Boise Cascade bought illegally imported timber. Here’s the price it will pay
Boise Cascade admitted to buying timber that was illegally imported from China, and it will cost the company millions.
The Boise-based company was fined over $6.3 million for its role in a timber trafficking scheme that sought to evade countervailing and anti-dumping duties, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The fines amount to twice the gross profits the company gained from selling the timber, and it also has to implement a compliance plan.
Boise Cascade pleaded guilty and was sentenced Monday for a felony violation of the Lacey Act, a federal law that prohibits the trade of plant products that have been illegally possessed, transported or sold.
The Justice Department said the company’s distribution center in Pompano, Florida, bought more than $30 million worth of hardwood plywood between 2018 and 2021 that was smuggled into the country by Horizon Plywood, a company owned by Florida couple Noel and Kelsy Quintana, who were sentenced in 2024 for violating the Lacey Act.
Horizon Plywood shipped products from China to Malaysia, moved the wood into new containers, and then shipped it to the U.S., falsifying import declarations, according to the release.
“Boise Cascade either knew about or was willfully blind to the illegal importation of the plywood they were purchasing from Horizon Plywood,” Adam Gustafson, the principal deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s environment and natural resources division, said in the release.
The Justice Department said Boise Cascade was aware that Horizon was under federal investigation and still placed at least 10 new orders for birch plywood in the two weeks after a search warrant was executed at Horizon’s warehouse in South Florida in 2021.
Boise Cascade manufactures and distributes wood products, including paper. It was formed in 1957 through the merging of Boise Payette Lumber Co. in Boise and Cascade Lumber Co. in Yakima, Washington. The original Boise Cascade Corp. broke up in 2004 and the surviving portion was privately held until it went public in 2013.
Boise Cascade is now a Fortune 1000 company with $6.4 billion in annual sales in 2025. It is one of just three Idaho companies whose shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
The company says on its website that it’s proud to have been recently named one of America’s Most Trustworthy Companies of 2026 by Newsweek.
“Boise Cascade knowingly profited from illegally imported timber and helped sustain a scheme designed to evade millions in duties owed to the United States,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason A. Reding Quiñones said in the release. “(The) guilty plea and sentence make clear that companies that turn a blind eye to fraud in pursuit of profit will be held accountable.”
The company’s shares tumbled over 6%, from $85.12 a share on Monday to $79.44 Wednesday, since the news was announced.
