More Prosecutors on the Beat

The announcement that the U.S. attorney’s office in Orange County is planning to increase its staff by two-thirds to fight federal crimes in the area is welcome news.

So is the emphasis that Assistant U.S. Atty. John Hueston, the office chief, says he will give to breaking up telemarketing fraud rings and combating the organized crime networks and street gangs.

Violent, front-page crimes draw a lot of public attention, but it is the less obvious criminal operations of those organized crime networks, gangs and boiler-room operators that have dug deep and pervasive roots into an increasingly urban and affluent community.

Although Hueston is new as office chief, he is keenly aware of Orange County’s well-earned reputation as the investment fraud capital of the nation.

That title was earned in the 1980s when unscrupulous telemarketers, preying mostly on the elderly, operated scores of boiler rooms staffed with smooth-talking con artists. They sold unsuspecting investors fraudulent oil and gas leases, phony tax shelters, futures and options trading and precious-metal schemes and other assorted scams.

The con artists were attracted here by Orange County’s wealth, and they mined trusting but gullible investors for what officials estimated were losses as high as $1 billion a year. That, according to judges and prosecutors, led to the realization in Orange County and the rest of the country that white-collar crime was a significant threat to the nation’s well-being.

It also led to the formation of a Southern California Fraud Task Force in 1986, hundreds of arrests and the assignment of more than 50 of the U.S. attorney’s staff lawyers in Southern California to work solely on white-collar crimes.

Still, scam artists today continue to prey on residents. So it should be reassuring to county residents again to see more federal prosecutors assigned to ferret out telemarketing fraud.

The two best ways to combat it are through education and enforcement. Residents must know where the scams are, what they are and how to protect themselves against fraud. And prosecutors must apply the aggressive effort that Hueston promises.

That will put some of the worst offenders out of business, help deter others and, as Hueston hopes, address Orange County’s dubious distinction as the capital of telemarketing fraud.