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How economic sanctions are enforced undoubtedly affects their chances of success. Yet, to date, a lot remains unknown about how governments actually enforce their sanctions. To shed light on the ways governments enforce their sanctions, we conduct an empirically driven case study of how the lead agency for enforcing economic sanctions in the United States, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), has enforced US sanctions from 2003 to 2018. Our study begins with an empirical exploration of how OFAC’s enforcement actions originate, what factors correlate with enforcement actions being taken, and what factors contribute to the financial penalties imposed as part of enforcement actions. We find that OFAC engaged in two distinct enforcement strategies during our period of analysis: a “fishing” strategy that involved taking a lot of enforcement actions and imposing small fines during …