$777 Million Sits in a DOJ Account. Military Families Who Lost Loved Ones to ISIS Want It Released.

In November 2017, U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Kenton Stacy was on a mission in Syria when an explosion left him with traumatic brain injuries and other wounds that upended his life and his family's. Years later, Stacy and his wife Lindsey learned that a French multinational corporation had been paying millions to the very terrorist organization responsible for attacks like the one that injured him — and that the U.S. government was sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars extracted from the company as punishment [1].

"They were essentially funneling money to fund terrorists and ISIS," Lindsey Stacy told Fox News [1]. The Stacys are among roughly 1,000 plaintiffs — Gold Star families, wounded veterans, and survivors — now demanding that the Department of Justice release $777 million in forfeiture and fines collected from Lafarge S.A., the French cement maker that pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and al-Nusrah Front [1][2].

The money has been in DOJ custody since October 2022. None of it has been distributed to victims [1][3].

How Lafarge Funded Terrorism

Lafarge purchased a cement plant in Jalabiya, northern Syria, for $680 million in 2008 [1]. Operations began in 2010, one year before the Syrian civil war erupted. As the conflict intensified and other foreign companies withdrew, Lafarge stayed [4][5].

Between 2013 and 2014, Lafarge and its subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) negotiated payments to armed factions — including ISIS and al-Nusrah Front, both U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations — to protect employees, maintain operations, and even gain competitive advantage over rival cement sellers [2][6]. The DOJ's statement of facts described a revenue-sharing arrangement: Lafarge agreed to pay ISIS based on the volume of cement LCS sold, effectively cutting the terrorist group into its profits [6][7].

The total paid to ISIS, al-Nusrah Front, and intermediaries was approximately $10.24 million between August 2013 and October 2014, according to U.S. prosecutors [2]. French courts found the figure to be €5.59 million ($6.53 million) in direct payments to the armed groups [5][8]. The discrepancy reflects differing calculations of intermediary costs and overhead payments.

These funds flowed to ISIS during a period of rapid territorial expansion. By mid-2014, the group controlled large swaths of Iraq and Syria, had declared a caliphate, and was carrying out mass atrocities — including the Yazidi genocide in Sinjar, Iraq, in August 2014 [9]. U.S. servicemembers were deployed to combat the group throughout this period.

Source: DOJ, Court Records

Data as of Apr 13, 2026CSV

The $777 Million Penalty — and Who Gets It

On October 18, 2022, Lafarge and LCS pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of New York to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations. It was the first time the DOJ had ever brought such a charge against a corporation [2][6].

The penalty totaled $777.78 million: a $90.78 million criminal fine and $687 million in criminal forfeiture [2][6]. At the time, then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco called it "a defining moment in the department's mission to combat the financing of terrorism" [2].

But more than three and a half years later, the funds remain in DOJ accounts. The Biden administration denied requests to distribute them while the parallel French criminal case against Lafarge was still pending [1]. That case concluded on April 13, 2026, when a Paris court convicted Lafarge and four former executives of financing terrorism, imposing a €1.125 million fine — the maximum under French law — and prison sentences of three to six years for the executives, including six years for former CEO Bruno Lafont [5][8].

With the French case resolved, families and their lawyers say there is no remaining justification for withholding the funds. "For families who lost their breadwinner, or for disabled servicemembers struggling to survive, access to their rightful share of these funds would be life changing," wrote Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) in a September 2025 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi [3].

Congressional Pressure Builds

The political pressure on the DOJ has intensified across two administrations. In February 2025, Republican lawmakers — including Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) — sent a letter urging the department to review remission petitions submitted by the families, arguing that "the previous administration ignored these victims and our requests" [1].

Hamadeh followed up seven months later, writing to Bondi that "many qualifying victims and their survivors" had received nothing, and that their legal counsel had not even received a response from the government [3]. He requested "a clear accounting of the status of these funds and why victims' families have received nothing" [3].

According to the Fox News report, families believe the decision to release the funds rests with Acting Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche [1]. The DOJ has issued a general statement saying it is "committed to compensating all victims to the maximum extent permitted by law" [1] but has not provided a timeline, explained the specific administrative process underway, or identified any legal barrier to distribution.

The Legal Framework: Forfeiture, Remission, and Victims' Rights

The path from criminal forfeiture to victim compensation runs through a DOJ process called "remission." Under the Attorney General's Guidelines on Seized and Forfeited Property, the AG has broad discretion to direct forfeited assets to victims of the underlying crime [10]. Over 40 civil society organizations — including Amnesty International, the Center for Justice & Accountability, and the White Helmets — signed a joint statement in May 2024 urging then-AG Merrick Garland to exercise this authority [11].

The statement cited a precedent: Garland's earlier decision to transfer forfeited Russian assets to benefit the Ukrainian people, arguing the same "creative solutions" should apply to ISIS victims [11].

A separate and larger parallel system exists in the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund (USVSST Fund), established by Congress in 2015. That fund was seeded with $1.025 billion from the BNP Paribas settlement — a case in which the French bank paid $8.9 billion for sanctions violations involving Sudan, Iran, and Cuba [12]. Since 2017, the USVSST Fund has made five rounds of payments totaling more than $7 billion [12][13].

Source: DOJ, GAO

Data as of Jan 1, 2026CSV

But ISIS is not a state sponsor of terrorism — it is a non-state armed group. That distinction matters: the USVSST Fund is explicitly limited to victims of state sponsors like Iran, Sudan, and Syria (the Assad government), not non-state actors [12]. The Lafarge forfeiture funds therefore cannot be deposited into this existing fund without new legislation or creative legal interpretation.

This leaves the remission process as the primary mechanism. Families have submitted remission petitions to the DOJ, but there is no statutory deadline for the department to act on them, and no formal oversight mechanism forcing a resolution [3][10].

