Scoular's $10m FCPA Settlement Signals Cartel-Linked Bribery Risk

The Scoular Company (Scoular), an agricultural supply chain business based in Omaha, Nebraska, has agreed to pay more than $10 million to resolve a US Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into a years-long scheme in which it relied on the bribery of Mexican officials to move goods across the US-Mexico border.

Scoular entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) alongside a criminal information filed in the Western District of Texas, charging the company with one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). It agreed to a $9,769,521 criminal penalty and $414,351 in forfeiture, reflecting a 25% reduction from the bottom of the applicable guidelines range.

According to court documents, between 2013 and 2019 Scoular authorised multiple third-party customs brokers to bribe Mexican officials so that shipments of corn and other products would clear border inspections for dirt, soil and other impurities. The brokers paid roughly $2,000 per train and invoiced the payments back to the company as reinspection fees, which Scoular then reimbursed. Employees discussed shipments and payments over WhatsApp. In total, the company authorised more than $400,000 in bribes and avoided fees and costs exceeding $6.5 million.

The detail that should command attention is what the company did not know. The DOJ determined that a portion of the bribes ultimately benefited people connected to a cartel operating at the border, tying a routine trade-facilitation practice to a national security concern. That link shaped the resolution and reframes cross-border corruption as more than a conventional bribery exposure.

For UK compliance teams, the case is a reminder that third-party intermediaries remain the sharpest point of anti-bribery risk, and that the UK Bribery Act 2010 imposes strict liability on commercial organisations that fail to prevent bribery by associated persons, with no requirement to prove knowledge. The mechanics here are instructive: small, recurring payments disguised as legitimate operating fees, routed through brokers and normalised as a cost of doing business. Such patterns rarely surface through periodic audit alone; they are caught by risk-based screening of intermediaries, scrutiny of reimbursement categories, and monitoring of informal communication channels.

Scoular did not receive voluntary self-disclosure credit, having failed to report the conduct in time, but did earn cooperation and remediation credit. Its remedial steps are a serviceable checklist for firms testing their own controls: it eliminated the brokers linked to reinspection fees, restructured its compliance function with senior leadership oversight, refreshed its code of conduct and third-party management policies, tightened financial controls on high-risk transactions, and rolled out targeted anti-corruption training. The gap between the penalty imposed and the credit foregone is a practical illustration of what early disclosure is worth.

In a related matter, customs broker Carlos Leopoldo Alvelais pleaded guilty in October 2025 to conspiracy to violate the FCPA. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated the case, prosecuted by the DOJ Criminal Division's Fraud Section, which handles FCPA and Foreign Extortion Prevention Act (FEPA) matters.

Read the press release here.