Welcome

Welcome to the web site for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. Our office serves a district of seven counties, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura, with a population that is the largest of any district in the country. We seek to understand and serve the needs of these residents, and the many diverse communities in which they live. To accomplish this end, we have added content to this web site to try and improve our ability to interact with you, our clients. For example, we have added detailed information on how to report crimes and report civil rights violations, and descriptions of our office’s community outreach efforts.

The lawyers in our Office enforce the laws and defend the interests of the United States.

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Our Civil Division works to ensure the civil rights of all Americans, enforcing the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Voting Rights Act, among other federal civil rights laws. In addition, we use the powerful tool of civil litigation, seeking monetary damages and civil penalties, to address a wide range of illegal conduct, including mortgage fraud, efforts to defraud the Medicare system, defense procurement fraud, Food and Drug violations, and environmental torts.

Our Tax Division engages in both civil and criminal litigation to combat a variety of tax frauds, including phony tax shelters, return preparer frauds, and tax protester schemes.

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Our Criminal Division’s first obligation is the protection of public safety. Therefore, our top priority, and that of the Department of Justice, is the investigation and prosecution of cases involving threats of terrorism, both domestic and international, as well as any and all other threats to the nation's security.

Our Criminal Division also remains vigilant to other threats to public safety in the District. We continue our efforts to disrupt and dismantle violent criminal street gangs, major drug trafficking organizations, and drug cartels that are responsible for supplying much of the illegal narcotics distributed in the Central District and for the violent crime that accompanies this narcotics trafficking. We continue our battle against predators who use computers and the Internet to exploit and harm others. Whether that exploitation is by way of identity theft and fraud or the manufacturing and distribution of child pornography, we work to ensure that wrongdoers are apprehended and appropriately punished, while the victims are provided the assistance they need. We pursue those who commit financial crimes, investigating and prosecuting those who, whether from the boardroom or an anonymous internet site, seek to use the avenues of commerce to steal from communities and individuals by way of mortgage, investor, or securities frauds. And we maintain our heightened focus on investigating and prosecuting health care frauds, environmental crimes, and public corruption offenses across the District.

As we bring to bear the serious penalties our criminal justice system can impose on offenders, we also recognize that we must do more than prosecute criminals. We have learned that arrests and prosecutions alone cannot solve all of the crime problems in the District. Accordingly, our office also engages in prevention efforts both to help change the toxic environments that produce criminals and to provide individuals with tools to avoid becoming victims of those who would criminally prey on them.

All three of our Office’s divisions, Criminal, Civil, and Tax, look forward to continued service in the best interests of the District.

André Birotte Jr.U.S. Attorney

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