Slightly ambiguous because I think the GP actually meant something like "enforcement may decline (to penalize or press charges)" which is definitely true and li

Slightly ambiguous because I think the GP actually meant something like "enforcement may decline (to penalize or press charges)" which is definitely true and likely the case if 90% of these are paperwork errors. There are definitely paperwork errors I can imagine, but it's difficult to imagine it being as simple a mistake as not checking the box that says "you have a job". More likely would be a grant office not being fully aware of a professors' funding sources or miscategorizing their funding in such a way that the grant office person helping with the paperwork marked it wrong and the professor didn't check carefully. That I would consider to be an "honest mistake" that gets corrected by moving money around and a strongly worried letter. Other stories I've heard go as far as two married professors who took their grant money and used it instead to move to an island resort for three months or something like that and didn't actually do the project at all. That was definitely a crime, but largely only because it involved the federal government. If they'd gotten a grant from a private company and didn't do what they promised it would likely be a civil lawsuit unless it rose to the level of actual illegal fraud.