White-collar criminal statutes range widely and reach practically every corner of public and commercial life. But, on the federal level, enforcement has often come (and gone) in waves of investigations and cases of similar type.

This is particularly true at Main Justice. Take, for example, the years of effort directed against financial statement fraud in the early to mid-2000s, misconduct related to the financial crisis of 2007–09 and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations in a variety of industries and countries. These trends in enforcement did not encompass the full extent of white-collar criminal prosecutions, to be sure, but they were dominant themes which affected the enforcement of white-collar crime generally.