Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Wednesday announced her office collected $864 million in revenue on behalf of the state through litigation and collection efforts in 2017.
Since Madigan took office, her office has collected more than $14 billion on behalf of the state.
The revenue collected for the state by Madigan shows that for every dollar of taxpayer funding her office received, she generated approximately $28 back to the state.
“Since becoming attorney general, I have brought in more than $14 billion for Illinois, including nearly half a billion dollars in funding for our state’s pension systems as the result of the 2008 financial crisis,” Madigan said. “I am proud of my work to generate needed revenue for the state of Illinois especially during difficult economic times.”
The revenue collected by Madigan in 2017 included $19.5 million for Illinois pension systems from a settlement with Moody’s Investors Service to resolve an investigation into its marketing and sale of risky residential mortgage-backed securities leading up to the 2008 economic collapse. In addition to this settlement, Madigan has reached six other settlements — with Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Standard & Poor’s — stemming from investments in mortgage-backed securities that resulted in recovering more than $450 million for the pension systems.
Madigan’s office also collected more than $339 million through collections litigation, including cases involving the collection of funds for damage to state property, child support enforcement, fines and penalties. Madigan also collected more than $250 million through tobacco litigation and more than $254 million in estate tax revenues.
In addition to recoveries for the state, Madigan’s Consumer Fraud Bureaus mediated nearly 25,000 complaints in 2017 and provided more than $6 million in mediated savings for Illinois consumers.