consumer fraud, 69 percent had made no prosecutions for insurance fraud, and 34 percent had prosecuted no corporate offenses whatsoever (U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1993, p. 2).
Local agencies are increasingly becoming more selective about the prosecution of white collar cases referred to them by federal agencies. For instance, California has gained the dubious distinction as the fraud capital of the United States. In the first nine months of 1994, MasterCard reported that almost 30 percent of its worldwide counterfeiting losses occurred in the state, and that fraud had risen almost 60 percent from the previous year (California Senate, 1994, p. 4). Despite these staggering statistics, the Los Angeles regional office of the U.S. Attorney General was forced to turn down 98 percent of the non-major and 46 percent of the major bank and thrift fraud cased referred by the FBI (California Senate, 1994, p. 5).
Again using California as an example, the dollar losses from white collar crime far outweigh the costs of common crime. Economic crimes in Los Angeles Coun
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