The Causal Chain Question

The strongest legal challenge to victim distribution involves causation. Under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), plaintiffs suing for civil damages must demonstrate that the defendant's material support was a proximate cause of the injuries they suffered [14]. In the forfeiture remission context, petitioners must show they are victims of the offense of conviction — here, conspiring to provide material support to ISIS.

Lawyers for the families argue the connection is straightforward: Lafarge's payments funded ISIS operations during the precise period when U.S. troops were fighting and dying in the region [1][9]. Todd Toral of Jenner & Block, a U.S. Marine veteran representing approximately 25 families, has called the case "the first time a corporation and executives have been held to account for aiding terrorism" [1].

But establishing that Lafarge's specific payments caused specific injuries to specific plaintiffs presents a higher evidentiary bar. ISIS had many funding sources — oil sales, taxation of populations under its control, looting of antiquities, and donations from private individuals [6]. Critics of broad victim claims argue that $6-10 million in cement-plant protection money, while criminal, may not have been a but-for cause of any particular attack on U.S. forces.

The DOJ has not publicly articulated this objection in the Lafarge case. But the department's silence — and its failure to act on remission petitions over three-plus years — suggests internal deliberation about the scope of eligible victims and the evidentiary standard that should apply.

Multiple Victim Groups, One Pool of Money

The military families are not the only claimants. In December 2024, more than 400 Yazidi-American survivors of the ISIS genocide filed a separate lawsuit against Lafarge in the Eastern District of New York. The suit, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, alleges that Lafarge's payments to ISIS directly enabled the group's campaign of mass killing, enslavement, and sexual violence against Yazidis beginning in August 2014 [9][14].

That lawsuit proceeds under the civil provisions of the ATA, seeking damages directly from Lafarge — separate from the $777 million already in government hands. But it highlights a broader tension: if the DOJ does distribute the forfeiture funds, who qualifies? The pool of potential claimants could include:

• U.S. military families and wounded servicemembers (roughly 1,000 plaintiffs in the Foley v. Lafarge litigation) [1]
• Yazidi-American genocide survivors (400+ plaintiffs in the Murad v. Lafarge suit) [9]
• Syrian and Iraqi civilians harmed by ISIS during the period of Lafarge payments [11]
• Other categories of U.S. nationals harmed by ISIS

If all groups were deemed eligible, $777 million would be divided among potentially thousands of claimants. With roughly 1,000 military family plaintiffs alone, an equal distribution would yield approximately $777,000 per plaintiff — though actual awards would likely vary based on the severity of injury or loss [1].

What Holcim Knew — and When

Lafarge merged with Swiss cement giant Holcim in 2015, creating LafargeHolcim (later renamed Holcim). The DOJ's prosecution documents state that former Lafarge executives concealed the Syrian payments from Holcim both before and after the acquisition [15]. Holcim has maintained it had no knowledge of the activities in Syria and did not conduct post-acquisition due diligence on the Syrian subsidiary's operations [15].

When the conduct came to light, Holcim investigated and cooperated with authorities. But the company did not voluntarily disclose the conduct to the DOJ, nor did it fully cooperate with the investigation at the outset [15]. Holcim has stated it "supports the resolution" reached between Lafarge S.A. and the U.S. Department of Justice [15].

The question of what American partners, investors, or regulators knew remains largely unanswered. Lafarge was publicly listed and had significant operations in the United States. No U.S. regulatory body has publicly disclosed whether it received warnings about the Syrian operations before the DOJ prosecution.

A Landmark Case — but Is It Selective?

The Lafarge prosecution was the first corporate material-support-for-terrorism case in U.S. history [2][6]. Legal scholars have noted that other multinational corporations operating in ISIS-controlled territory likely made similar protection payments to keep their operations running — a common practice in conflict zones [7][16].

No other company has faced comparable prosecution in the United States for payments to ISIS. The question of selective enforcement is difficult to answer definitively: the DOJ does not publish data on investigations it chose not to pursue. But the Lafarge case was, by the department's own description, a precedent-setting action — and precedents, by definition, are applied selectively at first [6].

In France, the conviction carries broader implications. The Paris court's April 2026 verdict was the first time a company had been tried for financing terrorism in France [5][8]. Legal analysts at Bracewell LLP and elsewhere have suggested the case could open the door to similar prosecutions of corporations that made payments to cartels or other armed groups in conflict zones [7].

Where the Money Sits

As of May 2026, the full $777.78 million remains in DOJ-controlled accounts. The department has not announced any plan to distribute the funds, redirect them to other victim compensation programs, or apply them toward federal debt reduction [1][3]. Congress has no automatic oversight mechanism over the disposition of criminal forfeiture funds — the decision rests with the Attorney General under existing DOJ guidelines [10].

Rep. Hamadeh has pressed for transparency, but his letters have gone unanswered [3]. No congressional hearing has been scheduled on the matter. The families' civil lawsuits against Lafarge continue separately in federal court, but those proceedings would result in damages paid by the company — not from the funds already held by the government.

The legal tools exist for distribution. The precedent of using forfeited assets for victim compensation has been established in other contexts. The question is whether the DOJ will act — and how it will balance the competing claims of military families, Yazidi survivors, and the broader universe of ISIS victims who were harmed during the years Lafarge kept the money flowing.

For Hailey Dayton, a Gold Star daughter whose father was killed in action, the bureaucratic delay compounds a loss that cannot be quantified in dollars. "This money was extracted because a company funded terrorists," her family's legal team has argued. "The people those terrorists harmed should receive it" [1].

The DOJ has said it is committed to compensating victims. Three and a half years in, families are still waiting for the commitment to become action.