Re: Why does it take so long for government action?
Surfer:
Sorry to be so late to this party, but maybe I can shed some light on why it takes so long before any action is taken by law enforcement in general. There is no way that I can provide you all the reasons, but will just mention the most obvious ones.
First, law enforcement is "reactive" not "proactive" when it comes to this type of crime, or any crime for that matter. First there has to be victims, and monetary loss. Until they shut down/disappear there are no victims and loss. Once there are victims, then the investigation starts. Back in 2004, the averagle SEC investigation could take 2 years, and that was just for the investigation. Then toss in trying to find the perp, recover any money and you are talking another 6 months to a year, if they are lucky to find them. Usually the money is long gone and not recoverable. Then once that is done, charges are filed and the trial process begins; which can take another 2-3 years sometimes.
Then you had over 1800 white collar crime investigators moved from the FBI unit to Homeland Security and they were not replaced back in 2007. Most agencies are grossly understaffed, and shockingly many were not computer savvy to do reverse IP Lookup, allocation ranges, reverse domain/name, IP address allocated, open ports, network blocks, network tracking, etc, etc.. When you toss in the rampant white collar crimes in these industries: mortgage, banking, insurance, welfare, stocks, accounting, embezzlement, construction, home repair, heating and cooling, pump and dump, and the list goes on and on, there just aren't enough investigators to cover them all. The Cyber-Criminals know this.
Toss in overcrowded court calendars, continuance requests, jurisdictional transfers, scheduling conflicts between defense and prosecutors, illness, deaths in the family, vacations, and the most simple case can take a year just to get all the parties available to hear and try the case. This is why there are so many plea deals so they can free up court calendars and still receive some kind of justice.
It is also a reality that law enforcement must prioritize the cases they are working on by the number of victims and dollar lost; and in some cases the amount of money that can be recovered.
Add in that most of the law enforcement agencies have seen an increase of 300-800% of new filings/complaints from the previous year, and you have the system overloaded with investigations/cases.
It is was for this reason that I formed Eagle, to assist law enforcement with most of the research so there investigation could center only on what law enforcement can do. Thus freeing up a lot of the basic research manpower and time.
As I said, this is only a tip of the iceberg as to why it takes so long. I hope this helped.
EagleOne
Author: "Robbing You With A Keyboard Instead Of A Gun - Cyber Crime How They Do It" available in soft cover and eBook at Amazon.com
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