Under ERISA, the Labor Department has the authority to conduct civil and criminal investigations to protect employee benefit programs and the assets set aside to pay benefits to workers and their families. The enforcement cases under the Employee Contributions Initiative represent civil cases filed in federal district courts across the country to protect the contributions made by employees and matching contributions promised by their employers. In these cases, workers had contributions to their pension or health plans withheld from their paychecks, but the employers did not deposit their contributions in the plans. Instead, the employers kept the workers' contributions and used them for their own purposes or other purposes unrelated to the plans.

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