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Attorney General Madigan collects nearly $1 billion in state revenue in 2013

Collections include $101 million recovery for state pension systems

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[March 15, 2014]  CHICAGO — Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced this week that her office collected nearly $1 billion in 2013 on behalf of the state of Illinois.

Through a combination of litigation and collection efforts, Madigan's office generated more than $32 for every tax dollar appropriated to the office in 2013. Since Madigan took office, total collections have reached over $10 billion.

"My office works to maximize revenue to support critical state programs and services, and we do this while maintaining the lowest level of taxpayer funding since 1997," Madigan said. "Since my first term as attorney general, we've secured over $10 billion in revenue to fund state operations."

In 2013, Madigan's office collected $992,581,592.32 on behalf of the state. The attorney general's office generated nearly $374.5 million of this amount through collections, litigation for damage to state property, child support, unpaid educational loans, fines and penalties. In addition, the attorney general's office collected nearly $273.6 million through tobacco litigation and nearly $243.6 million in estate tax revenues.

Additionally, due to a settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co., Madigan's office recovered $101 million for the state's pension systems to cover losses sustained from investments in mortgage-backed securities that contributed to the economic collapse in 2008.

Madigan's office operated in 2013 with an appropriation from the state's general revenue fund of $30,843,200 – the lowest level of funding from taxpayer dollars that the office has received since 1997. The attorney general's office generated $32.18 for every state general revenue tax dollar the office received in 2013.

The $992.6 million generated in 2013 does not include more than $1 billion in benefits that Madigan's office successfully recovered through mediation and litigation, which is distributed directly to Illinois residents, businesses and organizations, often in the form of restitution.

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For instance, the attorney general's Consumer Fraud Bureau recovered and saved more than $1.1 billion on behalf of defrauded Illinois residents and businesses in 2013, a sum that includes relief that Illinois residents received directly from the $25 billion national foreclosure settlement that Madigan secured in conjunction with her counterparts in other states, along with the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Over the last two years, Illinois residents have directly received nearly $2 billion in financial relief in the form of principal reductions, loan refinancing and cash payments as a result of the settlement, which was the second-largest ever obtained through joint action of state attorneys general.

Madigan's office also reached several major settlements with the pharmaceutical industry in 2013. Among the most notable is a $1.6 billion joint state and federal settlement with Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals over its illegal marketing of antipsychotic drugs Risperdal and Invega. Illinois received $23.6 million under the agreement.

Madigan's office also has secured more than $85 million in unpaid gasoline sales taxes through a joint enforcement initiative with the Illinois Department of Revenue. This ongoing investigation is aimed at cracking down on gas station owners who have evaded paying sales taxes by falsely under-reporting sales figures, causing the loss of millions of dollars in state tax revenue.

[Text from file received from the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan]

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