LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Sheriff's Office has joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Wildfire Disaster Fraud Task Force.
As a result of the recent wildfire disaster in Northern California, the FBI has established an ad hoc Wildfire Disaster Fraud Task Force to address fraud related to the relief and recovery efforts following the wildfires.
The Lake County Sheriff's Office is a member of this task force which includes federal, state, and local agencies with responsibility for investigating and prosecuting disaster-related fraud in the four counties primarily impacted by the wildfires – Lake, Mendocino, Napa and Sonoma counties.
Agencies represented on the task force include the California Highway Patrol, the Clearlake Police Department, Contractors State License Board, Department of Homeland Security - Office of the Inspector General, FBI, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Lake County Sheriff's Office, Napa County Sheriff's Office, Napa County District Attorney's Office, Santa Rosa Police Department, Small Business Administration, Sonoma County District Attorney's Office, Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the United States Attorney's Office.
This task force is a cooperative effort between local, state, and federal agencies to share and disseminate information and collaborate on investigations in an effort to streamline the process for preventing and addressing disaster-related fraud.
A primary goal of this task force will be to utilize intelligence obtained from previous disasters, such as the hurricanes in Houston, Florida, and Puerto Rico, to identify trends in fraudulent activity in an effort to prevent and deter disaster-related fraud in the counties impacted by the wildfires.
This task force also will provide a platform for referring complaints and reports of disaster-related fraud to the appropriate local, state, or federal agencies, and collaborating on investigative and prosecutive efforts.
Additionally, the task force will ensure that information and intelligence related to disaster fraud is disseminated to Northern California communities impacted by the wildfire disaster, in an effort to inform and advise the public of schemes to defraud and instruct the public on how to avoid falling victim to those schemes.
Lake County Sheriff's Office joins Wildfire Disaster Fraud Task Force
- Lake County News reports
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