Good morning. A senior Justice Department official gave a first glimpse into the Biden administration’s approach to white-collar crime, saying the agency would commit new resources and tools to weeding out wrongdoing by companies and their executives that harm U.S. national security, Dylan Tokar reports.

John Carlin, a senior member of the deputy attorney general’s office, in a speech on Tuesday to an audience of white-collar defense lawyers, acknowledged the Justice Department’s efforts to combat white-collar crime had fluctuated over the years. He added that the agency would “redouble” its commitment to white-collar crime enforcement under the Biden administration.

[Continued below…]

“Our prosecutors can’t be afraid to bring difficult cases,” Mr. Carlin said over video at an event hosted by legal trade publication Global Investigations Review in New York. “In order to support that, I think you’ll see in the days and months to come that we are building up to surge resources for corporate enforcement.”

Although Mr. Carlin highlighted the ways in which the Biden administration’s approach to white-collar crime enforcement would be consistent with the past administrations, he also signaled the Justice Department’s current leadership could make corporate misconduct a higher priority than in recent years. “There’s a crisis of confidence when it comes to the ability of the government to effectively monitor corporations and trust in corporations,” Mr. Carlin said. “That’s bad for business and bad for government.”

Join us Tuesday for the WSJ Risk & Compliance Forum. The virtual program includes sessions on anti-money laundering laws, emerging risks, compliance and cryptocurrencies, lessons from Wirecard and workshops on ESG reporting and responding to ransomware. Register here.

The U.S. Justice Department is creating a national cryptocurrency enforcement team to tackle investigations and prosecutions of criminal misuses of cryptocurrency and to recover the illicit proceeds from these crimes, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Wednesday.

The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which would be under the supervision of Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr., would focus on crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges and mixing and tumbling services, the DOJ said in a statement. The team also would help trace and recover assets lost to fraud and extortion, the DOJ said.

Related:

• The Justice Department also will impose large fines on federal contractors that fail to meet what Ms. Monaco said are “required cybersecurity standards,” including the disclosure of cybersecurity breaches, James Rundle and Kim S. Nash of WSJ Pro Cybersecurity report.

Two big Canadian financial groups are beefing up their top risk-management ranks.

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, which manages and invests the pensions of the province‘s active and retired teachers, has hired Kathryn Fric as its new chief risk officer.

Ms. Fric will start in her new role on Nov. 1 and report to President and Chief Executive Officer Jo Taylor.

Ms. Fric spent 18 years at Sun Life Financial Inc., where she most recently served as its senior vice president for enterprise and operational risk.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Nova Scotia, which operates as Scotiabank, announced that its current chief risk officer, Daniel Moore, is leaving the bank, to be succeeded by Phil Thomas.

Mr. Thomas, who joined the bank in 1997, is currently Scotiabank’s executive vice president of customer insights, data and analytics. Before that, he served as an executive vice president and chief retail risk officer for the Toronto-based financial institution.

Mr. Moore, who also joined Scotiabank in 1997, will move into a strategic advisory role, assisting with the transition until the end of this year, according to Scotiabank.

—David Smagalla

A federal jury is set to begin deliberations today in the Varsity Blues college-admissions case, following a nearly four-week criminal trial for two parents accused of committing fraud and bribery to get their children admitted to the University of Southern California as recruited athletes.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers made closing arguments in the U.S. District Court in Boston on Wednesday, in the first trial in a nationwide scandal that highlights the extreme anxiety around admissions to selective U.S. universities.

• The Varsity Blues Tapes: Hear Rick Singer Talk Through College Admissions Scandal

Investigators alleged in a criminal complaint filed in federal court last month in Washington that Frank Rafaraci, chief executive of Multinational Logistics Services, or MLS, inflated bills in providing maintenance and other husbanding services in overseas ports to naval ships, including an aircraft carrier. The complaint details alleged payoffs to at least one naval official using envelopes of cash.

• Safeway Inc.’s former top executive, Steven Burd, testified that the grocery-story chain relied on Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes’s promises when it decided to invest over $350 million in a partnership with the blood-testing company. The testimony from Mr. Burd may help prosecutors build their case that Ms. Holmes lied to investors about what Theranos was capable of accomplishing.
   
• The chairman of a Democratic-led House oversight panel said new documents show the Trump administration may have been involved in helping financially troubled trucking company Yellow Corp. obtain a $700 million pandemic-relief loan from the Treasury Department. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis is investigating whether that loan was improperly issued and used.
   
• Jonathan Kanter, President Biden’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division, sailed through his Senate confirmation hearing, pledging strong enforcement and receiving bipartisan support from lawmakers concerned about corporate dominance.

The Biden administration will impose new cybersecurity requirements on some railroad and other surface-transit systems, the latest effort by the federal government to compel certain private industries to boost their cyber defenses in the face of proliferating ransomware attacks and other disruptive threats, officials said.

Officials said the mandates, which follow new rules on pipeline operators earlier this year, were necessary because of surface-transportation systems’ vital role in the economy, as well as their potential importance to national security.

• Amazon.com Inc.-owned Twitch Interactive, the videogame streaming platform, said it suffered a data breach, with information leaked on the online chat forum 4chan. The 4chan user who allegedly posted Twitch data said they did so to hurt Twitch’s business. The person claimed to have access to information including Twitch source code, internal security tools and creator payouts.

Facebook Inc. has delayed the rollout of new products in recent days, people familiar with the matter said, amid media reports and congressional hearings related to a trove of internal documents showing harms from its platforms.

Executives at the social-media company also have put a hold on some work on new and existing products while more than a dozen people are involved in conducting “reputational reviews” to examine how Facebook may be criticized and to ensure products don’t adversely impact children, the people said.

Meanwhile, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s work and motives have been mischaracterized in recent media reports and whistleblower testimony and pledged that he would continue pursuing internal research into potential harms of social media.

• Coal supply shortages are pushing prices for the fuel to record highs and laying bare the challenges to weaning the global economy off one of its most important—and polluting—energy sources.
   
• Shrinking apartment sales and an unexpected default have stoked fresh investor concerns about China’s property developers, causing a steep selloff in U.S. dollar bonds from many of the sector’s debt-laden companies.

Send comments to the Risk & Compliance editor, Jack Hagel, at jack.hagel@wsj.com.

Subscribe to The Morning Risk Report here.

Follow us on Twitter at @WSJRisk, @_MengqiSun and @dgtokar.