Justice priced the entire national supply of trade-fraud leads at 24 hours.

Start with what the notice is, because it is small and it is not nothing. A Paperwork Reduction Act notice is an agency telling the public how many pieces of paper it expects and how long each will take, and this one announces a part of the Justice Department that did not exist under this name a year ago: the National Fraud Enforcement Division, and inside it the Global Trade & Commerce Enforcement Section. The form is “Voluntary.” Its “Affected Public” is “Primary: Government, State, or Tribal.” The section “will be working with several different law-enforcement agencies to vet, triage, and deconflict the information they receive.” Comments run 60 days, to 11 January 2027.

Now read the three numbers together, because they are the finding. 144 respondents. 10 minutes each. 1,440 minutes a year. The United States is in the largest tariff-enforcement push in a century, and the division built to run it has told the Office of Management and Budget that the national flow of trade-fraud leads into its new intake is 24 hours of somebody’s time — three working days, spread across every agency, every trade association and every industry lawyer in the country. The field where that effort would be priced in money is printed and left empty.

Against it, the channel the Justice Department did not build and cannot close. 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b)(1): “A person may bring a civil action for a violation of section 3729 for the person and for the United States Government.” § 3730(b)(2): the complaint “shall be filed in camera, shall remain under seal for at least 60 days, and shall not be served on the defendant until the court so orders,” served on the Government with “written disclosure of substantially all material evidence and information the person possesses.” § 3730(d)(1) pays “at least 15 percent but not more than 25 percent of the proceeds” where the Government takes the case over, and § 3730(d)(2) pays “not less than 25 percent and not more than 30 percent” where it does not. The Department’s own Fraud Statistics — Overview for 1 October 1986 to 30 September 2025 records 1,297 new qui tam matters in FY2025 against 401 government-initiated ones, $5,340,006,336 of qui tam settlements and judgments, and $330,358,218 of relator share awards paid.

So the private form expects 144 leads where the public statute drew 1,297 suits — 11.1025% — and the public one came with a cheque. That is the whole asymmetry, and it is published in two documents nobody reads beside each other.

What the United States actually pays is not a range in a statute; it is three numbers from three settlements, and they agree to within a point. Perfectus Aluminum, 12 May 2026, $549.5 million, on 2.2 million aluminium extrusions declared as finished “pallets” — “the relator share will be 17.5 percent of the settlement proceeds that are returned to CBP,” relators Mike Rapport, Eric Shen and the Aluminum Extruders Council, docket 5:15-cv-00712 (C.D. Cal.). Ceratizit USA, 18 December 2025, $54.4 million on tungsten carbide transshipped through Taiwan, relator Mark Stover, approximately $9,750,000 — 17.9228% — docket 2:22-cv-12291 (E.D. Mich.). Everlight Electronics, 5 August 2026, $5.15 million on LEDs, relator Tao Wang, a former employee, $876,146 — 17.0125% — docket TDC-21-cv-1607 (D. Md.). Mean 17.4784%. Across the whole thirty-nine years the Department publishes, relators have taken $9,963,696,036 of $60,972,925,646 — 16.3412%.

Here is the non-consensus reading, and the arithmetic for it is in the statute. Everyone reads tariffs from the importer’s side, as a cost. Read them from the other side. 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a)(1) makes a violator liable for “3 times the amount of damages which the Government sustains” plus a civil penalty per claim, held for 2026 at $14,308 to $28,618; § 3729(a)(1)(G) reaches anyone who “knowingly conceals or knowingly and improperly avoids or decreases an obligation to pay or transmit money” to the Government, which is what an unpaid duty is; and § 3729(b)(1) needs “no proof of specific intent to defraud.” At full trebling, a 17.5% relator share is 52.5% of the duty the importer never paid, and the realised 16.3412% is 49.0235%. The United States will pay roughly half of an evaded duty to whoever names the evader — and the division that runs the enforcement has just told OMB it expects its own tip channel to generate twenty-four hours of paperwork a year.

The door is a court clerk’s fee. The District Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule effective 27 May 2026 prints “Filing Fee for Civil Case” at $405.00 and notes that it “Includes a $55.00 administrative fee” — so $350 of statute and $55 of administration, 81% of a $500 budget, $95 left. There is nothing else to pay: no licence, no examination, no registration, no bond, no fee for the lead intake form and no fee for the § 3730(b)(2) disclosure. In practice relator’s counsel advances the $405, because the one thing you may not do is file it yourself.

And the target arithmetic is the strangest this series has run, because it has a time axis. $5,000 a month kept after 2026 federal tax — single filer, ordinary income, standard deduction $16,100, no self-employment tax — needs $65,704.5455 a year, $5,704.5455 of tax, an effective 8.6821%. At the realised 16.3412% share and an assumed 40% contingency fee, that is $670,132.57 of recovery to the United States for every year you wait, and the three cases above waited 3, 5 and 11 years from docket to settlement. No published contingency rate for False Claims Act relator counsel was found on this run, so the 40% is an assumption, and the playbook is where it is tested.