:: west palm beach police department ::

The West Palm Beach Police Department Financial Crimes Unit consists of three detectives: Detective Thomas McCauley, Detective James Chatman, and Detective Scott Utecht, who are highly trained in the investigation of financial crimes. These crimes include embezzlement, bank fraud, scams, credit card fraud, financial exploitation of the elderly/disabled, ID-theft and other white collar crimes.

The Financial Crimes Unit Detectives are members of the Palm Beach County Economic Crimes Unit as well as other associations that network to share investigative techniques, current fraud trends and provide advance training. These associations allow communication between law enforcement agencies, financial institutions and retailers to discuss incidents occurring in our area to prevent future acts of fraud.

We understand that you have been victimized and inconvenienced. If you are the victim of a check forgery your bank or credit union will normally take the financial loss and should credit your account. Once this is done, they become the victim of the uttering of a forgery. A victim of uttering of a forgery is ultimately determined by whomever suffers the money loss. Even though your signature has been forged, you will be considered only as a witness in this case. If the bank or credit union determines that you were negligent and does not credit your account, then you will become the victim of uttering of a forgery.

If you discover that your credit card was fraudulently used, the cardholder is the victim of the theft of the card only. Even though a credit card is issued to a cardholder, the issuing credit card company or financial institution has total control over their credit account and only extends the privilege of its use to the assigned cardholder(s). A cardholder is not deemed to be a victim of the fraudulent use of the credit card(s) solely by having their name embossed on the card. The credit card company or financial institution issuing this card will normally be the victim of any fraudulent use of the card. The victim of the crime known as fraudulent use of a credit card is determined by whomever ultimately suffers the financial loss.

The West Palm Beach Police Financial Crimes Unit is dedicated to the detection and apprehension of fraud related crimes against the citizens of West Palm Beach. Due to the nature of financial crimes, these investigations are a time consuming process, most of which is spent on record retrieval, analyzing the documentation and preparing the case for arrest. We appreciate your patience as we conduct our investigations.