UTAH WINS! UTAH WINS! UTAH WINS!

Tonight I was blessed to be present in the Super Dome and participated in the making of history at the 75th Anniversary Sugar Bowl as the non-BCS Utah Utes destroyed the storied Alabama Crimson Tide (a team that was rated Number One by the BCS for five weeks, including at the end of the regular season!)

UTAH 31 – ALBAMA 17!

In doing so, the Utes became the only team in the nation to go undefeated in the 2008 season, and can rightfully claim “WE’RE NUMBER ONE!" Unfortunately, the BCS monopoly, with its money and its exclusive club and its computers, will crown another team as National Champion next week. More on that tomorrow.

For tonight, let's just savor the sweet taste of victory! (click on the video below to watch Louie Sakoda put the nail in the coffin with his fourth quarter field goal - and celebrate the win again and again and again.) It was SWEET indeed!

Congratulations UTES! You did us all proud!

SUGAR BOWL TAILGATER

The day started at an IHOP outside N'awlins where we ran into Ute fans, the Mercer family from Bountiful and the Kaelberers from Tennessee, and Three MUSSers, Watson, Alsop and Kay.

We then went to the Marriott for the pregame Tailgate Party and got fired up with thousands of Utes fans (watch the video by clicking below.)

Check the Shurtleff UTE SPIRIT!

GO UTAH - BEAT BAMA!

2009 SUGAR BOWL - GO UTAH! BEAT BAMA!

I am on my way to The Big Easy with my son Heath and daughter Annie to experience history as the Tw0-Time BCS Busting, and only remaining undefeated NCAA football team, the University of Utah Utes take on the storied Alabama Crimison Tide! Thanks to one of my paralegals, Sharon Zeller, a Crimson Club member who couldn't make the game and sold me her tickets, I get to cheer on my alma mater as they beat a team that was ranked first in the nation for five weeks.

History will be made as a non-BCS team proves to the nation that hard work, team spirit and courage are stronger than the extreme efforts of the monopolistic BCS to keep the money and glory exclusively to its members, and restrain thousands of collegient footballers from ever playing for a national championship. Over the next four days I will use my blog to record our experience and share some of the history of the Sugar Bowl.

This is the 75th Anniversary of the historic Sugar Bowl and one of the most memorable (but lowest scoring) games ever played for the Silver trophy was the third classic in 1936 which pitted the TCU Horned Frogs against the LSU Tigers. The underdog Frogs lead by the great "Slingin Sammy Baugh" defeated the Tigers 3-2. A year later, the man who would become an NFL passing legend for the Washington Redskins, Baugh wrote of his New Years day game in the sloppy mud of Tulane:

"Another thing which made victory more sweet was the fact that a chap named Ernie Seago was playing quarterback for LSU," Baugh recalled. "Ernie Seago had lived across the street from me in my extremely young days in Temple and was going to high school and on the team at the time. Most of the boys in the neighborhood sort of looked up to Ernie and regarded him as something of a hero. How swell it was to me to ride back on the train, to think I had been playing quarterback on the team which defeated the team for which Seago was calling signals. Boy, that was the thrill of thrills."

FOOD FIGHT!

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.406

I was eight years old in 1965 when my parents gave me my first baseball mitt. It was a Sears & Roebuck (of course) Signature Series. I loved that mitt, pictured here with its “poly-reinforced thumb” and “tunnel top trap.” I can still smell the Glovolium I worked into the leather. I must have pounded my right fist into its “pro pocket” several thousand times. But I was most proud that it bore the signature of the great Ted Williams! (If you click on the photo you'll see the coveted signature.)


Williams had retired from baseball five years earlier, but he remained, along with Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, as one of the greatest heroes to have ever played the game. He was called “The Kid” “The Greatest Hitter to Have Ever Played the Game” and “God’s Gift to Baseball,” and his stats tell us why:

• Two-time American League MVP.
• Led the league in batting six times.
• Won the Triple Crown twice.
• Career batting average of .344.
• Highest career batting average of anyone with 500 or more home runs.
• 521 home runs.
• Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.
• Last player in Major League Baseball to bat over .400 in a single season (.406 in 1941 – a feat likely never to be done again.)

I never became much more than a “sandlot” baseball player, preferring the little league gridiron and the hardwood to the ball diamond, but I have been a student of the game and the “boys of summer” who made it America’s pastime during her glory days. I love heroic stories that provide inspiration and guidance to us in our daily lives. It was how Williams accomplished the extraordinary feat of batting .406 that most inspires me to this day in how I approach my job as Attorney General.

At the end of the 1941 season, with one more double-header to play the next day, Williams' batting average stood at .39955. League rules would round it up to .400 and Red Sox Manager Joe Cronin offered to let him sit out the games to guarantee Williams the “Holy Grail for hitters.” That evening Williams walked the streets of Philadelphia with Red Sox trainer Johnny Orlando, and talked about hitting, the A's pitchers he might face the next day, and whether he should play the game or take the sure .400. Williams finally said, "The record's no good unless it's made in all the games." And so he played, batting 6 for 8 and bringing his average up to the now insurmountable .406.

