Alejandro Mayorkas, who heads the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, has been on the job as the region’s top federal prosecutor for a mere 15 months. In that short time, however, his staff of 265 attorneys covering seven counties has been involved in some of the most complex and controversial law enforcement issues in recent memory.

Like his predecessors, Mayorkas has cracked down on various white-collar crimes like mortgage loan fraud, insider trading and boiler-room fraud. But it is his role in the ever-widening LAPD Rampart corruption scandal that has drawn the most attention.

In February, Police Chief Bernard Parks asked Mayorkas’ office and the FBI to investigate alleged civil rights abuses by officers in Rampart and elsewhere in the LAPD. While hailed in some quarters, the move was seen as a rebuke of District Attorney Gil Garcetti’s handling of the case. When Parks announced he was sending information directly to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, bypassing Garcetti, a bitter feud erupted that forced L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan to step in.

Before his appointment as U.S. Attorney, the Cuban-born Mayorkas served as chief of the general crimes section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, taking a lead role in Operation Money Cap a $300 million international money laundering case and the Boiler Room Task Force that targeted telemarketing fraud.

Question: With regard to the Rampart corruption probe, you’ve been thrust into the middle of a political tornado, especially when the feud between LAPD Chief Bernard Parks and District Attorney Gil Garcetti erupted. How are things going now?

Answer: I think everyone is moving forward very successfully. The district attorney has brought charges. We’ve received assistance from both the district attorney and the police chief. And our prosecution of the 77th Division officers involves the three offices working together. We certainly are not in the middle of any power struggle.

Q: Can you give some sense of the percentage of resources that your office is expending on the Rampart case? And how much of your personal time is it taking up?

A: I would say I spend a quarter to half of my time on Rampart; over the last six weeks it’s certainly been that, if not more. I’m speaking with other people involved in it from other offices, from the district attorney to the city attorney to the Police Department and, of course, the FBI.

Q: When do you expect to finish investigating the case?

A: Right now, we’re reviewing a lot of material. We came into the investigation after it was well under way. Now we the D.A.’s Office, the LAPD, and our office are going through our Garrity review, to ensure that we proceed with materials that are not tainted.

Q: What is the Garrity review process?

A: When an officer is subject to an internal affairs inquiry, that officer cannot invoke their Fifth Amendment right when questions are posed in an employment context. But those answers cannot be used in a criminal context if they are found to be compelled. So in our investigation, we have to make sure we do not use information that could later be found to be compelled; otherwise, the case could be thrown out and we could be subject to prosecution ourselves.

Q: So how are you ferreting out the usable information?

A: We have what is called in the vernacular a “dirty team,” that will take a look at all of the statements and all of the investigative materials and clean them and purge them of compelled information or the fruits of compelled information. And then what is clean goes to the “clean team,” which is the prosecution team. The dirty team is forever tainted and the clean team will take what is left and run with it. The two teams are completely segregated from each other.

Q: But what’s to prevent them from talking to each other?

A: Professional obligation, ethics. If they violate this knowingly, it would be illegal and their employment status would be jeopardized.

Q: Why not just lay off the internal affairs evidence altogether then?

A: Let me give you an example. If (Rampart officer) Rafael Perez’s statements were viewed as compelled, we could not use them against him, but we could use them against somebody else.

Q: What’s the interest level in Washington on the Rampart issue?

A: We’re working very closely with our colleagues in Washington, with the civil rights division. It’s potentially a very significant civil rights case. As everyone knows, the civil rights division has periodically investigated the LAPD since 1987; they have now escalated that investigation.

Q: Besides Rampart, what are the primary issues your office is focused on right now, especially with regard to white-collar crime and issues that pertain to business?

A: Our involvement in the local business community from a criminal prosecution standpoint has two primary prongs at this juncture. One is our increased emphasis on securities fraud and investment schemes and the like. We’re working very closely with the Securities and Exchange Commission to that end. On the other front we are increasing our efforts to address the growing problems in the high-tech industry crimes by way of the Internet, computer hacking and investment schemes that are perpetrated by way of new technologies.

