PORTLAND, Maine — The federal prosecutor’s office in Maine collected more than $1.5 million in criminal and civil actions in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II announced Thursday.
Of that amount, $847,901.95 was collected in criminal fines and $678,078.23 was collected in civil financial penalties, he said.
In addition to that money, federal prosecutors, working with partner agencies and divisions, collected $484,379 in asset forfeiture actions between Oct. 1, 2013, and Sept. 30, 2014. 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, Delahanty said.
The U.S. Justice Department collected $24.7 billion in civil and criminal actions in the fiscal year, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday. That is nearly 8½ times the appropriated $2.91 billion budget for the 94 U.S. Attorney’s offices and the main litigating divisions in that same period.
“Every day, the Justice Department’s federal 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,” Holder said in a press release issued Thursday. “Their diligent efforts are enabling us to achieve justice and recoup losses in virtually every sector of the U.S. economy.
“And this result shows the fruits of the Justice Department’s tireless work in enforcing federal laws; in protecting the American people from violent crime, national security threats, discrimination, exploitation and abuse; and in holding financial institutions accountable for their roles in causing the 2008 financial crisis,” he said.
The largest civil collections were from affirmative civil enforcement cases, in which the U.S. 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, the press release said.
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.