“406” has become for me a code. Whenever I’m tempted to stop short of my best work; to settle with mediocrity; to be satisfied with doing “okay;” I see the numbers “406” in my mind’s eye, and remember my mitt and “God’s Gift to Baseball,” and look for ways to do even better, to reach higher and innovate wider to protect Utah’s children and families (i.e. Amber “mobile” Alerts, Endangered Persons Advisory, Child Abduction Response Team, Identity Theft Data Base, Netsmartz internet safety training in every school, WebWiseKids teen internet safety training pilot in five school districts, Child Protection Registry, and CrimeReports.com.)

There is an additional great lesson in the story of how Ted Williams achieved such precision in hitting. The answer was detailed by the great one himself in his book The Science of Hitting - but that is a blog post for another day.

WHERE WERE THE POLICE? PART II

"'An economic 9/11,' warned Terry Connelly, dean of Golden Gate University's Ageno School of Business, of the potential fallout. As the ]bailout] package went down, panicked investors caused the Dow Jones industrials to nosedive nearly 780 points in their largest one-day point drop ever." Deseret News, 9/30/08 (Photo by Robert Caplin for the Wall Street Journal.)

As the Pillars of American Financial Empire begin to crumble, politicians promise salvation but end up in childish bickering and finger pointing which sends Wall Street plunging and Main Street panicking about the future. Everyone blames the greed and excess of corporate America; and people rightfully begin to ask: “How was this allowed to happen?” Historically, in times of crisis, when crime runs rampant and order turns to chaos, the most often asked question is “Where were the police?”

So where were the police, the regulators, and the prosecutors in the days, weeks and even years leading up to this catastrophe? The answer is: doing our jobs.

Years before most of America learned of the predatory lending practices of some national mortgage companies specializing in high-risk, “sub-prime” loans, I, and most other attorneys general, sued the largest of such companies for fraudulent and deceptive trade practices, and obtaining close to a billion dollars in fines from mortgage giants Household Finance Corporation, Household Realty Corp., Beneficial Finance Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage! In announcing our settlement agreement with Ameriquest I said, "In the face of serious and widespread allegations of unfair and deceptive practices, Ameriquest has agreed to take important steps to protect future borrowers. It's also important that Ameriquest is paying a substantial amount of money to help provide restitution to past customers." For more information about these actions, click on these links:

http://www.attorneygeneral.utah.gov/638.html

http://www.attorneygeneral.utah.gov/263.html

http://www.attorneygeneral.utah.gov/332.html

Unfortunately, other companies failed to learn from the mistakes and misdeeds of these companies, and did not make the changes we imposed on them and ultimately it led to the collapse of the entire sub-prime market and the resulting mortgage crisis . That in turn fueled this larger financial crisis because of the concomitant losses to Wall Street firms dealing heavily in mortgage backed securities and the insurance companies that insured them. Obviously more can, and must be done!

White-collar crimes, which include fraud, bankruptcy fraud, bribery, insider trading, embezzlement, computer crime, medical crime, public corruption, identity theft, environmental crime, pension fund crime, RICO crimes, consumer fraud, occupational crime, securities fraud, financial fraud, and forgery, cost the United States more than $300 billion annually.

In an article in The Christian Science Monitor, staff writer Alexandra Marks reported that federal prosecutions for US white-collar crime dropped some 28 percent, as homeland security cases rose in priority. Quoting J. Boyd Page, senior partner at Page Perry LLC in Atlanta, she wrote, "people can steal a much greater amount of money with a pen than they can with a gun... If we don't take a stand to say, 'Look, this is wrong' ... then we turn our head, and it results in a lot of people thinking it's OK."

She reported that "according to the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, the FBI had 2,385 agents engaged in fighting financial crimes in 2000. By 2004, that number had dropped to 1,882." Notwithstanding the cuts, the FBI and DOJ were successful in prosecuting some of the biggest corporate criminals including Lay, Skillings, Kozlowski, Ebbers and the Rigas boys.

Ms. Marks accurately pointed out that "white-collar crime experts don't fault the Justice Department for lack of zeal in its work, but do worry about the shrinking resources devoted to keeping corporate America on its ethical toes." Knowing this, state attorneys general have stepped up their individual and collaborative investigations and prosecutions. In addition to the successful actions against predatory lenders, AGs have successfully prosecuted securities firms, energy companies, telecommunications giants and even AIG last year.

