U.S. Attorney’s Office collects nearly $7.7 million in Civil, Criminal actions in Fiscal Year 2022

U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore announced today that the Western District of Missouri collected $7,691,991 in criminal and civil actions in Fiscal Year 2022. Of this amount, $5,422,014 was collected in criminal actions and $2,269,977 was collected in civil actions.

Additionally, the Western District of Missouri worked with other U.S. Attorney’s Offices and components of the Department of Justice to collect an additional $5,580,483 in cases pursued jointly by these offices. Of this amount, $45,732 was collected in criminal actions and $5,534,751 was collected in civil actions.

In total, the Western District of Missouri and partner agencies collected a combined total of $13,272,474 in criminal and civil actions and forfeitures in fiscal year 2022.

“The attorneys and support staff in our district’s Monetary Penalties Unit worked diligently to collect millions of dollars in restitution for victims of crime, and to seize the assets of those who sought to profit from their illegal activities,” said U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore. “In our Civil Division, attorneys and staff successfully recovered considerable funds owed to the government as a result of numerous civil judgments.

“Our collections and asset recovery programs, in both the civil and criminal divisions, hold defendants financially accountable for their conduct,” Moore added. “We are committed to ensure that these debts, both to the government and to the victims of crime, are paid in full.”

For example, the Monetary Penalties Unit recovered over $550,000 in criminal penalties from Randall Halley, a Nixa physician who pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement to Medicare to obtain insurance coverage for a fentanyl prescription and one count of conspiracy to use his DEA registration number for his employees to issue controlled substances to patients in his absence. Halley took bribes from a drug manufacturer in exchange for prescribing its fentanyl drug to his patients so often that he ranked highest in the state in net sales of the product. Numerous patients received dangerous fentanyl medication they did not need, nor did they qualify for under Medicare, and Medicare was defrauded out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Monetary Penalties Unit also collected over $880,000 in a civil forfeiture action as part of a central Missouri case involving real and personal property that represented criminal proceeds from drug trafficking.

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 collected to federal and state victim compensation and victim assistance programs.

Additionally, the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Missouri, working with partner agencies and divisions, collected $3,233,871 in asset forfeiture actions in FY 2022. 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.