Q: Can you be more specific about problems with securities fraud?

A: Sure, it runs the gamut. There’s insider trading, of course. Right now there are a lot of investment fraud schemes that are perpetrated, and there’s also accounting fraud that we’re seeing. The SEC is placing greater emphasis on crimes involving “cooking the books,” as it’s known in the vernacular.

Q: Your office recently wrapped up the insider trading case involving Jeffrey Sudikoff and his IDB Communications satellite network company. But the sentence of a year in prison and a $3 million fine seems like a mere slap on the wrist. Were you satisfied with the outcome?

A: I think we were satisfied, very much so. I think you’ll find, in the white-collar area the sentences to which individuals are exposed are not what one sees in other areas of the criminal justice system.

Q: Why do you think that is?

A: I think the Legislature has put an emphasis on addressing violent crime from a sentencing point of view, and you’ll find that violent crime will bring with it very severe penalties. In terms of the business crime, there are some that bring quite a bit of (prison) time, depending on the losses and the nature of the victims and the like. And in telemarketing fraud schemes we sometimes sentence people to five to 10 years if they’ve victimized the elderly over a period of time and the losses are such that the guidelines provide for a stiff sentence. So very often in certain business crimes, we do mete out, or the courts mete out, penalties that are quite severe.

Q: Is the amount of this type of securities crime directly related to the run-up of the stock market and people eager to cash in on that?

A: Perhaps so. I would only be speculating, but I think that with respect to stocks that are skyrocketing overnight, there probably is a commensurate growth in the amount of schemes that try to capitalize on that people wanting to take part in that growth.

Q: What are some of the scams that you think people in Los Angeles are now most vulnerable to?

A: Stock swindles and investment swindles. People have to be very careful, especially elderly people who are often targeted. And, one of the primary vehicles still is telemarketing, illegal telemarketing, misrepresentations, not just in written materials but primarily over the telephone. We’re seeing a tremendous amount of that, especially in Orange County.

I might add we have also observed a movement of the criminals to Canada, though the victims are here in the United States. There is a perception that the Canadian authorities don’t pursue them as aggressively, and it’s more difficult for us, of course, to bring them here.

Q: Are there any new twists emerging on these crimes?

A: In the ’80s, you used to have the big boiler rooms and now we don’t necessarily see them as frequently. We see now what we call “rip and tear” operations. The operations are smaller; they engage in the criminal activity, close up shop, change names and move elsewhere. They rip people off, they tear out, and start afresh.

Q: What about other types of white-collar crime?

A: We’re also seeing organized criminal groups getting involved in business crimes that we did not previously see. We had one case where what we believed to be an Asian organized crime group got involved in counterfeit computer chips.

Q: Does the nature of the crimes you’re dealing with in the L.A. area differ from other parts of California and other parts of the country?

A: Yes, yes it does. We are the capital of (a number) of crimes. Take bank robberies. Although they have dropped off precipitously in Los Angeles, we’re seeing them now in some of the outlying areas. There’s also a lot of health care fraud in this area, as well as a whole array of violent crimes. We are also the bankruptcy fraud capital of the country, and we lead the nation in the number of prosecutions in that area.

Q: Why so much bankruptcy fraud here?

A: I think you’ll find a host of crime problems in the large metropolitan areas, where you have sophisticated business and you have economic successes and economic failures, and people living in unfortunate situations. I don’t think we would be set apart from Chicago, from New York, from Washington, in terms of the array of law enforcement problems that we encounter.

Q: What about money laundering? Isn’t that also very big in L.A.?

A: It is. In fact Los Angeles is one of four areas the department has designated for a new program of high-intensity financial crime (investigations), where they are giving us some additional resources to address the money laundering problem. Our money laundering (prosecutions) are two-pronged. Not only in the narcotics area but in the business crime area as well.