The Fraud Unit is staffed with four Detectives and one Sergeant that is shared with Property Crimes. This unit is responsible for investigating cases involving identity theft, insufficient funds and account-closed checks, embezzlement, counterfeiting, financial crimes, theft by deception, frauds and scams, forgeries involving all types of documents and items, tax and peddler violations, trademark crimes, and computer-related financial crimes. Detective Thomas Lien, a 12-year veteran of the Fraud Unit, retired on January 22. In November, Patrick Marino transferred from the Patrol Division to the Fraud Unit.

This unit works closely with the South Dakota Attorney General, United States Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Social Security Administration, U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and the U.S. Immigration Service, since many of these crimes cross over into federal jurisdiction. The Fraud Unit works with a variety of agencies and businesses throughout the United States with Internet and other financial crimes investigations. Many investigations require bank or credit card records that must be subpoenaed. Hundreds of documents may need to be collected and numerous hours can be spent collecting and viewing video tapes from involved businesses in order to prosecute these cases. Financial losses can be staggering in these cases. Years of business and financial records may be needed to complete a case.

In 2010, over 600 people attended 13 presentations put on by the Fraud Unit detectives. The Fraud Unit is committed to crime prevention and sponsors fraud and identity theft prevention seminars to both business and service organizations and does numerous radio and television appearances and press releases in an attempt to keep our citizens current on this fast changing area of crime. The Fraud Unit investigated 1,516 cases in 2010.