The statistics are nothing short of daunting. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, employee fraud cost the country more than $600 billion in 2003 alone. According to the Department of Commerce, one third of all workers steal from their employers. The same findings suggested that 68.6% of employees who steal do not have criminal records. According to the US Department of Commerce, more than 30% of all business failures can be attributed to bad hiring practices.

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As they chatted online, the men might have imagined what the 15-year-old looked like.

They might have pictured a pretty blond girl, maybe a brunette.

Ed Sexton’s smooth bald head and the bristling whiskers of his mustache almost certainly didn’t come to mind.

But on the Internet, you can be whoever you say you are, and Sexton’s chat profile says he’s a 15-year-old girl in Lincoln.

The last part’s right.

Sexton is a police investigator in Lincoln who this summer busted three men he says tried to meet him for sex when he posed online as an underage girl.

The 37-year-old murder case of a Port Orange teenager has resurfaced, and with it, the names of three men homicide investigators believe could have information about the death of Gail Taylor.

The case gained steam last month when the first detective who worked on the killing — retired investigator Dick Vineyard — saw a story about Taylor in The Daytona Beach News-Journal. Vineyard called Port Orange police and Investigator Shon McGuire of the State Attorney’s Office, pushing Taylor’s case to the front of the cold-case pile.

A couple was behind bars Thursday and facing a slate of criminal charges for allegedly bilking more than $50,000 from an elderly North County man and his wife, both of whom are blind and suffer from dementia.

Investigators arrested Robert Gregory Holman, 33, and his 48-year-old wife, Gina Marie Trevino, on Sept. 1 on suspicion of several counts each of financial elder abuse.

Sheriff’s officials announced Thursday morning that they will seek nearly two dozen additional charges — including conspiracy, caretaker theft, grand theft auto and credit fraud — against the suspects at their arraignment next week.

The family of a 27-year-old Minneapolis man shot to death by police Wednesday night is asking United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to send a special investigator from Washington.

Dominic Felder died after police responded to a 911 call about someone, believed to be Felder, tossing a 60 pound piece of concrete through a window. Police responded to the house at 39th Street and Bloomington Avenue South, confronted Felder and a struggle ensued. The circumstances of the shooting in which seven shots were fired are still under investigation. The two officers involved are on routine paid administrative leave.

Lieutenant’s daughter faces charges.

A probation report on a police lieutenant’s daughter charged in the drunken driving deaths of two people was revised to remove derogatory information and to paint her as a model citizen, a CHP investigator said.CHP Officer Dave Pokorney, who interviewed 19-year-old Chelsea Arcos of Saugus after her arrest, said in an interview Thursday that he had received a phone call Aug. 30 from Probation Officer Dean DeRuise alerting him to the revisions.

“He told me he was ordered by his superiors to prepare a favorable report that recommended Arcos’ release on her own recognizance,” Pokorney said.

Murder suspect Anthony Horton is expected to testify in his own defense next week, his lawyer said Friday.

Chemung County Public Advocate Richard W. Rich Jr. told the court at the end of Friday’s proceedings that he would probably call Horton to the stand when he begins the defense case.

Day five of Horton’s murder trial ended earlier than usual because two prosecution witnesses are coming from out of town and were not available Friday.
The trial could conclude sooner than expected as well.

Attorneys had planned on taking two weeks to present their cases, but District Attorney John Trice said he only has a few more major witnesses to call and could rest his case early Monday.

A tactic once mentioned by Andrew Cuomo to fight Medicaid fraud is “weak-kneed,” Republican candidate for attorney general Jeanine Pirro told a group of business leaders at a meeting Friday.

Cuomo has suggested the state should look at establishing an amnesty period that would allow those who have cheated the Medicaid system, which pays for the health care of poor people, to pay back what they have stolen and escape prosecution. Pirro said that’s not a strong-enough approach.

“I think amnesty is a weak-kneed idea,” she said.

A man and his mother were arrested Wednesday on charges they used their Lehigh Acres insurance company to commit fraud and grand theft.

Micki Regas, 45, of Cape Coral and Patricia Regas, 72, of Lehigh Acre, own and operate Tradewinds Title Inc. The pair were charged with larceny grand theft and swindling to obtain property. Micki Regas was also charged with insurance fraud.

It’s not the first time the Regas family has faced accusations such as these. In 2001, Micki Regas and his sister, Vicki Wright, were sued for misappropriating funds, but the matter was settled out of court. As a result, Micki Regas surrendered the license of his title insurance business, Fleetwood Title.

Do you know that somebody may buy the list of phones you dialed from your cell phone during the last month?

People will know if you called your psychologist, your financial broker, your priest or just a friend.  Even worst, do you know that some websites offer to find your cell phone number, your private mailbox, and your physical home address for just a modest fee?  This is what some online data brokers do.

Data brokers collect information from different sources and the scope of the information they collect varies from company to company.  For instance, credit report agencies are data brokers which exclusively provide information on peoples’ credit history to corporations or employers.  Some data brokers may offer services to individual customers like bestpeoplesearch.com.  Bestpeoplesearch.com sells the list of your cell’s last dialed phone numbers.  Other companies like Abika.com offers to identify your real identity behind your AOL screen name; Peoplesearchamerica.com provides information on your mail box and cell phone calls; and Onlinepi.com offers to locate your cell phone.  Data brokers like credit report agencies may be subject to specific US legislation like the Credit Report Act and other Federal legislation, which may already afford some privacy protection to US fellows.

• Group for Private Investigators
• Group for Process Servers