Rhode Island
Policing for Profit: RI Police Line Up for a Cut of Alibaba’s $390M Forfeiture—and Hopkinton Admits It Spent ~$700K Positioning for the Payout
What happened
In July 2026 the U.S. Justice Department announced a $600 million resolution with Alibaba Group and AUS Merchant Services (a subsidiary of Ant Group, which runs Alipay) under non-prosecution agreements. According to DOJ, Alibaba admitted that from January 2016 to December 2024 it failed to stop merchants on Alibaba.com and AliExpress.com from making roughly 80,000 sales into the U.S. involving regulated chemicals, pharmaceuticals and pill-counterfeiting equipment. The deal includes $390 million in forfeiture ($200 million from Alibaba, $190 million from AUS) plus $210 million in criminal penalties. The U.S. Attorney’s Office calls it the largest monetary settlement in the history of the District of Rhode Island. In August, DOJ asked federal court in Providence to formally forfeit the $390 million.
The Providence Journal reported Monday that Rhode Island police agencies that supplied investigators to the case are now waiting for DOJ to set their cut through the federal “equitable sharing” program. That program splits forfeiture proceeds among participating agencies based on work hours and “qualitative contributions.” The agencies include Warwick, East Providence and Hopkinton police and the Rhode Island State Police. State Police Lt. Col. Erik Yanyar and Warwick Col. Michael Lima confirmed that their agencies are in line for payouts. Police leaders told the Journal they expect word on the amounts by the end of the year.
Hopkinton Police Chief Mark Carrier told the Journal, “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” and called any big forfeiture “life-changing” for his department. Carrier said that in 2019, in a pre-arranged move, Hopkinton hired retired Westerly officer Michael Marcotte, who was already on the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations task force, and kept him on it. According to Carrier, who was not chief then, the town did so “fully aware of the potential for large-scale forfeitures.” He puts the cost to taxpayers at about $700,000, says he hopes Hopkinton can recoup it, and wants the rest to go to technology, equipment, facilities and training.
Original reporting
Read the underlying sources:
Providence Journal — This $390 million forfeiture could reshape RI police budgets (Oct. 12, 2026)
Virtue Forge commentary
To be clear, nobody should shed a tear for Alibaba. A Chinese e-commerce giant that, by its own admission, let tens of thousands of illegal chemical, drug and counterfeiting-equipment sales flow into American homes deserved to pay, and Rhode Island investigators deserve credit for the work. The problem is what happens to the money next.
Under equitable sharing, forfeiture proceeds don’t go to the treasury for elected officials to appropriate in public. They flow back to the agencies that brought the case, earmarked for those agencies. That turns the power of the purse, which belongs to voters and their representatives, into a bounty system. Police budgets can grow by sums larger than a whole year’s appropriation without a single council vote or line in the state budget. Rhode Island’s Google windfall showed what follows: turf fights over who controls the money, pension holes plugged with one-time cash, and federal freezes.
Hopkinton’s chief said the quiet part out loud. DOJ’s own Guide to Equitable Sharing bars using shared funds for officer salaries, outside narrow pre-approved exceptions, “so that the prospect of receiving equitable sharing funds does not influence, or appear to influence, law enforcement decisions.” DOJ’s quick reference adds that “anticipated shared funds or property should not be budgeted.” A town that spends an estimated $700,000 keeping an officer on a task force while “fully aware of the potential for large-scale forfeitures,” and then hopes to be paid back from the haul, is exactly the appearance those rules were written to prevent. Whether any reimbursement is allowed is DOJ’s call. But law enforcement shouldn’t be run like a lottery ticket.
What Rhode Island should do: before a dollar arrives, every recipient town and the State Police should publish a spending plan and put it to a public vote of the council or the General Assembly. One-time money shouldn’t cover recurring costs or pension holes. And lawmakers should ask why the state’s police budgets keep getting built around federal bounties instead of honest, accountable appropriations.
What to watch: DOJ’s sharing decision (expected by year-end), whether Hopkinton seeks reimbursement for the task-force officer, and whether Warwick, East Providence and the State Police submit spending plans in public.