Lumber Liquidators Hit With $13.5M Fine In Importing Scandal

While foodies have grown a conscience in the 2010s and started caring about each stop on the food chain their meals come from, the same can’t quite be said for wholesale lumber customers. However, the Department of Justice has been keeping an eye out nonetheless.

The DOJ announced Monday (Feb. 1) that it had sentenced Lumber Liquidators Inc. for its part in illegally importing wood obtained by similarly illicit means in protected forests. The DOJ focused on the company’s actions in Asia, where agency officials claimed Lumber Liquidators farmed wood from protected forests in Russia to then manufacture into hardwood flooring in factories in China.

What is all this going to cost Lumber Liquidators? With the official sentencing, the company has earned itself $7.8 million in criminal fines, $3.15 million in civil penalties, nearly $1 million in criminal forfeiture and $1.23 million in community service contributions — a grand total of $13.15 million.

DOJ investigators noted that this is the largest ever amount fined to a company under the Lacey Act, which levied extra penalties on businesses that transport illegally farmed wood across international borders.

“By knowingly and illegally sourcing timber from vulnerable forests in Asia and other parts of the world, Lumber Liquidators made American consumers unwittingly complicit in the ongoing destruction of some of the world’s last remaining intact forests,” Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement. “Along with hastening the extinction of the highly endangered Siberian tiger and many other native species, illegal logging driven by the company’s greed threatens the many people who depend on sustainable use of these forests for food, clean water, shelter and legitimate jobs. These unprecedented sanctions show how seriously we take illegal trade, and I am grateful to the Service special agents and wildlife inspectors, Homeland Security agents and Justice Department attorneys who halted Lumber Liquidators’ criminal acts and held the company accountable under the law.”