And though most insurers had fraud units in their companies, Mr. Parisi said, there was little incentive for them to pursue investigations aggressively.

A fraud unit was established in the 70s to investigate white collar crime.

Call the fraud units of the three principal credit reporting companies: Equifax:

Call the fraud units of the three credit reporting bureaus.

Next, call the fraud units of the three credit reporting bureaus and report the theft of your credit cards and/or numbers.

Criminal investigation includes street gang, property crime, crime scene, and fraud units, an intelligence section and a crime analyst.

However, they spend a large amount of their time working with the fraud units in consular sections, investigating visa and passport fraud.

Even after Mr. Spitzer became attorney general in 1999, the size of the fraud unit remained about 300 workers, the same as in the early 1990's.

The Navy, said a spokesman, has long had a fraud unit within the Naval Investigative Service.

The insurance fraud bureau is thereby free of the bureaucratic entanglements associated with a state-operated fraud unit, and has significant financial incentives for effective performance.