Police and prosecutors from the Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are participating in the training, which will enhance cross-border cooperation in the fight against intellectual property theft by increasing the ability of the trainees to use advanced computer forensics techniques to track down, arrest and prosecute IP criminals. Training is taking place over three days at the GIPA facility, and will be lead by Ovie Carroll, Director of the Cybercrime Lab at the Justice Department’s Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section.

This specific, targeted forensics training is a groundbreaking effort for the IPCEN, which was established in 2007. The IPCEN serves two primary functions: to facilitate the exchange of successful investigation and prosecution strategies in combating domestic piracy and counterfeiting crimes; and to strengthen communication channels to promote coordinated, multinational prosecutions of the most serious offenders. By preparing a group of investigators to conduct sophisticated analysis of computer data, the mission of the IPCEN will be advanced and the opportunity for larger domestic and multi-national cases will increase.

The Justice Department organized the gathering with the assistance of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Global Intellectual Property Academy (GIPA) in Alexandria, Va., using a grant from the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics & Law Enforcement.

The IPCEN conference reflects the continuing outreach efforts of the Justice Department’s Attaché and IP Law Enforcement Coordinator for Asia, Christopher P. Sonderby, and the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (OPDAT).

More information about the department’s efforts to combat Intellectual Property Crime can be found at: www.cybercrime.gov

This week’s announcement of charges against individuals from Eastern Europe and Russia for allegedly hacking into credit card processors in the United States shines a spotlight on the issue of cyber crime and security. 

The Department of Justice, through the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), is working diligently with foreign nations all over the world to develop professional and transparent law enforcement institutions that protect human rights, combat terrorism and corruption, and reduce the threat of transnational crime, including cyber crimes.

One of the areas that ICITAP is focused on improving is cyber security.  In Eastern Europe, for example, Department of Justice officials are working with law enforcement agencies in nations that make up the U.S. – GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) Framework Program.  ICITAP helped develop a Virtual Law Enforcement Center, which links the four member countries through a secure video and criminal information network.

Increasing coordination and cyber security capabilities in these nations will help prevent fraud and allow for better communications to investigate crimes and catch criminals.  In December 2009, ICITAP will provide training in Moldova for cyber crime investigators, in partnership with other law enforcement partners.  ICITAP also provided training and equipment to the Ukrainian forensic laboratory for the examination of digital evidence seized in cyber crime investigations, including recent international investigations of child pornography and trafficking in persons.  In Serbia, ICITAP is working with the Organized Crime Directorate to develop a Cyber/High Tech Crimes Workshop and has facilitated communication between U.S. and Serbian law enforcement officials involved in joint cases.

Established in 1986, ICITAP’s first mission was to help train police officers in Latin America. Over the next two decades, ICITAP evolved into a full-service criminal justice development agency that plays an important role in fostering international stability and rule of law, which are vital to U.S. security.

During the past 20 years, ICITAP – part of the Department’s Criminal Division – has provided law enforcement development assistance around the world, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kenya, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru.  ICITAP works in close partnership with its funders; the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Department of Defense.

The office has been particularly busy recently, with 17 field offices worldwide and three new offices opening soon. In FY 2009, ICITAP carried out more than 1,000 training events for approximately 40,000 foreign law enforcement professionals, and was involved in nearly 140 technical assistance and training partnership activities with U.S. government agencies.

In December, ICITAP personnel from the field offices will gather in Washington, D.C., for the annual managers’ conference where they will share best practices and lessons learned from their overseas programs, before heading back to the far reaches of the globe to continue their missions.

For more information on ICITAP, please visit their Web site: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/icitap

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks with 60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft.

 Last night 60 Minutes aired “The $60 Billion Fraud” - a detailed look at widespread Medicare and Medicaid fraud schemes that cheats taxpayers out of billons of dollars each year. Attorney General Eric Holder sat down with CBS News and talked about the Justice Department’s commitment to put an to end health care fraud.

Watch it at CBSNews.com: “The 60 Billion Fraud”

The Justice Department’s efforts in this area are on-going. Just last week charges and arrests were announced in the cities of Los Angeles and Houston, two centers of activity for the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, the multi-agency squad of investigators and prosecutors that detects billing anomalies, identifies fraud schemes and shuts those schemes down.

The charges against 20 defendants in Los Angeles and six defendants in Houston were part of an ongoing crackdown by the Strike Force, which is in turn a vital part of the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Teams (HEAT), a high-level, anti-fraud partnership of the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Los Angeles Strike Force operations involve actions taken against owners of fraudulent durable medical equipment (DME) companies. DME may include wheelchairs, hospital beds, crutches, leg braces and numerous other types of medical devices designed with legitimate assistance purposes in mind.

