PHOENIX - First Assistant United States Attorney Elizabeth A. Strange announced today that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona collected $13,751,877 in criminal and civil actions in Fiscal Year 2017. Of this amount, $5,903,640 was collected in criminal actions and $7,848,237 was collected in civil actions.
The District of Arizona also worked with other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and components of the Department of Justice to collect an additional $3,464,078 in cases pursued jointly with those offices. Of this amount, $16,301 was collected in criminal actions and $3,447,777 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.
The U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, along with the Justice 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.
Federal law requires defendants to pay restitution to victims of certain federal crimes who have suffered a physical injury or financial loss. Criminal restitution is paid directly to the victims and 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 and 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 for the District of Arizona, working with partner agencies and divisions, collected $3,100,141 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.
RELEASE NUMBER: 2018-003_FY2017Collections
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
