Interesting article from the Dallas Business Journal:
White-collar crackdown
More and more local DAs take on corporate crime
William Hoffman
Staff Writer
GREATER METROPLEX -- As federal prosecutors shift their focus and resources to the new frontiers of homeland security, local prosecutors are increasingly picking up corporate fraud and white-collar crime cases the feds leave behind.
Collin County criminal district attorney John Roach, in office since Jan. 1, has added a criminal section to his office's special crimes division, partly in response to the feds' new priorities and partly due to rapid county growth.
Since 1999 Dallas County has experienced an uninterrupted rise in the number of corporate and white-collar crime cases handled by its specialized crime division, according to Brian Flood, the division's chief in the Dallas County District Attorney's office.
And the Denton County District Attorney's office now hosts three certified fraud investigators -- often called on by the Secret Service and other locally based federal law enforcement agencies -- and one of just 180 certified computer forensic analysts in the world, according to first assistant criminal district attorney Lee Ann Breading.
"I think the local district attorneys offices and (federal) agency offices and state attorneys general will do more of the white-collar crime and fraud cases that used to come out of the U.S. Attorneys' offices," said former assistant U.S. Attorney John Teakell, now an attorney at Dallas-based Milner & Finn.
Teakell said the shift of white-collar crime and corporate fraud prosecutions from federal U.S. Attorney's offices to county district attorneys might improve a convicted individual's chances of probation from state courts compared with federal courts, where sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums limit judges' discretion.
Full text:
http://www.bizjournals.com/industrie...3.html?f=et153
