U.S. Attorney's Sacramento Office Collects $82 million in Civil, Criminal Fines For 2017

January 23, 2018 |

For the fiscal year 2017, the U.S. Attorneys office in Sacramento collected over $82 million in civil and criminal fines according to information released today.

Covering the Eastern District of California, the office now headed by U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott collected $13,278,653 in criminal actions and $68,904,118 for civil actions. The Eastern District of California also worked with other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and components of the Department of Justice to collect an additional $162,370,250 in cases pursued jointly with these offices.

Of this amount, $15,414,000 was collected in criminal actions and $162,354,835 was collected in civil actions. Overall, the Justice Department collected just over $15 billion in civil and criminal actions in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2017.

“Every year, we recover far more money for victims and taxpayers than it costs to operate our office," Scott said. "These collections are critical to the Department’s mission of holding wrongdoers accountable, seeking restitution for victims, and pursuing funds that belong to American taxpayers.”

A significant portion of the monies collected were for actions involving allegations of Controlled Substance Act violations, including $150 million from McKesson Corp., $5 million from CVS Pharmacy Inc., and $11.75 million from Costco Wholesale. Other settlements were for health care fraud including a $9.86 million payment by Walgreen Co. to resolve allegations that it violated the federal False Claims Act when it knowingly submitted claims for reimbursement to California’s Medi-Cal program that were not supported by applicable diagnosis and documentation requirements.

The largest civil collections were from affirmative civil enforcement cases, in which the United States recovered government money lost to fraud, fire, 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 in the Eastern District of California, working with partner agencies and divisions, collected $10,377,430 in asset forfeiture actions in fiscal year 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.