Crime Overload Also Hobbles U.S. Prosecutors : Serious offenses involving large sums of money burden the FBI and other federal agencies. Like local officials, they often must ignore lesser cases.

When postal inspector Tom Dugan began his law enforcement career 15 years ago, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles would file criminal charges against suspects who had used the mail to defraud victims of $50,000 or more.

Today, Los Angeles-based federal prosecutors usually will not accept the case unless the loss to the victim exceeds $250,000, Dugan said. So, he and other postal inspectors generally will not spend time looking into complaints involving anything less than that amount.

“They have too many cases,” Dugan said of the U.S. attorney’s office, “and so do we.”

Like their counterparts in local law enforcement, federal authorities say many crimes that once were vigorously investigated are now tossed aside, largely because prosecutors are too busy with more serious offenses.

U.S. prosecutors in Los Angeles have set a particularly high threshold when considering whether to charge suspects accused of fraud and other crimes involving theft of property. As a result, federal agents usually will not investigate crimes unless the amount of loss meets the U.S. attorney’s requirements.

Although the FBI will investigate a bank robbery even when a small amount of money is involved, the agency will not pursue a bank fraud case unless at least $100,000 is stolen, said FBI spokesman Fred Reagan.

In thefts from interstate shipments, the law allows the FBI to step in if the value of the stolen goods exceeds $5,000, Reagan said. However, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles usually will not prosecute unless the amount is greater than $25,000.

Taking a stolen car across interstate lines is also a federal crime. But because of prosecution standards, Los Angeles FBI agents will not investigate a case unless an organized ring of thieves is involved and at least five vehicles have been stolen.

Federal prosecutors in San Francisco and New York said they also have increased filing standards, though generally not to the degree apparent among locally based agents. The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Lourdes Baird, declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed about prosecutorial filing standards.

It was “in the spirit of accommodation,” Reagan said, that the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office agreed upon filing standards so neither agency would waste time or effort pursuing insignificant or probably unprovable cases.

“We found in recent years that our people were running around and spreading themselves too thin on cases that didn’t have a lot of ‘quality’ to them,” Reagan said.

The more restrictive standards have left many crime victims with no recourse but to file lawsuits against those who have cheated or robbed them--an expensive process that often takes years.

“It is a sad state of affairs,” said Los Angeles attorney Gordon A. Greenberg, a former federal prosecutor who frequently sues on behalf of fraud victims whose complaints have been rejected by the U.S. attorney. “But until they have more prosecutors and more judges, it will continue as it is and probably will get worse.”

The U.S. attorney’s filing threshold, in terms of dollars, is probably highest for copyright crimes, a growing problem among movie studios and music companies. Unless the victim can prove a loss of $1 million or more, the U.S. attorney generally will not prosecute, according to Reagan.

Charles Morgan, a senior vice president and general counsel for Universal Studios, said his parent company, MCA, and other entertainment firms have had to jointly establish a $3.5-million enforcement program to police the video industry because federal authorities generally will not.

Under federal law, it is a felony for a retailer to possess more than eight videocassettes of movies that have been copied without permission. Morgan and others said federal agents often are deterred from investigating cases involving tens of thousands of pirated tapes because the U.S. attorney’s office will not press charges. Such cases, Morgan said, “are not the exception. They are the rule.”

The U.S. attorney, Morgan said, usually will not accept a case unless organized crime is involved or the suspects are operating in at least three states.

In one case this year, MCA’s in-house video cops--all of them ex-FBI agents--raided a Glendale videocassette merchant and discovered “hundreds and hundreds” of counterfeit tapes of foreign language movies.

But when the case was presented to the FBI, according to Morgan, agents balked. Morgan said the FBI told MCA officials, “This just isn’t the kind of heavyweight criminal activity that impresses people.”

Reagan, the FBI spokesman, noted that, “Whether it impresses people or not is beside the point. (The U.S attorney) has to operate under certain guidelines, so why waste your time on that kind of investigation” if it will not result in criminal charges?

With criminal sanctions rarely imposed in all but the biggest cases, MCA officials have relied on civil actions to punish lesser offenders. This year, Morgan said, the company has secured more than 100 “writs of seizure” in U.S. District Court, allowing MCA to seize pirated cassette tapes.

“It costs us a lot of money,” he said.