Boeing Pays $2.5 Billion in Deferred Prosecution Deal, Zero Executives Charged for 346 Deaths

The Department of Justice charged Boeing with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the 737 MAX evaluation and entered a deferred prosecution agreement requiring Boeing to pay $2.5 billion in penalties. Despite evidence that Boeing executives knowingly deceived the FAA about MCAS capabilities, concealed safety-critical information from pilots and regulators, and prioritized profits over 346 human lives, zero individual executives were criminally charged.

The $2.5 billion payment included $243.6 million in criminal penalties, $500 million for a victim compensation fund, and $1.77 billion for airline customers who suffered losses from the MAX grounding. The criminal penalty portion represented a rounding error for Boeing, which had $58 billion in revenue in 2020. Under the deferred prosecution agreement, if Boeing complied with certain conditions for three years, the criminal charge would be dismissed entirely, allowing the corporation to avoid a criminal conviction.

The DOJ’s decision not to charge any individual executives represented a complete failure of accountability. House investigations had documented that Boeing managers knew about MCAS problems before the first crash, that employees joked about deceiving regulators, and that executives concealed test data showing pilots needed far more time to respond to MCAS failures than certification standards allowed. The evidence supported charges of fraud, conspiracy, and potentially manslaughter against specific executives, yet the DOJ chose to prosecute only the corporate entity.

Families of the 346 crash victims denounced the agreement as a betrayal of justice. Their attorneys had provided DOJ with evidence of specific executives’ culpability, including communications showing consciousness of guilt. The deferred prosecution agreement meant Boeing would face no permanent criminal record if it maintained compliance for three years, and no individual would go to prison for what the House committee had documented as deliberate fraud resulting in mass death.

The agreement exemplified the two-tier justice system: corporations that commit fraud resulting in hundreds of deaths receive deferred prosecution and negotiable fines, while individuals who commit far lesser crimes face prison. Boeing’s $243.6 million criminal penalty was less than the company spent on CEO compensation in the same period. The deal sent a clear message that corporate executives can knowingly sell defective safety-critical products, conceal the defects from regulators, kill hundreds of people, and face no personal criminal consequences.