Criminal Investigation Settlements: Pleas, DPAs, and Corporate Deals

Almost every criminal investigation ends in a negotiated resolution rather than a trial. Criminal investigation settlements take several forms depending on who the target is: a plea bargain if the defendant is a person, a deferred prosecution agreement or non-prosecution agreement if the defendant is a company, and often a coordinated package that blends criminal penalties with civil payments, forfeiture, and regulatory reforms. The terms are shaped less by any single factor than by the strength of the evidence, the defendant’s cooperation, the collateral consequences a conviction would trigger, and the sentencing gap between pleading and losing at trial.

How Most Criminal Cases Actually End

Trials are rare. In federal court during fiscal year 2022, 89.5% of defendants resolved their cases with guilty pleas, 1.9% were convicted at trial, and 0.4% were acquitted.¹²³

What drives those numbers is the sentencing gap between a plea and a trial loss. The Vera Institute found that custodial sentences handed down after trial run on average 64% longer than sentences from plea deals.² The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers describes the federal differential more sharply: trial sentences run roughly three times higher than plea sentences for comparable offenses, and in some cases the multiple reaches eight or ten.⁴ Defense lawyers and researchers call this the “trial penalty,” and it reshapes the entire calculation. When exercising the right to a jury trial could triple a prison term, negotiation becomes the rational default.

The Supreme Court recognized plea bargaining as constitutional in its 1970 decision in Brady v. United States, and the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance now describes it as a “defining feature” of the criminal justice system.⁵

What a Plea Bargain Actually Is

A plea bargain is an agreement in which the defendant pleads guilty to some or all charges in exchange for concessions from the prosecution. Those concessions typically take the form of reduced charges, fewer counts, or a recommendation of a lighter sentence. Courts treat these agreements as contracts. If the defendant breaches, the government is released from its obligations. If the government breaches, a judge may allow the defendant to withdraw the plea or order specific performance.⁶

Several guardrails apply. Federal judges cannot participate directly in plea negotiations, and they retain final authority over sentencing regardless of what the prosecution recommends.⁶ A defendant may plead guilty only if they actually committed the crime and admit to doing so before a judge.⁷ Under McCarthy v. United States, the plea must be voluntary and the defendant must understand its consequences.

What Shapes the Deal You’re Offered

The strength of the government’s case is only one input. Research compiled by the Bureau of Justice Assistance identifies the seriousness of the offense, the defendant’s criminal history, pretrial detention status, and the type of defense counsel as significant factors in plea outcomes.⁵ Being held pretrial increases the likelihood of accepting a plea by 46%.²

Race matters too. The Vera Institute reports that the odds of receiving a plea offer that includes incarceration are nearly 70% greater for Black defendants than for white defendants, and that Black men receive the least favorable deals overall.²

Settling Before Charges Are Even Filed

Investigations often run for months or years before any formal charge. Healthcare fraud investigations involving Medicare or Medicaid have stretched to three years before the target even learned they were under scrutiny.⁸ That window matters, because in some states a defense lawyer can resolve a matter before the prosecutor decides whether to file at all.

Pre-filing intervention in California, for example, involves submitting letters to the filing deputy that lay out evidentiary weaknesses, constitutional problems with the investigation (such as illegal searches or Miranda violations), uninterviewed witnesses, and mitigating facts about the client.⁹ Early restitution, enrollment in treatment programs, and character references can all shift the prosecutor’s calculus.¹⁰

The possible outcomes include a declination (a “DA reject”), a reduction from felony to misdemeanor, routing into a diversion program, or resolution as a civil restitution claim.⁹ Because the case never enters the court system, a favorable pre-filing result avoids a public record, protects professional licenses, and spares the defendant the collateral consequences of a formal arrest.¹¹

Corporate Settlements: DPAs and NPAs

When the target is a company, the settlement toolkit expands. The Department of Justice treats Deferred Prosecution Agreements and Non-Prosecution Agreements as an “important middle ground” between declining to prosecute and securing a corporate conviction.¹² Under a DPA, the government files charges but agrees to defer prosecution for a set period, usually three years, while the company pays fines, admits to specific facts, implements compliance reforms, and cooperates with ongoing investigations. If the company meets every obligation, the charges are dismissed.¹³ An NPA works similarly but without the formal filing of charges.

