By MIKE SUNNUCKS
Baltimore Business Journal

Fewer corporate criminals, scam artists and fraudulent businesses are being pursued by government prosecutors since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

There has been a marked decrease nationally in prosecutions for white-collar offenses as prosecutors and police have focused more on terrorism and immigration cases.

"I've seen very few white-collar crime prosecutions of any type since 9/11," said Douglas Behm, a white-collar defense lawyer with the Phoenix, Ariz., law office of Jennings Strouss & Salmon PLC.

Behm said federal law-enforcement agencies took investigators off white-collar and other cases after 9/11 and put them on the terrorism beat.

"Without investigators, cases go nowhere," Behm said.

Federal criminal prosecutions of white-collar cases are down 27 percent nationally since 2000, according to Syracuse University research.

That study also shows that national-security and terrorism prosecutions are up 608 percent and immigration cases are up 127 percent since 2000.

The Syracuse study projects that more than 38,000 federal immigration cases will be prosecuted nationally this year, but fewer than 7,000 white-collar cases.