The District of the Virgin Islands collected $2.6 million in criminal and civil actions in Fiscal Year 2013, United States Attorney Ronald W. Sharpe announced Friday.
Of that amount, $2.3 million was collected in criminal actions and $284,098 was collected in civil actions.
Additionally, the District of the Virgin Islands worked with other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and components of the Department of Justice to collect an additional $26,000 in civil cases pursued jointly with these offices, Sharpe said.
This was a portion of the $8.1 billion collected by the Department of Justice in civil and criminal actions during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, and announced by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The more than $8 billion in collections in FY 2013 represents nearly three times the appropriated $2.7 billion budget for the 94 U.S. Attorney’s offices and the main litigating divisions in that same period.
Sharpe said the figures showed that the department’s enforcement actions help ensure justice, and do so while providing a return to the American people.
“During these tight budgetary times, it is important that we use both civil and criminal actions to aggressively protect public funds, recover ill-gotten gains from fraudsters and criminal defendants, and make every effort to return these funds to crime victims and our struggling communities, ” Sharpe said.
In civil cases, the District of the Virgin Islands recovered $86,272 as part of a $125,849 settlement in a Social Security fraud case; $24,264 in a student loan case; $25,000 in an environmental case, and $134,421in a foreclosure case. In criminal cases, it recovered $240,392 from two defendants in a bank fraud case; $1,648,537 in two cases involving the illegal importation of black coral; $134,441 in a federal tax evasion case, and $28,646 in a FEMA fraud case.
Nationwide, 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.
