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NCFIA HISTORY In the mid 1980's, Dave Peters, a manager and attorney within the CA DOJ, contacted members of (primarily) law enforcement agencies to form a steering committee for the creation of NCFIA. Ken Yules was one of those invited to that meeting. From these steering committee meetings, NCFIA was formally created and from that committee, officers and directors were selected and Dave Peters was the Association's first president. After roughly 2 years, nominations and elections were held by the membership for officers and directors. Ken Yules remembered meeting with a San Jose Police artist, Tom Macris, and within 30 minutes or so, they had created the logo that we still use today. The purpose of NCFIA was originally to bond together law enforcement officers from State, County and local agencies in their fight against all types of financial crime, i.e., fraud. NCFIA did not focus on burglary, robbery, bad checks or credit cards, but focused on trends of those committing fraud and other financial crimes. Ken Yules recalled meetings were held 4 times a year, often in the San Jose and San Francisco areas. Originally the meetings were in community rooms available for no rent. As the membership grew and dues were collected, the last meeting of the year was often held with a catered meal utilizing the unspent dues monies for the year. As time went on, the private sector of insurance investigators became the majority of membership. Clearly, at that time, Mr. Yules' associates within the private sector used NCFIA for one of its original purposes, that being of interfacing personally with detectives employed by governmental agencies. He remembers watching as bank investigators and government law enforcement officers dropped out from NCFIA as the thrust clearly became insurance fraud. More than once Mr. Yules argued that the NCFIA should be renamed Northern California Insurance Fraud Investigators Association. Most fraud units with the County and local agencies have little involvement with insurance fraud so largely, local police investigators dropped out. The original charter of NCFIA called for at least 50% make up of the government law enforcement officers on the Board of Directors and Officers. By now, most county and local detectives have all but dropped out of NCFIA and the make up is primarily now from the private sector of insurance fraud investigators, rather than its intended direction. Few state law enforcement officers are members with the exception of those involved in insurance investigations. Mr. Yules views this as a Darwinian evolution of NCFIA. For the most part, any of the people involved in NCFIA in the 1980's are no longer associated with the organization unless they now investigate insurance fraud for the private sector. Gone is the 50-50 ratio for close association of private and public investigative services. Mr. Yules also personally wishes the NCFIA were still focused on all types of fraud investigation but that is not the case right now. He does believe that NCFIA now is represented as the best in insurance fraud investigators' associations. Mr. Yules is proud that our organization now provides scholarships to young students. Dave Peters recalled that in 1984 he was supervising the Fraud Unit of the California Department of Justice. He attended the Southern California Fraud Investigators Association annual conference where he met with George Neilson then president of the Southern California Association. Mr. Neilson encouraged that a Northern Fraud Association be formed. Forming such an association had been tried previously but had failed. When I returned to Sacramento, with the support of the Department of Justice, we formed a committee to develop a fraud association. Early participants included Ken Yules, Cliff Milikian, Robert Marshall and others. Mr. Peters' idea was that we not duplicate other law enforcement organizations with monthly meetings around lunch. Since law enforcement was having financial problems at the time, we decided that quarterly meetings with a speaker in the morning and one in the afternoon would hopefully provide a training aspect that would be supported by law enforcement. The concept seems to have worked. We sent letters to all law enforcement agencies prior to every meeting addressed to fraud units. Mr. Peters was president in 1984 and 1985. I left the Department of Justice in 1985 and became counsel for the California Department of Real Estate. Charlie Wynne became the second NCFIA president. Ken Yules was instrumental in getting the NCFIA logo. A lot of people helped in organizing and making the association a success. George Cramer (who has been President TWICE) remembers that the FIRST Annual Conference was under his first term. He has been a Conference Chair, Conference Treasurer and many other offices within the organization and continues to be active today. Bill Smith, President in 1993, points out that he helped create and finalized the current membership application that we use today for NCFIA. Also, his memory says that his year was the first time we went to the Monterey Hyatt for our Annual Conference, something that has now become a yearly tradition. Mike Kinnison, President 2000 to 2001, remembered that we drafted our current Mission Statement in his tenure and we finally computerized the Conference and Secretary tasks under his leadership. Craig Pusser added that for his year as president (2001-2002), he moved the Association into the electronic age by implementing a restructuring of the NCFIA web site, and the creation of an electronic newsletter. Craig also led the initiative to make email the communication vehicle of choice for NCFIA. Craig recalled that the 2001 conference was particularly memorable for him in that the committee worked tirelessly to make the program an example of fraud training at its very best. Craig also remembers, with great sadness, that 9.11.01 occurred during his year as President, and he was proud of how the Association responded to the tragedy by making a donation on behalf of NCFIA to the families of victims. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