These company owners are alleged to have engaged in a variety of schemes to defraud Medicare through the submission of bills for DME that total approximately $26 million. In some of these alleged schemes, straw owners were paid by defendants to disguise the true ownership of the companies. In some cases, after filing claims to Medicare, those charged allegedly did not supply the equipment to Medicare beneficiaries, supplied equipment to beneficiaries who did not need it, or ordered equipment in the names of deceased beneficiaries.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, speaking to reporters, commended the takedown, but said much work remains as Medicare fraud is reigned in:

“Today’s indictments and arrests are important achievements in our ongoing fight against Medicare fraud, but there is more that we can, and will, do. Our Medicare Fraud Strike Force will continue to be vigilant in rooting out criminals who masquerade as health care providers in order to steal from American taxpayers. Every dollar stolen from the Medicare program is one dollar too many.”

Six defendants were charged this week in similar schemes in Houston. In some of the Houston cases, defendants were charged with billing Medicare for DME and then not delivering the equipment to their purported patients. In one case, a defendant is alleged to have billed Medicare for two knee braces for a patient who only has one leg.

Since inception in March 2007, Strike Force operations in Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit and Miami have been immensely successful.  The Departments of Justice and HHS are working together to help eliminate fraud and investigate fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid operators who are cheating the system. Attorney General Eric Holder and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have made a commitment to bring perpetrators of fraud to justice, as demonstrated by the creation of the HEAT earlier this year.

Later this week, Assistant Attorney General Tony West will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on “Effective Strategies for Preventing Health Care Fraud”. More information about the hearing is available on the Judiciary Committee Web site, here.

To learn more about the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT), go to www.stopmedicarefraud.gov.

Over the past two days, 303 individuals in 19 states were arrested as part of Project Coronado – a 44-month multi-agency law enforcement investigation, which targeted the distribution network of a major Mexican drug trafficking organization known as La Familia, through coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement. 

More than 3,000 agents and officers operated across the United States to make the arrests during the two-day takedown.  During the two-day operation alone, $3.4 million in U.S. currency, 729 pounds of methamphetamine, 62 kilograms of cocaine, 967 pounds of marijuana, 144 weapons and 109 vehicles were seized by law enforcement agents. Below, a look at Project Coronado, and the overall numbers of this 44-month operation.

Project Coronado – By the Numbers

1, 186: Number of Total arrests.
1,999: Kilograms of Cocaine Seized
2,710: Pounds of Methamphetamine Seized
29: Pounds of Heroin Seized
16,390: Pounds of Marijuana Seized
$32,795,000: U.S. Currency Seized
269: Number of Vehicles Seized
389: Number of Weapons Seized
2: Number of Maritime Vessels Seized

The Attorney General announced the current results of Project Coronado at a press conference held this morning. He was joined by DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and ATF Acting Director Kenneth E. Melson.

Read the full news release.

AAG Breuer testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee regarding human rights violators. Photograph by Eli Rosenbaum for The Department of Justice

Today, Lanny A. Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law about how the Department works to hold human rights violators accountable for their crimes.  He also outlined plans to enhance these efforts by merging two sections of the Criminal Division.

At the onset, AAG Breuer outlined ways in which the Department brings human rights violators to justice.  The first starts at our borders, where we work with the Department of Homeland Security to prevent these perpetrators from entering our country.  If a suspect has entered the country, and we can’t prosecute them in our own courts, we seek to capture and extradite them so they can stand trial abroad.  Finally, when evidence implicates someone in genocide, war crimes, torture or other human rights violations, the federal government moves swiftly to investigate and take the appropriate legal action.

For example, AAG Breuer highlighted the prosecution of Roy M. Belfast aka “Chuckie Taylor,” the first person charged with violating the U.S. stature prohibiting torture.  Federal prosecutors proved that Belfast, who was born in the United States and is the son of former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, commanded a Liberian paramilitary organization that routinely and brutally tortured their enemies.  In January 2009, Belfast was sentenced to 97 years in prison. 

Immigration litigation is another powerful tool to bring human rights violators to justice. In May 2009, former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk was removed to Germany. Upon arrival in Germany, Demjanjuk was arrested and charged with having been an accessory to the murder of more than 29,000 Jews at a concentration camp.

Breuer noted that while the Department is proud of its efforts to prosecute human rights violators and build global capacity to address these atrocities, he said the Department can and will do more to pursue justice and achieve deterrence in these cases. 

Specifically, he announced he has recommended to the Attorney General that the Department’s already outstanding efforts in the area of human rights would be enhanced by a merger of the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section and the Office of Special Investigation into a new section with responsibility for human rights enforcement, MEJA/SMTJ cases, and alien-smuggling and related matters.  That new section would be called the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section. 

AAG Breuer testified that the Attorney General has indicated his support for this change and the Department’s strong commitment to enforcing human rights, and he expects to move forward with it, after necessary approvals from the Office of Management and Budget and notifications to Congress.     

Holding human rights violators accountable is integral to the Department’s mission, and requires close coordination and cooperation throughout the federal government and with our law enforcement partners abroad.  AAG Breuer and the entire Criminal Division are committed to strengthening the rule of law and foster respect for human rights both here in the United States and around the world.

Read AAG Breuer’s full testimony. (PDF)