§ 140A.110.Disposition of Assets

A distribution formula, and its final subsection is the one that matters most.

Subsection (b): after deducting costs of suit, including reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs, 80 percent of the remainder is paid to the state, and the remaining 20 percent is paid pro rata to each law enforcement agency, district attorney’s office, criminal district attorney’s office, and office of a county attorney with felony criminal jurisdiction found by the court to have assisted.

The 20 percent share is an incentive, and a carefully bounded one. Agencies must be found by the court to have assisted, so the share follows contribution rather than jurisdiction, and the court decides.

That answers a familiar objection to forfeiture arrangements, where agencies retain proceeds of their own enforcement. Here a court allocates, and the majority goes to the state.

Subsection (c) is the significant provision: the first $10 million paid to the state in a fiscal year, after costs, shall be dedicated to the compensation to victims of crime fund.

So the money runs to victims first. The chapter gives trafficking victims no claim of its own — the attorney general sues, not them — and this is how the proceeds reach them: through the fund that compensates crime victims generally.

That connection is what makes the absence of a private right of action defensible. Victims cannot sue under this chapter, and the first $10 million of what it collects each year is spent on them.

The trafficking chapter in Title 4 remains available for a victim’s own claim.