In Utah we continue our efforts to aggressively attack mortgage fraud on a local basis. Last February, the state legislature gave us a tough new law specifically called "Mortgage Fraud" and appropriated some money to start the creation of an in-house unit of investigators, analysts and prosecutors. In May of 2007, we formed a multi-jurisdictional task force with the U.S. Attorneys office in Utah, the Utah Division of Real Estate and local agencies, and have in the past year put a number of fraudsters behind bars.

For example, just last week I announced that the former president of Cobalt Homes, Brian K. Brady, 55, of Sandy [left] has started serving a 90 day jail sentence for defrauding homeowners and subcontractors. More importantly to his victims, he will pay more than $300,000 in restitution and serve six years on probation to ensure those payments are made. Earlier this year, we charged Val E. Southwick, [right] the founder and president of VesCor Capital, with nine second-degree felony counts of securities fraud for his involvement in a commercial real estate investment scheme where we alleged he bilked 817 investors out of an estimated $140 million.

These are uncertain times and those who defraud homeowners and lure Utahns into shady investment schemes, need to know with a certainty that the State of Utah will seek justice!

This Thursday and Friday, my office will be hosting our annual Utah Attorney General's White Collar Crime Conference where hundreds of investigators, analysts and prosecutors will gather once again to be educated into the latest scams and schemes and to further develop collaborative relationships to combat all manner of white collar crime in Utah.

As the economic crisis deepens and politicians debate rescue policies, the police will continue to do everything within our power to protect and serve, and to uphold the rule of law so that our dynamic and powerful democratic free market system can survive and once again flourish.

WHERE WERE THE POLICE? PART I

"Worst Crisis Since '30s, With No End Yet in Sight" - The Wall Street Journal

As the Pillars of the American Financial Empire crumble, politicians promise salvation but end up in childish bickering and finger pointing which sends Wall Street plunging and Main Street panicking about the future. Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, N.J., told Reuters today, "There's a monster amount of fear out there. This is global contagion." Henry Herrmann, CEO of mutual fund company Waddell & Reed, told Bloomberg News that if Congress doesn't come up with a plan, and soon, “the damage is unimaginable!"

Everyone, including the two men battling for President, blames the greed and excess of corporate America; and people rightfully begin to ask: “How was this allowed to happen?” Historically, in times of crisis, when crime runs rampant and order turns to chaos, the most often asked question is: “Where were the police?” It's a good question. One which I will try to answer in the next few blogs.

PART I

I was litigating cases in Southern California at the time of 1992 riots after the Rodney King verdict, and as much of South Central L.A. burned, and people died, the cry went out again, “where are the police?”

As Jews around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah, I am reminded of a law enforcement course I took at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. entitled “Where Were the Police? Lessons Learned from the Holocaust.”

While we go about trying to find a solution to the current crisis and ensure it doesn't happen again, it behooves us to ask what happened, and what role did law breakers have in it? The next obvious question then is, "where were the law enforcement and regulatory agencies as bad actors were quietly but devastatingly undermining America's financial pillars?"

As the Chief Law Enforcement Official in the State of Utah, I can tell you that when it comes to enforcing financial laws from antitrust to mortgage fraud and all manner of corporate white collar crime, My AG colleagues around the country and I(of course, guided and supported by our very capable staff attorneys and investigators) have been on the job, suing CEOs of major corporations, Wall Street big wigs and sub prime mortgage giants, and prosecuting financial crimes by Fortune 500 companies.

I have lectured around the country to corporate executives and their in-house lawyers on the power and authority of state attorneys general in policing corporate greed and excess. My lecture is consistent and forthright. I believe strongly in the greatness of a free market economy which best protects the consumers of America by igniting competition, encouraging innovation and ensuring the development of products and services which better our lives at prices we can best afford. In a 2004 satirical piece called “In Defense of Excess,” Times columnist Michael Kinsley, explained it this way:

“The magic of capitalism, as explained by Adam Smith and his followers, is that it channels individual greed into activities that benefit all of us.”Greed is good," declared Michael Douglas, playing a corrupt financier in the movie Wall Street. More accurately, greed is inevitable. It is part of the human condition. And in moderation, economists argue and history demonstrates, greed is no bad thing. Free-market economies could not function if we were all Mother Teresa.”

But I have also consistently warned that where the human capacity for greed is left unchecked, unfortunately, there are those who will cheat and lie and steal and circumvent the rules and break the law and that is where the Rule of Law and Law Enforcers like myself must, and will, step in to protect consumers and hold law breakers accountable; thereby leveling the playing field for those in the majority who obey the rules and are often put at a competitive disadvantage by the “greedheads” and crooks like Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron, Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, Bernie Ebbers and Scott Sullivan of WorldCom and John and Timothy Rigas, the father and son who bankrupted Adelphia Communications.

In August of 2002, The Wall Street Journal recognized me as one of six "tough guy" attorneys general who were “gaining clout and influence beyond state borders.” The article concluded that the six "united crime busters" are helping shape national policies by winning cases and "chasing bad guys."

Stay tuned for Part II...