U.S. Attorney’s Office Collects $51.6 Million in Civil and Criminal Actions for U.S. Taxpayers in Fiscal Year 2017

NEWARK, N.J. – U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito announced today that the District of New Jersey collected $51.6 million in criminal and civil actions in Fiscal Year 2017.  Of this amount, $19.7 million was collected in criminal actions and $31.8 million was collected in civil actions. 

The District of New Jersey also worked with other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and components of the Department of Justice to collect an additional $737.7 million in cases pursued jointly with these offices.  Of this amount, $155,000 was collected in criminal actions and $737.5 million was collected in civil actions.         

Overall, the Justice Department collected just over $15 billion in civil and criminal actions in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2017.

During the 2017 fiscal year, significant recoveries in the District of New Jersey included:

• $7.485 million as part of a civil settlement with Omnicare Inc. to resolve allegations that Omnicare, in an effort to increase business efficiency and profit, designed and implemented an automated label verification system that resulted in the submission by Omnicare of claims for generic drugs different from those actually dispensed to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. It also resulted in the dispensing of drugs with patient-specific labels displaying the incorrect manufacturer or NDC.

• $4.47 million in cash and proceeds from the sale of real property in a large-scale home health care aide fraud case. Eight other real properties are in the process of being sold. 

• $1.22 million from bank accounts of individuals associated with a New Jersey company that alleged laundered millions in street cash for narcotics traffickers from Mexico and elsewhere. A total of approximately $2.7 million has been forfeited in the case to date.

In addition, $6.34 million in funds forfeited in 2017 and prior fiscal years was returned to victims of the criminal offenses upon which the forfeitures were based.  This included $4.8 million forfeited from a husband and wife who owned a mobile diagnostic testing company that received insurance reimbursements for diagnostic testing and reports that were never interpreted by a licensed physician.  The forfeited funds were used to compensate Medicare and private insurance companies in full for their losses.

The U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, along with the department’s litigating divisions, are responsible for enforcing and collecting civil and criminal debts owed to the U.S. and criminal debts owed to federal crime victims.  The law requires defendants to pay restitution to victims of certain federal crimes who have suffered a physical injury or financial loss.  While restitution is paid to the victim, criminal fines and felony assessments are paid to the department’s Crime Victims’ Fund, which distributes the funds to state victim compensation and victim assistance programs.

The largest civil collections were from affirmative civil enforcement cases, in which the United States recovered government money lost to fraud or other misconduct or collected fines imposed on individuals and/or corporations for violations of federal health, safety, civil rights or environmental laws.  In addition, civil debts were collected on behalf of several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Internal Revenue Service, Small Business Administration and Department of Education.

Additionally, the U.S. Attorney’s office in the District of New Jersey, working with partner agencies and divisions, collected $18.8 million in asset forfeiture actions in FY 2017.  Forfeited assets deposited into the Department of Justice Assets Forfeiture Fund are used to restore funds to crime victims and for a variety of law enforcement purposes.