EBSA Criminal Investigations Closed, Fiscal Year 2021

Criminal investigations into plan-related theft, kickbacks, and fraud that EBSA's Office of Criminal Enforcement closed, including cases referred for prosecution.

Criminal investigations are the smallest share of EBSA's enforcement activity by volume and the most serious by consequence, reserved for cases the agency's Office of Criminal Enforcement identifies as involving theft, embezzlement, or kickback schemes against a benefit plan rather than a fiduciary-process failure. The individuals named in these matters — plan administrators, third-party service providers, sometimes plan sponsors themselves — face personal criminal exposure distinct from and in addition to any civil restitution obligation, and that personal-liability dimension changes the stakes for the individuals involved relative to the far more common civil-investigation track.

Duration in criminal EBSA matters tracks the same pattern seen in other agencies' criminal programs: longer than the civil track, driven by the evidentiary standard for criminal referral and prosecution, and by the coordination required between EBSA's criminal investigators, the U.S. Attorney's office, and often other agencies where the underlying conduct spans plan theft and separate financial crimes. A plan sponsor whose administrator or service provider becomes the subject of a criminal referral should expect the criminal track to run on a multi-year timeline largely independent of how quickly the plan's own civil restoration process can proceed.

For fiduciary liability insurers, criminal EBSA exposure is a narrower but sharper risk than the civil-investigation track: coverage questions around criminal-conduct exclusions become live the moment a criminal referral is made, and the parallel civil recovery action against the plan — seeking restoration of stolen or misappropriated assets — typically proceeds on its own track rather than waiting for the criminal matter to conclude, which means both tracks need to be modeled together rather than sequentially.

Resolution paths split between negotiated plea agreements, which resolve most criminal EBSA referrals, and restitution orders that run alongside any custodial sentence, with the plan's own financial recovery frequently pursued through a separate civil action regardless of the criminal outcome. Criterica Intelligence frames criminal EBSA referrals as a distinct, personal-liability-driven risk that runs parallel to — not sequentially after — a plan's civil restoration process, for the sponsors, insurers, and funders that need both tracks modeled at once.

Figures on this page are drawn from official agency publications, cited individually below, and reflect the agency’s own reporting as of the date shown for each figure. They are not Criterica Intelligence model outputs, are not predictions, and are not a measure of any party’s legal exposure or liability. Agencies periodically revise prior-year figures; where a revision is known, both figures are shown with their sources. This page does not constitute legal, investment, or compliance advice.