CEDAR RAPIDS – U.S. Attorney Peter E. Deegan, Jr. announced today that the Northern District of Iowa collected $5,488,359.87 in criminal and civil actions in Fiscal Year 2017. Of this amount, $1,906,625.31 was collected in criminal actions and $3,581,734.56 was collected in civil actions.
Additionally, the Northern District of Iowa worked with other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and components of the Department of Justice to collect an additional $3,910,786.48 in civil cases pursued jointly with these offices.
Overall, the Justice Department collected just over $15 billion in civil and criminal actions in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2017.
“We take seriously our duty to collect money owed to taxpayers and crime victims,” Deegan said. “Our total collections over the past fiscal year, once again, exceeded the total amount of our direct budget. Our entire office is committed to holding wrongdoers financially responsible for their actions and sending the message that crime doesn’t pay.”
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 for the Northern District of Iowa, working with partner agencies and divisions, collected $1,643,754 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.
What happens to that money? Where does it go?
It would be interesting to go back twenty years and see what the northern district hauled in each year. For the population has never exploded in Iowa. Crime on the other hand has. Wonder what the leading crime is that hauls in the most cash on the barrel head. It’s got to be theft of some sort. For this seems to be a lot of peoples morbid fear. People throughout history have always resorted to stealing from others to survive in a world that increasingly becomes overly greedy at the expense of morals and ethical behaviors. And there is a lot of suffering going on because of this. Enjoy your day.
1984.