Hello Everyone,
Evelyn here,
In this week's edition of the Attorney General's “News Briefs” the General looks over this year’s achievements within the OAG.
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December 21, 2007
Message from Attorney General Bill McCollum
Looking back over the year 2007, I am pleased that the Attorney General’s Office has made significant progress toward protecting our children from child predators, taken steps to reduce the growth of gangs in the state, and developed meaningful initiatives to better serve the people of Florida.
This year, I supported the passage of the CyberCrimes Against Children Act of 2007. The new law contains a first-in-the-nation provision that creates a separate penalty for internet predators who communicate with a child, or someone believed to bea child, online and then travel to meet that child to further sexually abuse him or her. I also secured funding to expand my CyberCrime Unit across the state from six to 56 staff members.
The law enforcement efforts are important to combat internet child predators, but so are education and prevention measures. We kicked off our statewide CyberSafety educational initiative at the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year with a goal of reaching every middle and high school in Florida. To date, 16,000 students have received the cybersafety presentation. My cybersafety website, http://www.safeflorida.net/safesurf, provides valuable information to adults, teens and kids about staying safe while surfing the internet.
In October, I announced a collaborative effort to develop a Statewide Gang Reduction Strategy. My office formed an Executive Working Group of state agency heads to explore a two-pronged approach - a Law Enforcement effort and an educational effort focused on prevention and intervention - to address the critical issues concerning gang membership identification, gang recruitment, risk factors for youth, prevention, crime suppression and post conviction or adjudication diversion. This week, I hosted a two-day Gang Reduction Strategy Summit in Tallahassee. That summit was the next step in developing a Statewide Gang Reduction Strategy. Participants included law enforcement officials, educators, health care providers, social agency workers, faith leaders and elected officials.
In addition to the policy development, my Office of Statewide Prosecution is overseeing the 18th Statewide Grand Jury, impaneled in August to investigate the increase in crimes related to gang activity. The grand jury announced its first indictments last week, charging 10 South Florida gang members with criminal racketeering charges.
Another important initiative my office has undertaken is the development of the Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys. The Council began meeting in February with the goal of making research-based policy recommendations to improve the lives of members of Florida’s minority communities. The Council’s report is due in January and will be available on the Council’s new website at http://www.cssbmb.com.
Government accountability is one of the most important assets in our citizens’ efforts to hold their government responsible. In March, I launched the Government Accountability Project to encourage state and local governments to be proactive in providing Florida’s citizens the information and records they need. As part of the project, the Attorney General’s Office has posted the agency’s contracts on the GAP website for public access. Citizen forums are also being planned as part of the Government Accountability Project to give Floridians a voice in the public records process and the opportunity to discuss records they have requested but may have had trouble accessing.
One specific area of concern for me as Attorney General is protecting our civil rights, particularly in situations involving familial discrimination. My Office of Civil Rights issued a series of subpoenas in July to the Cornerstone Group and several of its apartment complexes in South Florida, seeking to determine if the company is discriminating against families with children, in violation of the Fair Housing Act. This investigation is ongoing.
In April, I wrote a letter to Congress, expressing my strong support for federal legislation that would put in place long-overdue penalties for those who commit hate crimes. Also in April, my Office of Civil Rights required a Broward County condominium association to change its rules so all its Jewish residents can hang mezuzahs on their doors.
Consumer protection continues to be one of the founding principles of the Attorney General’s Office. We are in the midst of an investigation into the sale of grouper in Florida restaurants and in October, my Economic Crimes Division sent subpoenas to the nation’s largest distributor of fish and several other distributors seeking to identify the source of fish being falsely sold as grouper.
In July, I launched a formal investigation into several entities in the prepaid calling card industry including multiple distributors and service providers. We are working to identify prepaid calling card providers and examine their marketing practices which have been called into question as deceptive or deliberately fraudulent.
Just last month, I unveiled a sophisticated team to combat internet-related fraud and simultaneously announced the first agreement reached by the newly-created CyberFraud Task Force. The CyberFraud Task Force was created to review and investigate complaints against companies or individuals found taking advantage of consumers through internet-related fraud. The task force has already reached a $1 million settlement with one internet marketing company and has sued another company, alleging it was engaging in blatantly deceptive business practices and cramming charges onto consumers’ wireless phone bills. Additional investigations are ongoing.
In early December, the Florida Board of Governors unanimously approved my Code of Conduct for Student Lending at public universities. The Code is designed to protect students and their families from being inappropriately steered to certain lenders. The Code’s adoption coincides with an ongoing investigation by the Attorney General’s Office into the student lending industry as a whole.
In light of the changing mortgage markets, we are also investigating various aspects of mortgage fraud, particularly scams related to "rescue foreclosure" offers. The Attorney General’s Economic Crimes Division has the authority to file litigation against companies or individuals violating the Florida Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act through mortgage-related scams.
An additional area of growth for the Attorney General’s Office this year has been in our Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. The unit has undergone substantial development since January 2007, including a reorganization of regional responsibilities, new training initiatives and new procedures for case management. The unit has also created a new bureau tasked with investigating and litigating multi-state false claims cases involving the Florida Medicaid program.
This has been a year of significant progress for the Attorney General’s Office and I have enjoyed developing these initiatives, interacting with Florida’s citizens, and the promise of many more opportunities to serve the people of our great state in the years to come.
Thank you.
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Evelyn out.
