United States owed 65 billion US in unpaid fines

The New York times recently reported on a Study performed by Martin H. Pritikin of  Ezra Ross Whittier Law School and UCLA School of Law that Corporates, White Collar Criminals, Polluters and Fraudsters owe the US Government more than $65 billion US.

The study delves into the structure of the collection activity and found that;
- Responsibility for Collection of Bad Debts is dispersed. In collecting criminal debts, it is placed amount 94 different US attorney offices with a success rate of just 4%.
- The mining regulator had a similar success rate of just 5%.
- There is no incentive for agencies to collect their debts, with all funds being recovered going back to the government (not retained by the agency).

In some cases there was never going to be any chance of success, cited examples being officers of National Century Financial Enterprises, an Ohio health finance company. They were ordered to pay fines of $2.38 billion for defrauding investors. They’ve paid  about $3 million. Many of them are in prison.

In other cases, there have been better opportunities for success. Sales of mining companies have been allowed to proceed in the mining  even with fines owing. If legislation is not already in place, the legislators do not need to be to inventive to capture these fines.

The key lessons from this are responsibility, accountability and incentive for collection teams.