The Department of Justice introduced an interagency task force Wednesday designed to bolster the federal government’s response to fraud schemes targeting vulnerable U.S. citizens.
The effort, launched via an executive order from President Trump, will combine resources from Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Federal Trade Commission to target crime in areas from healthcare to financial markets and digital currencies.
“Drawing on our pooled resources, including subject-matter expertise, data repositories, and analysts and investigators, we can identify and stop fraud …on a wider scale than any one of us can do alone,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said. “We will pursue our mission with determination, fairness, and the coordinated resources of all our law enforcement partners.”
Rosenstein said the goal of the task force is to deter, not prosecute, fraud. Acting Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio later clarified that the government intends to bring charges when appropriate.
“We would prefer to never have to do that, that the fraud would be deterred,” he said.
The initiative will seek to build upon the federal government’s recent attempts to crack down on corporate fraud. The Justice and Health and Human Services departments cooperated in June to charge 162 doctors and others in opioid-distribution cases. The Justice Department also arrested 74 people last month in a real estate fraud scheme targeting the elderly.
Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney labeled the announcement as a blow to critics who said the agency under his authority has dulled its enforcement efforts on sectors like payday loans.
“We absolutely intend to continue to protect consumers,” he said.
