Skip to main content
Press Release

U.S. Attorney’s Office Issues 2023 Annual Report

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Michigan

DETROIT –The United States Attorney’s Office made significant strides in 2023 in rebuilding community trust, reinvigorating our protection of civil rights, and restructuring our approach to violent crime, United States Attorney Dawn N. Ison announced today. The details of the office’s work in 2023 are set forth in a 51-page annual report highlighting prosecutions, community outreach, trials, convictions, systemic change, and community impact. The document is available here for review by the public.

The report sets forth the work done in service of the richly-diverse Eastern District of Michigan. The lawyers and support professionals in our Detroit, Flint, and Bay City offices, along with our partner agencies, had significant accomplishments this year.

Among them:

  • In fiscal year 2023, our office collected $68,224,759.35 in criminal and civil actions in judgments, fines, restitution, and forfeiture, more than twice our operating budget of $ 24.9 million. These funds are being returned to victims and taxpayers.
  • Our efforts to target the most violent offenders who are harming public safety resulted in numerous federal convictions. We obtained conviction for the leader of the Seven Mile Bloods Gang who terrorized Detroit’s east side for many years. We also obtained Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”) convictions for three senior members of the Almighty Vice Lords Nation, a criminal enterprise that operates across the country including in Detroit.
  • We filed suit against a Dearborn Heights landlord who is alleged to have subjected actual and prospective female tenants to sexual harassment on multiple occasions since at least 2017.
  • We charged a former Warren police officer with violating a jail prisoner’s civil rights by assaulting the prisoner without justification.

 

  • We remained committed to rooting out public corruption in our community as 2023 saw the Mayor of Inkster indicted by our office for bribery and guilty pleas from the Mayor of Taylor for conspiracy to receive bribes and wire fraud and the President of the Madison School Board for bribery and tax evasion.
  • We obtained a conviction at trial against an ISIS fighter who left his home in Michigan and travelled to Yemen and Syria where he obtained ISIS training and spent more than 2 years as an ISIS soldier.
  • The office has charged 142 defendants (52 in 2023) with participating in pandemic fraud schemes, ranging from unemployment insurance fraud conspiracies to fraud in pandemic loan programs. Of the individuals charged in such cases, the United States has thus far obtained more than 86 convictions.
  • We indicted 8 people and charged them with federal civil rights offenses and violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for using physical obstruction to intimidate and interfere with employees and patients of a reproductive health clinic, because the clinic’s employees were providing, and the patients were seeking, reproductive health services.

Although we are encouraged by the results of our efforts in 2023, we recognize that we still have more work to do. The work detailed in the 2023 Annual Report details our ongoing efforts to keep our community safe, protect civil rights, and ensure fairness and opportunity for everyone in our community. Each day, the 220 men and women of the U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to work diligently to further these goals and to advance the interests of our nation.

Updated March 14, 2024
Component
USAO - Michigan, Eastern