APRI Highlights - Fall 2004

Sean Morgan Program Manager and Senior Attorney, White Collar Crime Program

APRI’s White Collar Crime Program (WCCP) continues its mission to assist local prosecutors in combating telecommunications fraud using the Internet and telephone lines, and particularly fraud that exploits America’s seniors.

WCCP held a national leadership conference June 28-30, 2004, in Washington, DC, on financial exploitation and abuse of older persons. Conference highlights included a presentation on the proposed Elder Justice Act by Lauren Fuller, chief investigative counsel, U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, and a discussion of the relationship between exploitation and physical abuse by Paul Greenwood, chief of the Elder Abuse Unit, San Diego (CA) District Attorney’s Office.

In addition, Sean Morgan, APRI’s White Collar Crime Program manager, joined with Lisa Weinreb, head of CATCH, the high-tech crime unit for the San Diego and Riverside District Attorney’s Offices, and John Labossiere, crown counsel, British Columbia, to present on the escalating perpetration of identity theft schemes at NDAA’s Summer Conference.

WCCP conducted its third Wired to Fight Fraud training in Seattle, WA, August 2-4, 2004. This course educates prosecutors on current on-line fraud scams, the physical and legal acquisition of electronic and digital evidence, and assisting victims of telecommunications fraud.

WCCP has continued its efforts to document “best practices,” start-up concerns, successes, resources, resource leveraging, and ongoing challenges faced in combating telecommunications fraud. APRI staff visited the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office in Waukegan, IL, to see how a suburban jurisdiction has combated telecommunications fraud. APRI will publish the best practices and lessons learned from this visit, as well as previous visits to CATCH and the Thirteenth Prosecutorial District Attorney’s Office in Bolivia, NC, in the APRI Special Topics Series.

Finally, because fraudsters frequently commit their crimes across local, state, and even national borders, WCCP established a peer-to-peer technical assistance list to help prosecutors ensure that jurisdictional boundaries do not become barriers to justice. This contact list, which includes at least one state or local prosecutor from each state, was published in August on APRI’s Web site.

For information about WCCP’s trainings and publications, please visit us on-line at www.ndaa-apri.org (click on WCC – White Collar Crime in the right column) or contact us at whitecollar@ndaa-apri.org or 703-549-4253.