These tools emerged in the early 1990s. By May 2009, 140 had been negotiated since the first two in 1993.¹⁴ Use has accelerated, particularly in antitrust: the DOJ’s Antitrust Division entered 11 DPAs between 2019 and 2023, with mean total payments of $74.8 million per case.¹³

Prosecutors weigh several factors when choosing between a DPA, an NPA, and a full prosecution: how serious the offense is, how pervasive the wrongdoing was inside the company, whether the company self-reported, the depth of its cooperation and remediation, the quality of its compliance program, and the collateral consequences a conviction would impose on innocent employees, shareholders, and the public.¹²

Collateral consequences often decide it. In the Teva Pharmaceuticals price-fixing case, the DOJ explicitly noted that a conviction “likely would result in the Company’s mandatory exclusion from participation in any federal healthcare programs.” Teva received a DPA requiring $225 million in penalties and the divestiture of a drug product line, the first antitrust DPA to include such a remedy.¹⁵¹⁶

One rule applies across all corporate resolutions: they are not supposed to shield individuals. Under DOJ policy, corporate DPAs and NPAs should not provide protection for individual wrongdoers, and any exception requires written approval from the relevant Assistant Attorney General or U.S. Attorney.¹²

The DOJ’s 2026 Corporate Enforcement Policy

On March 10, 2026, the Department of Justice released its first department-wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy, replacing a patchwork of component-specific and regional policies with a single framework for all corporate criminal cases except antitrust.¹⁷ Companies that voluntarily self-disclose, fully cooperate, and remediate in a timely fashion receive a presumption that the DOJ will decline to prosecute, absent aggravating circumstances.¹⁸

Companies that fall short of formal voluntary self-disclosure but still report in good faith and cooperate can receive a Non-Prosecution Agreement lasting fewer than three years, no compliance monitor, and a fine reduction of 50% to 75%.¹⁷ The policy also expands what counts as a red flag. The recidivism look-back now covers similar misconduct within the last five years, plus any “similar misconduct the entity otherwise engaged in” with no stated time limit.¹⁹

Why Collateral Consequences Push Toward Settlement

For many corporate defendants, the fine is less important than what the settlement prevents. A criminal conviction can trigger suspension or debarment from federal contracting, a consequence widely described as a “death knell” because it blocks new contracts, renewals, and task orders across every federal agency.²⁰ Debarment typically lasts up to three years, but the reputational and operational damage can outlast the formal period. Certain statutes, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, make debarment automatic upon conviction.²¹

In healthcare, a fraud conviction typically means exclusion from treating Medicare and Medicaid patients, effectively shutting the provider down.⁸²²²³ Breach of a CIA can itself become grounds for exclusion.

For individual professionals, the stakes include their licenses. A physician who pleads to even a misdemeanor can lose the right to practice.⁸ These downstream consequences give prosecutors leverage and help explain why so many targets settle cases they might otherwise contest.

