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| FBI ramps up probes of financial, mortgage fraud | |
| 2009-03-20 | |
THE number of probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into corporate fraud and mortgage fraud is growing by the month. FBI deputy director John Pistole told a US House of Representatives panel that the bureau has more than 2000 open investigations into mortgage fraud as well as 566 corporate-fraud investigations.
Those numbers are all larger than those Mr Pistole offered to a Senate committee last month. Comparing Mr Pistole's testimony to the House panel with the data he gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, it appears the FBI has opened 36 new corporate-fraud investigations and 200 new mortgage-fraud investigations in recent weeks. Mr Pistole said the FBI continues to experience "an exponential rise" in the number of fraud investigations it is conducting, "a trend we expect to continue". He said the FBI's investigations on corporate fraud and financial-institution failures are focused on accounting fraud, insider trading and financial-statement manipulation. Mr Pistole told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that the FBI's investigations into the current financial crisis involve companies "that everybody knows about". Mr Pistole told the House panel that the growing number of fraud probes was straining the FBI's resources for investigating white-collar crime. President Barack Obama's 2010 budget proposal and various bills introduced in Congress call for additional financial resources for the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate fraud cases. | |
| Posted by:tipper |