Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section | 2018 National Crime Victims' Service Awards Tribute Video

JENNIFER BICKFORD, DEPUTY CHIEF, PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING UNIT: MLARS is the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section. It's in the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, and my particular unit works to compensate victims of crime with forfeitures that were obtained from our federal partners all across the country.

ALICE W. DERY, CHIEF, PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING UNIT: Probably about half or more of the cases that we do are white collar crime, fraud.

JENNIFER BICKFORD: And the types of cases range from Bernie Madoff, you know, huge worldwide fraud, everyone knows about that, to one employee potentially embezzling from their mom and pop employer. With teamwork, it's really a collaborative group effort to get to the best result or think of a creative new way to get another victim some more money.

KENNETH FEINBERG, SPECIAL MASTER, U.S. VICTIMS OF STATE SPONSORED TERRORISM FUND: We are trying to give back to the community by demonstrating our support for victims who are otherwise powerless.

JENNIFER BICKFORD: So to date in Madoff, we've paid over 700 million dollars to about 30,000 victims, which is our most paid out in any single case to date. 

Since about 2000 to now, we've already given out over five billion dollars to victims of crime through the remission process. The U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund has given out over another billion. And in the future we will have another three billion distributed in Madoff. So we're moving up to nine or ten billion dollars going out to victims of crime.

ALICE DERY: It makes it worthwhile at the end of the day when you know we're going to be changing a person's life and giving them hope and giving them something that—that they—they didn't have. And that matters.

KENNETH FEINBERG: I think the entire team that operates gets tremendous personal satisfaction at giving back to the country.