Multi-Agency Global Settlements

Large corporate investigations increasingly involve several federal agencies at once. The DOJ’s Justice Manual instructs attorneys to consider all potential criminal, civil, regulatory, and administrative remedies from the moment a case opens, and to coordinate with counterparts to avoid duplicative penalties.²⁴

The November 2023 Binance resolution illustrates how coordinated settlement works. The cryptocurrency exchange resolved investigations by FinCEN ($3.4 billion, the largest penalty in Treasury history), OFAC ($968 million, also a record), the DOJ, and the CFTC, all announced on the same day. Binance admitted to willfully failing to file over 100,000 suspicious activity reports and executing more than 1.67 million trades involving users in sanctioned countries including Iran and North Korea. The deal included a five-year monitorship giving Treasury access to the company’s books, records, and systems.²⁵

TD Bank’s 2024 resolution followed the same template. FinCEN assessed $1.3 billion for Bank Secrecy Act violations, the Federal Reserve fined $123.5 million, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency imposed a $450 million penalty along with growth restrictions. The bank admitted it had willfully failed to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program and had failed to report approximately $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions.²⁵ Each agency’s piece targeted a different aspect of the same underlying failures.

Healthcare Fraud and the False Claims Act

Healthcare fraud settlements are the single largest category of government recoveries, and the False Claims Act is the primary vehicle. In fiscal year 2025, FCA settlements and judgments hit a record $6.8 billion, with $5.7 billion coming from healthcare. Since the FCA was strengthened in 1986, total recoveries have exceeded $85 billion.²⁶

The FCA imposes treble damages, three times the government’s loss, plus per-claim penalties ranging from $10,781 to $21,563.²⁷ The per-claim structure is what makes the arithmetic so punishing. A provider that submits thousands of false billing claims faces penalties that multiply quickly into the millions or billions.

A defining feature of FCA enforcement is the qui tam provision, which lets private citizens, often company insiders, file suit on behalf of the government and share in the recovery. In fiscal year 2025, whistleblowers filed a record 1,297 qui tam suits, yielding over $5.3 billion in recoveries. Recent healthcare settlements include Gilead Sciences at $176 million over allegations of using speaker programs to induce prescriptions, and Independent Health Association at up to $98 million for submitting unsupported diagnosis codes.²⁶

What Happens After the Settlement

Paying a fine is rarely the end. Most corporate agreements require ongoing compliance measures, and many require an independent monitor who oversees the company’s reforms and reports to the government. The DOJ’s May 2025 memorandum on monitor selection overhauled how these arrangements work, imposing hourly rate caps, mandatory budget submissions, and proportionality requirements to end what critics called a “blank check” approach to monitorship costs.²⁸

The policy requires at least biannual three-way meetings between the company, the monitor, and the Criminal Division to prevent overreach. Monitorships must be “narrowly tailored” and imposed only when demonstrably necessary.²⁸ The Binance monitorship, which includes dual monitors appointed by the DOJ and FinCEN respectively, has been described as one of the most complex in recent history.²⁵

Criticism of monitorships has centered on the selection process and financial incentives. Companies typically nominate their own monitor candidates, and monitors are paid by the companies they oversee. Academic proposals have called for a dedicated interagency Office of Monitorships to professionalize the function and shift compensation away from hourly billing toward outcome-based structures.²⁹

When a Civil Case Runs Alongside the Criminal One

Criminal investigations often overlap with civil lawsuits built on the same facts, and that creates a constitutional problem for defendants. The Fifth Amendment protects individuals from self-incrimination, but invoking it in a civil proceeding can draw an adverse inference, letting the judge or jury assume the worst. Testifying in the civil case, on the other hand, creates a record prosecutors can use.²⁴

Courts can grant a stay of civil proceedings while a defendant faces criminal charges on the same facts, but they are not required to. Judges weigh the impact on the defendant’s constitutional rights, the harm to the plaintiff from delay, and whether judicial efficiency would be served by letting the criminal case resolve first. Stays are most likely when the defendant has been indicted for a serious offense involving the same conduct at issue in the civil case.

Settling a civil claim while criminal charges are pending is legal but constrained. The law prohibits any agreement that ties a civil payment to a witness’s testimony, silence, or the outcome of the criminal case. Federal law criminalizes giving or receiving anything of value in exchange for testimony or a witness’s absence, and courts routinely void settlement agreements that attempt to “suppress, stifle, or stay” a criminal prosecution.³⁰ A victim can tell a prosecutor they are satisfied with a civil resolution, but the criminal prosecution remains under the government’s sole control.

