FBI Shift Crimps White-Collar Crime Probes
A massive shift of FBI agents to anti-terrorism and counterintelligence duties has undermined the work of fraud investigators, who are taking on fewer scam artists and corporate miscreants and taking longer to complete cases, Justice Department officials say.
The shift, a response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been felt especially hard in Southern California, a traditional breeding ground for fraud.
"The number of agents currently working white-collar crime is significantly diminished from the number of agents working it before 9/11, because we've had to move a lot of personnel resources over to counterterrorism and counterintelligence," said James M. Sheehan, FBI special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office's criminal division.
As a result, he said, "It could be that there are cases that meet the U.S. attorney's guidelines for federal prosecution and we simply can't get to them because we don't have the resources."
Given the continuing threat of terrorism, however, Sheehan said the shift of resources was "the right thing to do." And he said the FBI wasn't turning away any big cases.
"If there are major cases that need to be addressed, and only the FBI has the investigative talent or resources to do it, then we're going to find a way to do it," he said in an interview last week.
Sheehan wouldn't say how many agents were being assigned cases or how many fraud investigations were being opened these days compared with before the terror attacks. FBI officials in Washington didn't respond to a request for national figures.
One key former supervisor in Los Angeles said the local FBI office had reduced by nearly 60% the number of agents assigned to white-collar crime, public corruption and related work.
Prosecutors said probes must often be put on hold as agents take on temporary terrorism assignments. U.S. Atty. Debra W. Yang in Los Angeles, the top Justice Department official in the region, said the FBI's ranks have become so thin that she at times has had to negotiate to retain individual agents working on important fraud cases.
Morale has suffered, according to some prosecutors, as the number of white-collar agents dwindles and the importance of their overall mission is reduced.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service has helped fill some of the gap by moving experienced agents back to fraud work.
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