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JOHN L. SMITH: Crime that happens here often goes nationwide, FBI agent finds

Name the story, and there's almost always a Las Vegas connection. When it comes to crime, what happens here often reverberates nationwide, whether the subject is money laundering, human trafficking or even mortgage fraud.

Steve Martinez discovered this for himself in three years as Special Agent in Charge of the Las Vegas FBI office. This week he becomes assistant director in charge of the FBI's enormous Los Angeles division.


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  • The Las Vegas office has just a few hundred agents and staffers, while the Los Angeles division is a staggering 8,000. But when it comes to activity under FBI purview, Las Vegas might rank as the Bureau's biggest little city.

    Over the past 23 years, Martinez has held posts in Phoenix, Washington, El Paso, and Los Angeles. He also served as the FBI's first on-scene commander at the outset of Operation Iraqi Freedom. From drugs on the border to cybercrime on the Internet, Martinez has done it all.

    But he might have seen the widest variety of action in Las Vegas.

    "What work we don't generate here as an FBI office looking at the local community, other agencies bring to us," Martinez, 51, told me during a wide-ranging interview recently on KNPR's "State of Nevada."

    "Because for the same reason that people like to come to Las Vegas, the bad guys like to come here, too. They think there's anonymity here. And so it's almost a tax on this office to be concerned with those external players as well."

    A big part of his job was carving out working relationships with casino corporations and local law enforcement. But Martinez admits even he was surprised to find the FBI investigating widespread mortgage fraud.

    "Certainly in the Las Vegas Valley and in other parts of Nevada, it's a huge, huge issue," he said. "For the FBI it was not a high priority when you look at other types of white-collar crime. ... But it was such a spike here and had such an impact on the overall decline in the economy because of the amount of the fraud, we recognized it here very, very early and were out front, I think, nationally in standing up. (We created) a task force first of all, so that we could address it, leveraging other resources, and also just getting to the point where we understood the scope of the problem here.

    "There was a lot of work done in the FBI office here to look at ... financial suspicious activity reporting, analyze that and determine where we had some nodes of frauds. And we were really quite surprised ourselves at the level at which it was occurring here."

    Whether the scandal results in more state regulation or just more federal prosecution is another matter.

    "I think any time you have a situation where you have rapid growth, you're going to have opportunities for people to cut corners and for opportunities to commit fraud," Martinez said. "And I think Nevada has just provided that kind of opportunity. But if you look at the mortgage fraud problem across the country, I think it was really more to do with financial regulation across the board, not necessarily just this state, but the way the banking industry was or was not regulated.

    "What really provided the opportunities here was just the rapid growth, the pace at which these transactions were turning over. I think, frankly, the financial institutions were not able to keep up with it. And so, detecting frauds when there was the potential to make an awful lot of money turning one transaction after another over was a real challenge."

    He's on to bigger challenges in Los Angeles, but I don't doubt Martinez soon will find himself following a trail that leads back to Las Vegas.

    John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.

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    gary wrote on December 01, 2009 05:27 PM: Las Vegas is the "holy" mecca for criminals; tourists usually have large sums of cash, and don't hang around to press charges. Casinos don't really care where the money comes from as long as it is "green". Sin City: 24 hour money laundry capital of the world.


    Sad wrote on December 01, 2009 01:21 PM: Henderson cop kills mother and geta away with it. Then he rapes a little 15 year old girl and gets away with it.
    The Henderson cops get a new sub-station. The Henderson expands the court house.

    See the pattern yet?

    Cover-up, greed, corruption, abuse, money laundering, speed traps to generate money, dirty deals, increased taxes, increased water and sewer fee's, paid off judges, and the list goes on and on, and this is only Henderson Nevada.

    The entire State is filled with this kind of abuse.

    Local City Government is the problem and no one is doing anything to clean house.

    Time to sell out..


    the goal of the d/a office is to drag out every case to a point that all crimes appear to happen so long ago, the cost simply are forgotten. wrote on December 01, 2009 12:08 PM: the trick works like this.




    http://www.lvrj.com/news/10228251.html


    d/a office ties make get out of jail free cards wrote on December 01, 2009 12:05 PM: The state attorney general's office will take over the burglary case against a Clark County firefighter-paramedic due to a conflict of interest at the county level.

    Sam Bond is in jail accused of stealing narcotics from fire houses and ambulances. The I-Team has learned both of Bond's parents work for the county.

