City Could Get $88,000 to Fight Piracy and Privacy Crimes

The City Council will vote to allow the City Manager to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the state’s Department of Justice to accept $88,107 in grant funds.

If approved the money would be added to the city attorney’s budget and used to investigate privacy and piracy crimes.

“The city of Pasadena is home to numerous retail and commercial businesses that have total profits exceeding $1 billion and generate tax revenues to the city totaling more than $40 million,” according to a city staff report. “With these businesses operating within the city, there is associated crime that accompanies these successful businesses. Intellectual property theft as well as identity theft are on the rise in Southern California and Pasadena has not been excluded from that rise.”

The grant funding will support contract costs for a prosecution assistant and an investigator. These funds will go into the Prosecution Division’s contract account to fund these two positions. No other funds will be utilized for funding the positions.

The funds cannot be used for other purposes like combatting the spread of the Coronavirus.

“If approved these grant funded positions will enable prosecutors to successfully engage the community in bringing additional attention and reporting of such crimes while aiding in the successful prosecution of offenders,” the staff report reads.

According to the staff report, the city prosecutor’s office currently prosecutes a significant number of these theft related cases and expects more in the future due to the associated increase in the economic outlook for the country, state, county and city.

These crimes include code grabbing devices, housing fraud, theft trade secrets, computer hacking, illegal use of credit cards and identity theft.

In February 2020, the state department of justice awarded the City Attorney/City Prosecutor’s office a total of $88,107 for one year to hire support staff to help prosecutors with the successful prosecution of the crimes.