FRAUD LAW LOOPHOLES DISCOVERED; INTERNET INTRODUCES SPECIAL PROBLEMS, SAYS PROSECUTOR

Sometimes the information superhighway travels too fast, says Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle.

Swingle said several credit-card fraud cases using the Internet have left police unable to help local crime victims because state laws stand in the way.

The problem occurs when a person's credit-card number is used to make a purchase in a county where the victim doesn't live, Swingle said. The criminal, who might live in St. Louis, uses a Cape Girardeau person's card number to buy goods from a company based in Los Angeles or some other city. Even though the company cooperates by allowing law enforcement agencies to pinpoint the residence and computer where the purchase was made, the case may never be investigated or prosecuted, Swingle said.

"Right now the only county where you can be prosecuted for a crime is where an element of the crime occurred," he said.

Cape Girardeau police Capt. Steve Strong has seen enough Internet credit fraud in recent months to realize the laws are out of date.

"We've had some cases, not a large number," Strong said. "But it's new, and like any new crime, the longer people see they can get away with it the more it will increase."

The ease of committing the crime comes from the anonymity offered by the Internet, Strong said. An actual card isn't needed to buy, only an active account number.

"That's why we tell people to take their carbons with them," he said. "The next person can come along, pull the carbon out of the trash and use your credit card."

Old-fashioned credit fraud before the Internet didn't give police these problems, Strong said.

Cape Girardeau's Internet cases have been treated coolly by police and prosecutors in other cities, Strong said. In large urban areas like St. Louis, where small municipalities exist within a larger one and then within a county, law enforcement overlaps itself. This makes it hard to find someone to investigate a small incident of credit fraud, he said.

It's more difficult when a company can only say that its product was bought by a computer in St. Louis, Strong said.

In certain instances, the FBI or U.S. attorney's office will step in to assist a police department, the captain said.

"You can send the victim to the FBI, but they can be selective in what they choose to deal with," Strong said. "If it's not over a certain dollar amount, it gets ignored."

Federal investigators don't have the resources to handle every criminal complaint they receive, said Larry Ferrell, assistant U.S. attorney for Missouri's eastern district.

But in certain cases a crime involving a low dollar amount will get their attention, he said. Generally, it would depend on the criminal history of the person involved or substantial interstate activity by the criminal, Ferrell said.

Swingle has sent a proposal to state Attorney General Jay Nixon to try to update the credit-card-fraud statute. It would permit investigation and prosecution of a crime in four jurisdictions:

-- The county where the crime occurs.

-- The county where the defendant resides.

-- The county where the victim resides.

-- The county where the property was obtained or attempted to be obtained.

If parts of a crime were committed in different counties, any of the counties could prosecute, the proposed statue says.

"This is truly a case where technology has out-paced the criminal law," Swingle says in his letter to Nixon. "In many cases the jurisdiction where the victim lives will sometimes be the only one that truly cares about seeing the crime successfully investigated and prosecuted."