    Sam Bond's father is a retired Metro police officer who now works part time at the department. Bond's mother works in the district attorney's office.

    Metro investigators say their son broke into secured narcotic's supplies on ambulances and at six to eight fire stations, none where Bond worked. Detectives say Sam Bond stole the drugs morphine and two different sedatives.

    On Sunday morning, a witness says he caught someone trying to break into this lockbox on a MedicWest ambulance. After a short chase, police caught the suspect.

    MedicWest Paramedic Supervisor Ron Tucker said, "In all the years that I've worked here at this company, we've never had an issue with our scheduled narcotics."

    Tucker says early Sunday morning, while parked at Desert Springs Hospital, one of his medics caught the burglar on the ambulance.

    "The paramedic was coming out of the hospital to put his equipment away. He opened up the side door of the ambulance and saw the suspect inside trying to get into a lock box with a crowbar," Tucker said.

    Once the paramedic realized what was happening, the burglar ran out the back of the truck and the paramedic ran around the side of the truck. He chased the suspect until he heard someone else behind him.

    Ron Tucker continued, "The next thing he heard was 'stop, I have a gun.' And he didn't know where that had come from, but it was the undercover officer. So he stopped and Metro arrested the suspect."

    tax payers bought more-to-replace-what-was-stolen-so-it-can-continue.


    free money and cars wrote on December 01, 2009 12:03 PM: The Clark County Fire Department hasn't seen dime one of $24,542.24 owed it by Dustin Kourim, son of a Clark County deputy fire chief, who wrecked an emergency vehicle after taking it for a joy ride.
    Kourim took his father's company-issued Bronco the night of March 19, 1997, flipping the vehicle in the intersection of Robindale and Paradise roads after colliding with a BMW belonging to Augustus Almendral. The impact sent the BMW careening into David Funderlich's brick wall.


    the clark county fire department crimes get buried right away wrote on December 01, 2009 12:02 PM:

    http://www.kvbc.com/global/story.asp?S=3952591


    MBAMFORD wrote on December 01, 2009 11:39 AM: FBI Agent Pleads Guilty, Receives Jail Sentence
    Feb 27, 2009
    by Leasa Conze, KOLD News 13 at 5

    A FBI agent accused of masturbating in a women's bathroom at the University of Arizona pleaded guilty today to public sexual indecency.

    Ryan James Seese was sentenced to 5 days in the Pima County jail and 3 years probation.

    Seese also must go through a treatment program.

    In May, a janitor found Seese when she went to clean a bathroom stall in the Student Union.

    She ran out and reported it.

    Seese fled to the nearby parking garage, where he was cited for three misdemeanor charges and released to an FBI supervisor.


    star rider wrote on December 01, 2009 11:18 AM: Angry...the government in the true sense of the word can't force banks to lend money, I agree. However they do have the regulatory powers to control what happens in the market, and this will indirectly dictate bank's lending policies. Banks have been left holding the bag on a ton of bad loans and mortgages, so they are shy about making loans. In addition all these bad loans have reserve requirements (dictated by the fed gov't) which banks must maintain, and that takes cash out of the lending pool. Can the government force a bank to make a loan? You bet they can, this is done with all the Fair Credit Acts established to promote lending and prevent discrimination. Can the fed say they will fine banks that refuse to cooperate with mortgage modifications? Yeah, and I think they just said that the other day. Banks have some underwriting authority when deciding a loan application, but the government also provides rules/laws that must be followed.


    angry@SimpleMindedFools wrote on December 01, 2009 10:54 AM: If you brain dead artards think any government official or entity can 'force' the banks to lend, then why isn't the government forcing the banks to lend now?

    No politician can force a bank to lend money artards. So put the tin foil on your head and go hide in the closet and stay off the streets so they are safe for children.


    homer wrote on December 01, 2009 10:12 AM: Joetheplumber You got your facts wrong. Look at Phil Gramm and and John Mccain they are the great deregulators. Lets not for get GW Bush who asked congress to find ways for more Americans to buy homes. He did this to repay the banking industry who contributed so heavily to his campaigns . You right wingers never tell the real story. And while you are it look at Phil Gramms wife who wrote the Enron loophole that costs billions and ruined thosands of lives.McCain nevers aw a industry he did not want to dereglate.


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