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> it has reached a settlement agreement with the Department that will see it pay $300 million over five years, in quarterly chunks of $15 million.

> ...Seagate persisted and between August 2020 and September 2021 sold 7.4 million hard drives to China, in 429 transactions worth a combined $1.1 billion.

Useless fine. This is a rounding error to Seagate.

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0.3B fine on 1.1B of sales might not seem much, but that probably wipes out all their profits from those transactions.

300m fine on 1100m of sales.

If their margins are under 30ish percentage it would wipe out any profit made on the illegal activity. Personally i think its a rather fitting fine and this model should be used more often.....

Treble damages always seemed fair to me. Have an independent third party determine the profit made from illegal activity (to avoid, or at least hinder, shady accounting practices). Triple it, and that's the fine. Obviously wipes out all the profit, has a punitive aspect to it including a buffer if they successfully hide some profits, and you can spread the fine out if you want to avoid bankrupting the company.

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