U.S. Attorney’s office collects over $7 million in civil and criminal penalties in fiscal year 2016

INDIANAPOLIS – U.S. Attorney Josh J. Minkler announced today that the Southern District of Indiana collected $7,707,955.00 in criminal and civil actions in Fiscal Year 2016.  Of this amount, $4,975,067.00 was collected in criminal actions and $2,732,888.00 was collected in civil actions.

“Collecting money owed to the victims of crimes and taxpaying citizens of this district is a commitment I take very seriously,” said Minkler. “Those who steal and fraudulently take money from victims will be held accountable and I will do everything humanly possible to return the money to its rightful owner.”

Additionally, the U.S. Attorney’s office, working with partner agencies and divisions, collected $2,270,160.00 in asset forfeiture actions in FY 2016.  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.

Nationally, the Justice Department collected more than $15.3 billion in civil and criminal actions in fiscal year (FY) 2016 ending Sept. 30, 2016. The $15,380,130,434 in collections in FY 2016 represents more than five times the approximately $3 billion appropriated budget for the 94 U.S. Attorneys’ offices and the main litigating divisions of the Justice Department combined in that same period.

“Every day, the men and women of the Department of Justice work tirelessly to enforce our laws, ensuring that taxpayer dollars are used properly and that the American people are protected from exploitation and abuse,” said Attorney General Lynch.  “Today’s announcement is a testament to that work, and it makes clear that our actions deliver a significant return on public investment.  I want to thank the prosecutors and trial attorneys who made this year's collections possible, and I want to emphasize that the department remains committed to the well-being of our people and our nation.”

Civil collections account for more than $12 billion of the total collected and 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, mortgage, financial, 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 (HUD), Health and Human Services, Internal Revenue Service, Small Business Administration and Department of Education.

The department also continued to collect monies that will go for cleanups and natural resource restoration efforts for two of the largest environmental cases in history.  The department collected nearly $153 million in FY 2016 scheduled payments from the landmark $20.8 billion settlement approved by the court this year to resolve civil claims against BP arising from the 2010 Macondo well blowout and the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill that followed in the Gulf of Mexico. The department also collected nearly $160 million in scheduled payments from the $5.15 billion settlement of litigation against subsidiaries of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. for the attempt to evade environmental liabilities of the historic Kerr-McGee Corp.  The settlement set aside in a trust approximately $4.4 billion to fund environmental clean-ups and for environmental claims, the largest environmental enforcement recovery ever by the Department of Justice.

More than $3 billion of the total was collected in FY 2016 from criminal cases, including the more than $772 million criminal penalty assessed against Alstom S.A., a French power and transportation company charged by the District of Connecticut in a foreign bribery scheme.  The fine was the largest, ever, to resolve a foreign bribery case. 

The total includes all monies collected as a result of Justice Department-led enforcement actions and negotiated civil settlements.  It includes more than $12 billion in payments made directly to the Justice Department, and more than $3.3 billion in indirect payments made to other federal agencies, states and other designated recipients.