Attorney General Lockyer Honored by Association of Certified Fraud Specialists

Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov

(SACRAMENTO) – The Association of Certified Fraud Specialists has awarded Attorney General Bill Lockyer with its highest honor – the Edwin H. Sutherland Award – for his aggressive accomplishments on white collar crime, consumer protection, energy, civil rights and environmental protection.

"I am honored to be recognized by an association whose members devote their lives to protecting citizens against fraud and white collar crime," Lockyer said. "With the help of the association's members, I will continue to fight to protect our citizens from all types of crime, including elder abuse, financial fraud and consumer scams."

The Association of Certified Fraud Specialists (ACFS) is a national, professional organization headquartered in Sacramento that administers the Certified Fraud Specialist program across the country. As part of its mission, the association also provides conferences, specialized training, research, networking and pro bono community services. Its members include professionals such as certified public accountants, auditors, law enforcement and private security professionals, private investigators and attorneys who deal with white-collar crime, fraud and abuse.

The association lauded Lockyer's initiative in establishing the Operation Guardian program to police nursing homes, and for bolstering the Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse, which has seen an increase in criminal prosecutions of elder abuse from one case in 1993-94 to 131 cases in 2001-02.

"Because of your guidance, and the results you have obtained, both the California Attorney General's Office and the California Department of Justice are consistently used as examples by other states and they are regularly cited by the federal government as a role model for others to follow," wrote ACFS National President Charles Rayborn, and Richard Harris, chairman of the ACFS Board of Regents. "You have consistently led your staff to prove that fighting violent crime and fighting white-collar crime need not be mutually exclusive efforts. In the end, it is the citizens of California that benefit from such vision, a benefit that directly translates into a better quality of life."

Created to recognize extraordinary professional achievement in the field of detecting or deterring fraud and white-collar crime, the Edwin H. Sutherland Award is the associations' highest honor. The award was named in honor of the man who coined the phrase "white-collar crime" in 1939.

# # #