Utah attorney general and sponsor pitch statewide financial-crimes intelligence center

Attorney General Derek Brown urged the Economic and Community Development Appropriation Subcommittee on Feb. 10 to back a proposal to create a Statewide Financial Crimes Intelligence Center (FCIC) housed in the attorney general's office, saying the office needs a centralized place to connect investigations and share technical expertise.

"We're seeing a level of sophistication now that is just off the charts," Brown said, describing recent cases in which even experienced professionals lost large sums during complex schemes. He told the committee his office recently recovered the bulk of several million dollars stolen in a real-estate transaction and argued the FCIC would help connect cases that cross county lines.

Senator Kolimore (as recorded), who introduced the late request on the agenda, said banks and credit unions have raised the issue with the attorney general and sponsor because financial fraud is climbing. Committee chair Cal Musselman added a personal anecdote about a near-loss to an email-based wire fraud that was stopped by a bank's detection algorithms, and he expressed support for better statewide coordination.

Proponents told the committee the center would address "siloing" in current enforcement structures and provide specialized staff and tools to assist rural counties that lack the bandwidth or expertise to investigate sophisticated financial schemes. The record cited a statewide loss figure of about $114,000,000 in 2024 and described annual increases since 2020; that figure was presented to the committee by the sponsor as an estimate derived from reporting by financial institutions.

The FCIC request was discussed as part of the larger ECD prioritization exercise later in the meeting and was included on the prioritized list forwarded to the Executive Appropriations Committee for consideration.