$5.3 billion in judgmentswon

U.S. ATTORNEY’S BIGGEST VICTORY CAME IN $4.5B CITIGROUP CASE

The U.S. attorney’s office in Colorado won civil and criminal judgments and settlements of more than $5.3 billion in fiscal year 2014.

The biggest chunk of that money came in a $4.5 billion settlement against Citigroup for residential mortgage-backed security fraud, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release Tuesday.

The settlement requires Citigroup to provide billions of dollars in relief to underwater homeowners, distressed borrowers and affected communities.

The Citigroup penalty was, at the time, the largest bank-fraud amount ever paid.

Operating on an $18 million budget, U.S. Attorney John Walsh’s legal team also helped recover $16.6 million in criminal actions and $5.2 million in civil actions in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Additionally, the office recovered $17.8 million in asset-forfeiture actions against alleged criminals, often in federal narcotics cases. More than $10 million in the forfeiture collections arise from investment fraud schemes.

The U.S. attorney’s office also collected $850 million from Bank of America pursuant to the 2012 NationalMortgage Servicer Settlement in which the Colorado U.S. attorney’s office took a leading role.

“The United States Attorney’s Office works tirelessly to investigate both civil and criminal misconduct and to collect money due to the taxpayers and to victims of that misconduct,” Walsh said in the news release.

Most 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.