Wednesday, January 07, 2015CLEVELAND -- The United States Attorney's Office Northern Ohio district collected a record $356.7 million in the 2014 fiscal year, the office said in a press release. The district covers 40 counties, including Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.
The money is collected from criminal and civil cases the office is “exclusively or substantially” involved in and distributed to crime victims, law enforcement agencies that participated in investigations, other federal agencies and the U.S. Treasury.
“The work of this office and our partners not only recovers hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars,it helps make crime victims whole, it punishes those who lie and cheat to enrich themselves and it hits criminals and scammers where it can hurt the most, right in the wallet,” U.S. Attorney Steven Dettlebach said in the release.
Dettlebachalso noted the money collected was more than 20 times the office's annual budget and the office also took in $11.4 million in forfeitures. As a whole, the U.S. Attorney's Office collected $24.7 billion in fiscal year 2014, triple the amount from a year before.
Prior to last year, the most the district office had collected in the previous decade was $80 million in 2006. In 2013, the northern Ohio district collected nearly $24 million.
Among the largest collections last year were a $200 million settlement from U.S. Bank, a $25.2 criminal penalty against Diebold Inc. for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and a $116 million settlement from Omnicare Inc.
SOURCE: United States Attorney's Office Northern Ohio.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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