White Collar Crime

The Northridge earthquake was a beacon for crooked contractors. The region's real estate skid, with its epidemic of foreclosures, has been exploited by hustlers with deceptive schemes to save people's homes. These are just two recent examples of why Southern California is known in enforcement and judicial circles as a favorite haunt for scam artists and a spawning ground for white-collar schemes.

In the open desert outside Baiji, Iraq, a naked man with a thick black beard crouched in the dust of a railroad culvert at twilight. Hours before, he had been mumbling and praying in Arabic. Now he spoke few words. Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna stood over him in the grainy darkness, his Glock pistol racked and pointed down at him. "If you don't talk, I will kill you," Behenna said. The night was warm and ragged from the dust storm that had turned the afternoon an eerie ocher.

Just before retiring from a 23-year career with the FBI, Tom Parker noticed a very disturbing trend in the crime statistics. Fraud against corporations was on the rise, and overworked law enforcement agencies could only investigate the largest cases. "The threshold of fraud necessary for us to investigate kept increasing," he said. Meanwhile, local law enforcement agencies were forced to concentrate on street crimes, such as gangs, drugs and robbery.

Utilizing innovative computer technology, birth records or just a plain old copying machine, criminals are writing at least 500 million fraudulent checks every year, with banks, businesses and customers losing more than $10 billion, a company that monitors check fraud said Wednesday. Of that amount, businesses and banks absorb about $6 billion in losses, with individuals losing the rest.

Two former executives of Chatsworth-based With Design in Mind International Inc. will serve time in prison after getting what a prosecutor called an unusually stiff penalty for white-collar crimes. Steven Zuloff of Bel Air and Barry Benjamin of Woodland Hills were each sentenced to a year in prison and three years of supervised release by U. S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles on Monday, a prosecutor said.

As a special agent with the U.S. government, Terri Price has been trained to operate high-tech surveillance equipment, to sweep crime scenes for the most delicate clues, and to fire a 9-millimeter Beretta handgun with deadly accuracy. But Price's investigations only occasionally require surveillance, rarely involve crime scenes and never end in shootouts.

As defense attorneys accused the government of ethical breaches in the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping investigation, the lead prosecutor on Monday was lecturing defense lawyers at a posh legal retreat in Aspen, Colo., co-sponsored by the jailed sleuth's former attorney. His topic? "Ethical Dilemmas in White-Collar Cases." Assistant U.S. Atty.

From the moment she took over as U.S. attorney in San Diego in 2002, Carol Chien-Hua Lam made no secret that white-collar crime would be her top priority -- including transgressions by prominent business and political figures. And she was as good as her word, prosecuting corporate targets, local officials and a U.S. congressman, Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham of Rancho Santa Fe, who is in prison as a result of her efforts. Lam, however, was recently fired, one of eight U.S.

Daniel M. Petrocelli and his Century City law firm probably won't be fully compensated for their work defending Jeffrey K. Skilling, as the former Enron Corp. chief executive appears to have exhausted his defense fund. But the payoff down the road could be well worth it, even if Skilling is convicted. The decision to defend Skilling is seen as a business move by Petrocelli and his firm, O'Melveny & Myers, to burnish their reputation and expertise in white-collar criminal defense.