Crime Changing Its Face, Departing FBI Agent Says : Enforcement: Most investigations used to involve fraud or violent incidents, Wylie (Bucky) Cox recalls. Now, he says, white-collar criminals are the subjects of more than half the cases.

When Wylie (Bucky) Cox first joined the FBI back in 1973, it wasn’t quite what he expected.

“I thought it was going to be rock ‘n’ roll, shoot ‘em up, kick down doors and drive fast,” said the resident agent in charge of the FBI’s Orange County office. “It’s not like that at all.”

Actually, he said, the work has been even more rewarding than he anticipated as he went head to head against bank robbers, drug runners, foreign spies and white-collar crooks, studying clues, collecting evidence and guessing a criminal’s next move.

“It’s not like Hollywood,” said Cox, 43, who is preparing to leave the FBI’s top spot in Orange County this June for an internal investigative position in Washington.

What “the Bureau” is really like, however, is not widely known because the agency likes it that way.

“We have been termed an anonymous organization,” Bucky said. “The public probably doesn’t realize that there’s 62 agents and 90 FBI employees in Orange County.”

Nonetheless, Cox, during a recent interview, offered a brief, behind-the scenes glimpse into the life of the county’s G-men and women.

On the fourth floor of a nondescript, yellow stucco building on West Civic Center Drive, behind the receptionist’s bullet-proof glass partition, dozens of agents work hundreds of cases, everything from tracking down out-of-state fugitives to unraveling mail fraud.

Unlike local police, who are usually most productive when riding around in a patrol car, “the feds” tend to spend the majority of their time behind a desk, poring over reams of documents and following paper trails. One of the most important investigative tools in these agents’ crime-fighting arsenal is the telephone.

“Most of the cases involve communications. Even in our good violent crime cases, it’s communications that gets the job done,” Cox said.

The workload and the size of office has increased significantly since Cox came to Orange County in 1978, when there were only 17 agents assigned to the office.

At that time, Cox was the least experienced agent in the office. He worked everything from violent crimes to foreign counterintelligence and was the county’s first FBI drug investigator.

Cox, who was raised in New Mexico, spent 4 1/2 years in the Army, getting commissioned as an officer and serving one year in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division as a Special Forces captain.

After his discharge in 1970, Cox went back to New Mexico and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science. He dropped out of a master’s program the day he received a letter from the FBI telling him he was hired.

Fresh out of the FBI Academy, Cox’s first assignment was with the Los Angeles office in 1973. Five years later he moved to the Santa Ana office, where he has been ever since, living in South County with his wife and three children.

Over the years, he said, he has seen a lot of change in the county. Unlike now, where hundred-pound seizures of cocaine are fairly routine, “an ounce or a multi-ounce seizure was a big case,” he said.

“As the community builds up, the crimes become more sophisticated and our violations increase,” Cox said. “In 1978, we were doing more fraud, violent crimes and foreign counterintelligence. . . . Now, we have half of the office assigned to white-collar crime investigations . . . such as the savings and loan and bank failures.”

Investigations of white-collar crime can often take years to complete. Documents from the investigation into Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn.’s collapse, for instance, have filled an entire storeroom, and has been one of the most extensive investigations tackled by the local agents. The FBI has been the lead agency in the joint federal, state and county task force looking into a wide range of possible wrongdoing, including violations of securities, thrift and campaign laws at the failed Orange County thrift.

The characteristics of the county also lend themselves to certain types of crime, said Cox, who noted that because of Orange County’s affluence, agents are constantly running into con men who find a fertile hunting ground here. A number of mail and telephone fraud operations are based here because a prestigious address can give an impression of credibility.

Because of the diversity of crime and the number of cities in the county, FBI agents here find it useful to work closely with local police departments to tackle countywide problems, such as bank robbery.

The image of the arrogant federal agent who steps in and “takes over” the investigation from local authorities doesn’t apply in Orange County, Cox said.

“Interagency cooperation works extremely well here,” he said. “Most of the law enforcement agencies in the county are fairly small and have grown up together. . . . Their borders run together and crooks don’t respect borders, so they have had no choice but to depend on each other and work cooperatively.”

One way in which that cooperation is evident has been in trying to curb bank robberies. In 1987, when nearly 32 banks were robbed each month, FBI officials decided to form the Bank Robbery Apprehension Team, a task force of county agencies aimed solely at combatting the problem.

By coordinating information throughout the county, distributing photographs of suspects, establishing a reward program, and providing the media with accounts of robberies and descriptions of suspects, the countywide team was able to reduce the number of bank holdups by nearly half--to 18 a month--in 1990, Cox said.

“There’s a lot of resources that we can bring into an investigation that the FBI can’t, and vice versa,” said Orange County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. John Meiter.

Federal and local agencies also work together on drug investigations, arrests of fugitives and other crimes.

As Cox prepares to leave Orange County after 13 years, he predicted the agency’s role here will continue to grow, possibly branching off into new territory.

“I see some scary trends in gangs,” he said. “Particularly the very violent, cold-blooded gang shootings that are taking place here and across the country. . . . I think the FBI may be wanting to take a look at that . . . to see what we can add to local law enforcement.

“When you see the . . . innocent people that are struck in these shootings, and the children who are felled by the bullets that are being fired indiscriminately, that’s a national problem.”

Cox said he looks forward to his new assignment in Washington but will miss the people and the action in Orange County. “There’s never a lull here,” he said.

Said Capt. Tim Simon, who heads the county’s Regional Narcotics Supression Program: “Bucky leaves quite a legacy in the county. He showed that by working together we can get much more done.”

Special Agent James M. Donckels, who has spent 22 years in the FBI, 14 of them in Orange County, will replace Cox as the resident agent-in-charge in June. “I feel honored that I was chosen for the position. . . . I won’t be the same as Bucky--we all have our different management styles--but I’ll give it my best shot.”