A recent price-fixing guilty plea provides a roadmap for antitrust whistleblowers looking to report wrongdoing and receive a reward. Last month, DOJ announced the guilty plea of Dennis Dopico, who conspired to fix seafood prices in Florida. DOJ alleged that Dopico conspired for years with other wholesalers to fix the prices of stone crab claws and spiny lobsters, driving down the prices paid to the fishermen who caught them.
This guilty plea highlights DOJ’s current emphasis on prosecuting criminal antitrust violations. To that end, in July 2025, DOJ launched an Antitrust Whistleblower Program designed to bust precisely this kind of scheme by paying rewards for information leading to successful antitrust criminal prosecutions. Several Whistleblower Partners attorneys played key roles in encouraging and shaping this program, which is designed to bring forward tipsters who can expose difficult-to-detect conspiracies in highly concentrated markets.
Could a whistleblower have used the new program to expose Dopico’s scheme? It’s possible, though these cases typically take many months or years to build. On the other hand, DOJ had smoking-gun evidence that the best whistleblowers can bring forward—private text messages from Dopico to his co-conspirators admitting that they were “working together” and “matching ... prices.”
If a whistleblower provided those text messages, could they receive a reward? Likely so. Under the new program, whistleblowers can receive 15-30% of the criminal fines recovered based on their information. Here, Dopico pleaded guilty to violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act—a charge covered by the whistleblower program with a maximum $1 million criminal fine. The investigation is also ongoing, and if other co-conspirators and their companies face similar prosecutions, the total criminal fines could easily exceed the $1 million threshold. The maximum criminal penalty for corporations in such cases is a $100 million criminal fine, though it can be increased to twice the company’s gain or twice the loss suffered by the victims if either amount is greater than $100 million.
These award provisions are modeled after the False Claims Act, which pays rewards to those who report fraud on the government. Indeed, the False Claims Act can itself be a tool for antitrust enforcement when the collusive conduct costs the government. For example, several Whistleblower Partners attorneys represented a whistleblower who exposed a massive bid-rigging conspiracy to inflate the price of fuel on U.S. military basis in South Korea. Our client’s case led to a $363 million DOJ recovery and a $37 million reward for our client. Based on that success, DOJ is now broadening its use of whistleblowers to help eliminate antitrust violations in purely private markets.
Anyone working in a concentrated market should be aware of these illegal conspiracies to artificially disrupt trade. An experienced whistleblower attorney can help you figure out whether you have a case under the new Antitrust Whistleblower Program or the False Claims Act—or both—and how to report your information safely while maintaining your eligibility for an award.
