Given the fact that the economic crisis of 2008 is costing this country trillions of dollars.  And given that it was brought on in part by the criminal conduct of some financial institutions, not to mention all those who helped them, it stands to reason that federal prosecutions from October, 2008 to September 2009 (Fiscal Year 2008) would reflect that.  Right?

Actually, not at all. The most serious crime facing our nation during these troubled times has been . . . wait for it. That’s right – illegal immigration!

Corporate Fraud Takes a Back Seat

By a long shot, immigration prosecutions far, far outweighed corporate and financial fraud prosecutions in the country during that time. Specifically, there were 91,879 immigration prosecutions, with 92% of those being prosecutions of aliens illegally entering the country. During that same time there were 178 financial fraud prosecutions, and a grand total of 82 corporate fraud cases.

This means that during a time when taxpayers were asked to pony up $800 billion in bailout money to help the very financial institutions that contributed to the problem, there were 1,121 illegal aliens prosecuted for every single corporate fraud defendant.

Easier to be Corporate Criminal than Illegal Alien

And of the 91,879 immigration prosecutions, how many were prosecutions of businesses who hired the illegal aliens? It is hard to believe, but true, that only 13 employers were prosecuted for the felony offense of hiring illegal aliens. So it’s much, much safer to be a criminal corporation than to be an illegal alien.

This is all part of a longer trend. While immigration prosecutions have steadily increased over time, with a huge jump in 2007, non-immigration prosecutions have actually dropped since 2004.

Is this all just a consequence of 9/11 and the “war on terrorism?” That rationale conveniently forgets that all 19 al-Qaeda hijackers were legal aliens.

Homeland Security Agency Outpaces FBI

The FBI used to be the premier federal law enforcement agency. No longer. The Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Patrol is the lead agency in referring federal crimes for prosecution (46.5%), followed by the Department of Home land Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (12%). In third place is the Drug Enforcement Administration with 9.5% of prosecution referrals. In fourth place is the FBI, with only 8.7%  of the referrals.

And even the FBI has been forced to refocus its efforts on terrorism at the expense of white collar crime investigations.

New Task Force on Financial Crime

The Obama administration announced in November the creation of a “Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force,” to coordinate efforts tot increase prosecutions of financial crimes. This replaces the “Corporate Fraud Task Force,” created by President Bush in 2002, which accomplished nothing much more than an overall decrease in fraud prosecutions. Will the new task force make any difference? I don’t think so – not as long as homeland security and the “war on terror” remains the number one crime issue for most Americans.

So perhaps the huge financial crisis of 2008, the aftermath of which we will continue to feel for some time, has a fairly simple explanation. When you remove federal restrictions to allow greater freedom from pesky regulations, and when you remove the cop from the beat, crime goes up. Go figure!

Mobile Spam a New Frontier

Cell phones are a new frontier for advertisers, spammers, identity thieves and computer viruses aided by unsophisticated internet browsers and filtering systems and consumers who focus on features, not security. Whether by text or picture, abuse is growing as new technology shrinks costs and enables delivery to handsets carried in pockets and purses. Already:

• Between 18 percent and 25 percent of all American cell phone users have received spam;

• 200 known viruses have targeted one popular cell phone operating system;

• Identity thieves are using cell phone text messages to trick the unwary into providing personal or financial information or downloading viruses that steal it.

• Bluetooth wireless technology and pictures and video are being used to spread viruses.

The attraction’s simple enough: hundreds of millions of Americans carry cell phones everywhere and pay attention when they ring or flash a text message.  We trust our cell phones.

Advertising Boon

For commercial advertisers, that trust translates into a cheap way to tap a lucrative market. Particularly when the primary users are teenagers and young adults – what the advertising industry calls the target demographic that spends less time reading and watching television.

And use of cell phones as mobile computing devices is growing. By 2007, 80 percent of the world’s population had access to mobile phone coverage with about 3.3 billion mobile phone subscribers – the equivalent of half the planet’s population – including 226 million Americans. Americans alone sent 5,000 text messages per second, 43 million a day every day, in 2007.  And, about 40 million users received text-message ads.

By 2010, spending on mobile ads and mobile banking is expected to reach $10 billion, in part, because cell phones are viewed as trusted and secure devices. The ad barrage is already weazling in to the dike of privacy.

Kraft sends e-mail dinner suggestions to mobile users. Kroger, a grocery store chain, is testing a mobile coupon for shoppers to use.  Guinness boosted beer sales by 24 percent in the last month of a mobile advertising campaign. In-store traffic increased 21 percent when Dunkin’ Donuts sent a coupon to cell phones of high school and college students.

More importantly, perhaps, 17 percent forwarded the coupon to friends. In Great Britain, mobile media is attracting a “highly desirable audience” that is cash rich, and time poor with a third of users reporting they are tempted to buy advertised products, according to the M:Metrics, a firm that tracks mobile marketing. Now, advertisers are looking at ways to use the mobile web to access the audience, according to a 2008 company survey.

So who are the biggest consumers of the mobile web? Americans. And, the ads are already flowing, brought to you by your cell phone carrier.

Last week, Verizon Wireless announced that it will allow banner advertisements on news, weather, sports and Internet sites early this year. Sprint began allowing banner ads in October. Welcome to the the future of advertising — whether you like it or not.

**Check back on Thursday for Part 2 in this series on internet spam:   How Can You Block Junk Cell Phone Messages?