ATLANTA — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - Georgia, Northern), published as received.
ATLANTA - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia collected over $35 million in civil and criminal penalties and forfeited nearly $8 million of assets during Fiscal Year 2025, which ended on September 30, 2025.
“These collections and forfeitures underscore my office’s dedication to securing financial justice for victims and the public,” said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. “We and our law enforcement partners will aggressively use all available legal means to hold wrongdoers accountable, compensate crime victims, and protect the public fisc by collecting debts owed to the government.”
Defendants who commit certain crimes must pay restitution to the victims of those crimes. Criminal defendants also must pay criminal fines and assessments, which go to the Department of Justice’s Crime Victims Fund. This fund distributes the monies to federal and state victim compensation and victim assistance programs. During Fiscal year 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office collected over $17 million in restitution, fines, and/or assessments imposed against defendants in criminal cases.
In affirmative civil enforcement cases, the United States sues individuals and/or corporations to recover government monies lost to fraud or other misconduct, or to collect fines imposed for non-criminal violations of federal law. This office collected over $18 million through affirmative civil enforcement cases.
This office also worked with other Department of Justice components to jointly collect an additional $34 million in civil and criminal cases.
In addition, this office’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section used civil and criminal forfeiture tools to deprive wrongdoers of their ill-gotten gains and divest them of the property used to facilitate their crimes. Specifically, in Fiscal Year 2025, this office forfeited more than $4.5 million in criminal cases and over $1.5 million in civil forfeiture cases. This office also worked with its federal law enforcement partners to forfeit an additional $1.8 million through nonjudicial forfeiture processes.
The Department of Justice uses forfeited property to compensate crime victims, to share with federal, state and local law enforcement partners and for a variety of other law enforcement purposes. In Fiscal Year 2025, more than $3 million was returned to crime victims and over $5 million was shared with law enforcement agencies.
For further information please contact the U.S. Attorney’s Public Affairs Office at USAGAN.PressEmails@usdoj.gov or (404) 581-6016. The Internet address for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia is http://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga.
