High Technology Theft Apprehension and Prosecution Program

California Senate Bill 1734 in 1998 established the High Technology Theft Apprehension and Prosecution Program (HTTAP) which is now funded via the California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA).

Since 1998, the program has expanded to include five regional task forces covering 31 counties within the State of California. The mission of the HTTAP Program is the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of high technology crimes and to combat identity theft. Each of the task force comprises multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional high-tech crime teams consisting of local, state, and federal investigators and prosecutors. Each team has the ability to coordinate effective investigation and prosecution of cross-jurisdictional crime. The task forces are able to efficiently pursue, arrest, and prosecute a wide range of criminal offenders in a greater number of jurisdictions than individual agencies can &mdash; thereby minimizing duplication of public resources and expense of time and money by victims, witnesses and courts. Each task force provides high technology-oriented public safety resources to the communities collectively served by all the task forces.

In addition to high-tech crime, the HTTAP Program was expanded in 2001 to address the ever-growing problem of identity theft which frequently exploits high technology to affect its goals. Five additional task force teams, specializing in this area, were created to focus on combating identity theft in California. These identity theft task force teams (one in each of the high-tech task force regions) work collaboratively with the five original HTTAP High-tech task force teams. The identity theft teams were modeled similarly to the high-tech task force teams, in that they too are multi-jurisdictional and multi-agency staffed. Additionally, they enjoy the partnerships of various privacy protection organizations that provide referrals and consumer protection information to the public.