Tungston rod importer pays $54.4M to settle DOJ tariff fraud allegations
An industrial products distributor has agreed to pay $54.4 million to settle allegations, first made by a whistleblower, that it evaded tariffs and violated the federal False Claims Act (FCA).
Ceratizit, based in Charlotte, N.C., and headquartered in Luxembourg, engaged in “a transshipping scheme, a misclassification scheme and a failure-to-mark scheme, alleged the complaint, filed in 2022 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by whistleblower Mark Stover, who worked in the metalworking industry.
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