What Victims Actually Get

Victims occupy an awkward position in criminal settlements. The Crime Victims’ Rights Act of 2004 grants them the right to be notified of proceedings, to be heard at sentencing and other key stages, and to receive “full and timely restitution.” Under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act, courts must order restitution for the full amount of each victim’s losses regardless of the defendant’s ability to pay.³¹

Actually collecting is another matter. In complex fraud cases, victims often cannot trace their money to recoverable assets. Prosecutors use forfeiture, seizing the proceeds of crime, as a complementary tool to freeze assets and create a pool for victim compensation. The Attorney General has discretion to distribute forfeited funds to victims through remission petitions or by using forfeited property to satisfy outstanding restitution orders.³¹

In corporate settlements resolved through DPAs and NPAs, victim compensation gets more uncertain. The Basel Institute on Governance has documented a pattern in which large fines are paid to sovereign states while actual victims receive nothing, particularly in corruption and bribery cases where identifying who was harmed is itself contested.³² The DOJ’s 2024 Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program allows tipsters to receive up to 30% of the first $100 million in forfeited proceeds, though the program has not yet reported any actual awards.³³

1
Pew Research Center. Fewer Than 1% of Defendants in Federal Criminal Cases Were Acquitted in 2022
2
Vera Institute of Justice. In the Shadows: A Review of the Research on Plea Bargaining
3
American Bar Association. Plea Bargain Task Force
4
NACDL. The Trial Penalty
5
Bureau of Justice Assistance. Plea Bargaining Research Summary
6
Legal Information Institute. Plea Bargain
7
U.S. Department of Justice. Plea Bargaining
8
LSU Law. Criminal Settlements
9
Zak Fisher Law. Pre-Filing Intervention Criminal Defense California
10
EG Attorneys. Criminal Case Settlement
11
Cron Israel and Stark. CA Pre-Filing Intervention
12
U.S. Department of Justice. Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations
13
University of Chicago Business Law Review. Deferred Prosecution Agreements in Antitrust Enforcement
14
U.S. Government Accountability Office. Corporate Crime: DOJ Has Taken Steps to Better Track Its Use of Deferred and Non-Prosecution Agreements
15
U.S. Department of Justice. Teva Pharmaceuticals DPA
16
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. Teva Settles Price-Fixing Charges With U.S. DOJ
17
U.S. Department of Justice. Department of Justice Releases First-Ever Corporate Enforcement Policy for All Criminal Cases
18
U.S. Department of Justice. Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy
19
Covington. DOJ Issues Department-Wide Criminal Corporate Enforcement Policy
20
Wiley Rein. Suspension and Debarment
21
Crowell & Moring. The Impact of Criminal Conviction on Public Sector Contractors and Grantees
22
HHS Office of Inspector General. Corporate Integrity Agreements
23
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Corporate Integrity Agreement E-Bulletin
24
U.S. Department of Justice. Coordination of Parallel Criminal, Civil, Regulatory, and Administrative Proceedings
25
U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Department Announces Landmark Settlement With Binance
26
U.S. Department of Justice. False Claims Act Settlements and Judgments Exceed $6.8B in Fiscal Year 2025
27
U.S. Department of Justice. False Claims Act
28
U.S. Department of Justice. Criminal Division Policy Materials
29
University of Illinois Law Review. The Case for an Office of Monitorships
30
Joseph Hollander & Craft. No Quid Pro Quo: Settling Civil Claims While Criminal Charges Are Pending
31
WilmerHale. The Interplay Between Forfeiture and Restitution in Complex Multi-Victim White-Collar Cases
32
Basel Institute on Governance. Probing the Issue of Victims in Negotiated Settlements for White-Collar Crimes
33
U.S. Department of Justice. Criminal Division Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program