needs to Investigate

An EAPA allegation asks U.S. Customs and Border Protection to investigate antidumping or countervailing duty evasion. It pays the person who files it nothing. For a producer watching imports arrive at prices that leave no room for the duty, the useful question is what changed between the product the competitor sold and the declaration it sent Customs. That mismatch may also support a whistleblower case with a share of the recovery.

What Is an EAPA Allegation?

An EAPA allegation under the Enforce and Protect Act, 19 U.S.C. 1517, concerns goods covered by an antidumping or countervailing duty order entering through a false statement or omission that reduces or avoids the duty. Customs opens an investigation when the information reasonably suggests evasion.

The evidence connects the actual merchandise, the order covering it, the importer and what Customs was told. Product specifications and catalogs show what the business sells. Shipment records connect that product to the importer. The declaration shows the description, origin, value and duty treatment the government received. The point is where those accounts part company.

An EAPA allegation can concern a wrong rate instead of false origin. CBP’s breakdown of alleged schemes includes wrong rates, misclassification and undervaluation as well as transshipment. A producer’s identity and the rate claimed can matter just as much as the country printed on the paperwork.

How Do I File an Allegation for Evaded AD/CVD Orders?

If you want to file an EAPA allegation, speak with our whistleblower experts about how to report the suspected evasion and what your evidence could support. A False Claims Act case pursues money the importer knowingly kept from the government.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay a reward of 15% to 30% of what the government recovers. The difference matters to the competitor losing sales as much as it does to an employee who knows which declaration changed. The business paying the full duty carries a cost the evader skipped, and taxpayers lose the revenue.

For an industry association considering an EAPA allegation and FCA assessment, we examine the product knowledge, pricing and shipment evidence together. That assessment also asks what the importer knew or deliberately avoided learning. If Customs has already considered the allegation, we weigh that history with you as part of the case assessment. We also assess any China tariff evasion the evidence shows.

The Customs Trail Runs Across the Business

The evidence of duty evasion often sits in records produced by different participants. The carrier’s manifest, the supplier’s invoice, the broker’s filing and the importer’s accounts payable tell different parts of the same transaction. Comparing them can expose the change that saved the duty.

For ocean cargo, the Importer Security Filing captures the seller, buyer, manufacturer or supplier, claimed origin, tariff number, container stuffing location and consolidator. The carrier separately files a manifest. Available public vessel manifest data can identify shippers, consignees, cargo and ports, giving a competitor a view into the shipment without access to the importer’s accounting system.

The entry gets the merchandise released. The entry summary states the declared value, classification and duty rate. The goods can leave the port before Customs has the filing that says what duty the importer believes it owes. The final calculation comes through customs liquidation.

A customs broker may prepare the filing, but the importer remains responsible for the duty. The broker can hold the instructions that explain a changed product description. Accounts payable may hold the real invoice while the broker receives a lower one, exposing a declared value below the price paid. Sourcing may know the factory that made the goods.

For goods routed through another country, the production records answer a different question from the shipping records: what actually happened there. Factory and processing records can show whether the claimed manufacturer performed the work.

A Product Can Disappear Into Another Classification

Trade data can help identify where to look for the missing duty. The World Customs Organization’s 2015 paper Mirror Analysis and Revenue Fraud describes comparing what an exporting country records with what the importing country records. Goods missing from one product category on the import side can reappear in a similar category taxed at a lower rate. The paper makes the mechanism concrete:

The paper calls for combining this analysis with field investigators’ experience. That is where a competitor’s product knowledge becomes useful: recognizing what the goods really are, then connecting the trade-data discrepancy to a shipment and its declaration.

EAPA Investigations: Reasonable Suspicion Versus Substantial Evidence

EAPA investigations use reasonable suspicion for interim measures, early steps to secure the duty, and substantial evidence for the final determination of evasion. Opening an investigation is different from deciding that evasion occurred. Our assessment connects the unpaid duty and the business’s knowledge to a whistleblower case.

A Competitor Won the Sigma Case

Island Industries, a competitor and former supplier, brought a False Claims Act case against Sigma Corporation and won after the government declined to join. Sigma imported Chinese welded outlets with a beveled end designed to be welded to a pipe and a threaded end for a sprinkler head or another attachment. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion describes the discrepancy: Sigma marketed the goods as welded outlets, but declared them to Customs as steel couplings carrying no antidumping duty.

Island’s sales manager began looking because Chinese products kept undercutting Island’s prices. Without specialized trade-law experience, he found the antidumping order and the relevant scope ruling. Sigma’s executive overseeing imports testified that the company had never seen either document, both issued in 1992, until 2017 or 2018. The competitor found the documents in a day. The importer had been declaring that no antidumping duty was owed.

The jury found Sigma liable under the False Claims Act. The court tripled the jury’s damages award and entered judgment for $24,256,638 in damages and $1,824,145 in civil penalties. The business losing sales became the whistleblower pursuing the government’s unpaid bill.

The Same Product Problem in the Warehouse

Allied Stone and its president agreed to pay $12.4 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations concerning Chinese quartz. The Department of Justice alleged that the goods were described as marble and crystallized glass, carrying lower duties. It also alleged failures to ensure that manufacturers and third-party importers declared and paid the applicable antidumping and countervailing duties.

The whistleblower’s complaint described a disguise that reached the packaging and the shipping route:

That allegation connects what someone in the warehouse could see to what a trade-data search might show. The product, the route and the business named on the entry all belong in the same inquiry.

Sources

• Congress: Enforce and Protect Act, 2016
• Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: Sigma Corporation amended opinion, August 21, 2025
• Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals: Island Industries opinion stating the Sigma judgment, February 29, 2024
• Department of Justice: Allied Stone customs settlement announcement, August 19, 2025
• World Customs Organization: Mirror Analysis and Revenue Fraud, April 2015

Your Product Knowledge Can Carry a Case

Speak with our whistleblower experts about the declaration that does not match the goods, whether you see the discrepancy in a catalog, a warehouse or the instructions sent to a broker. We build the case with you, find customs fraud whistleblower lawyers who know antidumping disputes, and stay beside you through the outcome.

Together We Make A Difference.