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Sheriff's economic crimes unit is needed now more than ever

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published December 8, 2006

When Pasco County Sheriff Bob White recently reopened an economic crimes unit that had been closed for more than a decade, the move was especially significant for Bill Moltzan and Oonagh Guenkel.

Sgt. Moltzan, a 19-year veteran picked to head the unit's eight detectives, was an investigator in the unit before it was disbanded by then-Sheriff Lee Cannon in 1995.

Guenkel headed the much publicized unit until 1994, before she was reassigned and later demoted. Under her leadership, the unit was credited with breaking big cases connected to a pioneer Pasco home builder and a dance studio in Hudson.

In the past decade, Pasco County has seen its share of white-collar cons and criminals.

The game has grown more sophisticated and high tech, thanks to computers and the Internet. But the basic ingredients for white-collar crimes remain greed, trust and betrayal.

Sadly, with more victims for con artists to prey on, Pasco property crimes detectives have struggled to keep up.

Unfortunately, the detectives assigned to track down white-collar criminals are also the same people who are asked to chase burglars and petty thieves.

Moltzan will tell you that the detectives who enjoy chasing down suspects Law and Order-style hate the tedium and the paperwork involved in tracking those sweet-talking, suit-wearing cons. It's just not the same adrenaline boost.

And jail time isn't guaranteed. Judges don't treat white-collar criminals tough enough.

Take the Beacon Homes case in Pasco. After Beacon Homes builder Clyde B. Hoeldtke Jr. was convicted in 1996 of misusing construction funds, he was sentenced to two years' house arrest at his $1-million mansion in Colorado.

As victims of Sky Development Corp. and Coral Bay Construction can attest, that kind of punishment is more of an invitation than a deterrent for shady builders to steal home ownership dreams and empty retiree bank accounts.

But solving white-collar crimes isn't merely about catching and punishing crooks; it's about having empathy for the victims, the elderly men and women whose life savings and assets disappear in paper and ink.

That's why Moltzan and other sergeants lobbied Sheriff White to reopen the economic crimes unit.

That's why former Sgt. Guenkel drove so hard when she headed the unit. That's why, in the decade since she left the Sheriff's Office, she wondered why her former bosses didn't reopen the white-collar crimes unit - even after it was found that the old unit's problems of mishandling of evidence and not investigating crimes promptly were typical of the entire agency, even after Cannon rehired some of the economic crimes unit detectives whom he had earlier forced out.

"It's a shame it took this long," Guenkel said.

After the bitterness of her demotion, two lost races for sheriff and an unsuccessful federal lawsuit against Sheriff Cannon, Guenkel went back to college.

She teaches at Moton Elementary in Brooksville.

"Now I'm trying to keep kids out of jail instead of trying to put them in jail," she said.

In that way, she's still fighting crime.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 8, 2006, 05:29:12]