Related: Texas’ top 10 white-collar crime cases of 2025<\/a><\/p>\nPaul\u00a0Coggins, a former U.S. prosecutor for the Northern District of Texas, said that he was troubled by the pattern. \u201cLooking at these numbers, I would say white-collar is being hampered,\u201d said Coggins, who is now a partner at Troutman Pepper Locke in Dallas specializing in white-collar defense.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was particularly troubled by the drop in federal environmental and tax sentences. \u201cThat is a reflection of the EPA in bringing these cases,\u201d Coggins said. \u201cAnd frankly, a reflection that the IRS has been starved of resources.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The DOJ has redirected tax investigators and FBI agents from their traditional duties to immigration enforcement, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shows this is the golden age of tax fraud. We used to make a lot of tax cases because the [Criminal Investigation Division] was the best in the world at tracking money,\u201d Coggins said. \u201cBut they have been starved of funding.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The DOJ\u2019s \u2018brain drain\u2019 and resource cuts\u00a0<\/p>\n
Former federal prosecutors like Jeff Ansley and Ashlee Martin said the drop-off in white-collar sentences also coincides with the loss of several thousand prosecutors nationwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re seeing an incredible brain drain,\u201d said Ansley, with Vedder Price in Dallas. \u201c\u2026 From what I\u2019ve seen, I think easily 25 percent of federal prosecutors have left their offices \u2014 from Washington, D.C. down to the smallest office in the department.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The Justice Department has not publicly released a definitive attrition rate for prosecutors alone, but reports and watchdog agencies estimate that about 2,800 DOJ attorneys have left. As a result, the number of DOJ attorneys has fallen from about 10,000 to 7,000 \u2014 one of the largest declines in several decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some cases, it\u2019s because they\u2019ve been fired,\u201d Ansley said. \u201cIn some cases, because they resigned or retired early, or just left and did something else because they weren\u2019t satisfied with the work they were doing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martin, a partner with Gerger Hennessy Martin & Peterson in Houston, said the \u201cinstitutional knowledge and expertise\u201d lost because of the exodus of thousands of prosecutors cannot be easily replaced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey left,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, it will take a long time for someone who hasn\u2019t done these white-collar cases to learn how to do them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the turnover, Martin said, inexperienced prosecutors are more likely to make mistakes in preparing a criminal case, ultimately leading to more dismissals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019re seeing more examples of cases that were not fully investigated before they were brought,\u201d Martin said. \u201cThey have not done a thorough review of the evidence during discovery. Things that normally would not meet a federal threshold.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ansley said that even simple fraud cases are \u201cat least relatively complex,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhite-collar prosecutions are also hampered when field agents are assigned elsewhere. Every prosecution begins with the agents,\u201d Ansley said. \u201cThe FBI, Postal Inspection Service and IRS. They investigate. \u2026 They are the ones who find the evidence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen so many of them have either left or deployed to immigration cases,\u201d Ansley said, \u201cyou\u2019re going to see the pipeline of cases that are brought to prosecutors to even consider prosecuting \u2014 that\u2019s going to be reduced significantly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The decline in white-collar prosecutions has been ongoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cNo one has emphasized what I would consider traditional white-collar crimes in a long time,\u201d said Matt Orwig, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been a lot of cuts in the Department of Justice, except for the border districts,\u201d said Orwig, now retired. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Although the Southern and Western judicial districts of Texas cover the 1,254-mile Texas-Mexico border, Orwig said the Northern and Eastern judicial districts of Texas also are considered border districts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Eastern District extends from Beaumont and Tyler to Texarkana and Collin County, including Plano, McKinney and Frisco. The Northern District of Texas includes Dallas, Fort Worth, Lubbock and Amarillo. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Through \u201ccuts by attrition,\u201d he said, all four Texas districts may have lost resources. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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Many prosecutors also left after receiving an email, known as the \u201cFork in the Road\u201d memo, by the Office of Personnel Management to roughly 2 million federal civilian employees on Jan. 28, 2025. It offered eligible employees the opportunity to voluntarily resign through a \u201cdeferred resignation program.\u201d Employees could choose to resign but continue receiving full pay and benefits through Sept. 30, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In all, some 154,000 federal employees ultimately accepted deferred resignation or related buyout offers, representing about 6.7% of the civilian federal workforce.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are people who took this opportunity \u2014 this \u2018fork in the road\u2019 \u2014 to essentially leave the office and continue to get paid for a period of time,\u201d said Andrew S. Robbins, a former federal prosecutor in the Northern District. \u201cMaybe some of those people were leaving regardless, and others may not have, and decided it was a good opportunity. They could leave and put some money in their pocket and go into something different.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Robbins, now with Vedder Price in Dallas, said he decided to leave the civil division of the Northern District of Texas in November 2025, but struggled with the decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Robbins said attorneys in the private sector can make $200,000 plus bonuses in their first year, compared to a federal prosecutor with a starting salary of some $90,000. \u201cThere was always a gap, and I think it has become much more dramatic,\u201d he said. \u201cThen layer upon that inflation, growing housing costs and other factors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Various prosecutors said they struggled as they believed the mission and principles of the DOJ had changed. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Orwig said a Justice Department memorandum by then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in May 2025 highlighted the focus away from white-collar crime prosecution. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The memo \u2014 \u201cFocus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime\u201d \u2014 outlined the DOJ\u2019s enforcement priorities and policies of its Criminal Division for prosecuting corporate and white-collar crimes in the new administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The memo acknowledged that white-collar crime posed a significant threat to U.S. interests. It added that \u201cunchecked fraud in U.S. markets and government programs robs hardworking Americans and harms the public. \u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the memo added: \u201cHowever, overbroad and unchecked corporate and white-collar enforcement burdens U.S. businesses and harms U.S. interests. The vast majority of American businesses are legitimate enterprises working to deliver value for their shareholders and quality products and services for customers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The memo said, \u201cProsecutors must avoid overreach that punishes risk-taking and hinders innovation. For these reasons, the Division\u2019s policies must strike an appropriate balance between the need to effectively identify, investigate, and prosecute corporate and individuals\u2019 criminal wrongdoing while minimizing unnecessary burdens on American enterprise.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ansley said he questioned Bondi\u2019s claim that prosecutors overreach. \u201cI think that has happened,\u201d Ansley said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen it happen before, once or twice myself. But it is a statistically irrelevant percentage of cases in which that happens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, he said he believed the memo was \u201ccode speak\u201d intended to reduce focus on fraud cases and \u201cprotect people and companies who are friendly to this administration.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Impact on Texas\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coggins said he was concerned that the drop-off in federal white-collar prosecutions in Texas was more troubling than in other states, such as New York. In Texas, he said, county district attorneys rarely handle white-collar prosecutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe DA\u2019s offices in Texas, unlike the New York Manhattan district attorney\u2019s office, do mainly reactive crime: murder, robbery, rape, burglary, theft, those types of crimes,\u201d he said. \u201cThat consumes those offices. That means if a white-collar case is going to get worked, it is likely going to get worked in the U.S. attorney\u2019s office. If the U.S. attorney\u2019s offices are not handling much white-collar work, that means nobody is doing it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Department of Justice attorneys have decreased the number of prosecutions for white-collar crimes nationwide and in Texas.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-368139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}