Wednesday, Attorney General Holder announced that the Justice Department (DOJ) collected a whopping $24.7 billion in civil and criminal actions in fiscal year 2014 – more than triple what it raked in for FY2013.
“That’s more than three times the $8 billion total the Department collected in 2013. And it’s nearly eight and a half times the combined budgets of our 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and all of our main litigating divisions,” Holder said in a video and press release announcing the windfall.
Holder called the $24.7 billion bonanza a “valuable return on investment”:
“Every day, the Justice Department’s prosecutors and trial attorneys work hard to protect our citizens, to safeguard precious taxpayer resources, and to provide a valuable return on investment to the American people,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “Their diligent efforts are enabling us to achieve justice and recoup losses in virtually every sector of the U.S. economy. And as a result, I can report today that – during Fiscal Year 2014 – the Justice Department collected a total of $24.7 billion in civil and criminal actions.”
About $13 billion in payments were made directly to the DOJ, while $11 billion went to other federal agencies, states, and other recipients.
Where did all this money come from? Largely, from individuals or corporations cited for health, safety, civil rights, tax or environmental violations, the press release explains:
“The largest civil collections were from affirmative civil enforcement cases, many of which were brought under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, in which the United States recovered government money lost to fraud or other misconduct or collected from individuals and/or corporations for violations of federal health, safety, civil rights, tax, 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.”
But, the lion’s share came from a $13 billion settlement with JPMorgan – the largest settlement with a single entity in American history – and a $7 billion settlement with Citigroup, Inc.:
“The largest single source of collections came from civil penalties paid by financial institutions to resolve financial fraud claims stemming from the 2008 financial crisis, including significant amounts paid by JPMorgan and Citigroup Inc, to resolve federal and state civil claims related to the packaging, marketing, sale and issuance of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS). Both resolutions include record penalties under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) and in addition, also provide billions of dollars of relief to struggling homeowners.”