Douglas County law enforcement agencies and the United States Secret Service have teamed up to develop the state's first financial crime investigative team.

The Financial Investigative Regional Strike Team (FIRST) is a multi-jurisdictional unit created to take down large-scale financial crimes, from tracking down organized retail crime to users of counterfeit money. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office, the Lone Tree Police Department, the Castle Rock Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service are joining forces on the team.

In the interest of retaining confidentiality for ongoing investigations, two Douglas County sheriff's deputies requested to remain anonymous for this story. FIRST mostly does surveillance and cover work.

“We have malls and we have big-box stores, and the fact there's a lot of overlap, there was a need to develop a task force that could target and investigate these groups that would need the specialties of someone like myself, as well as these investigations are very time consuming,” said a Douglas County sheriff's deputy and financial crime detective of 13 years.

The Outlets at Castle Rock and the Park Meadows shopping district in Lone Tree, home to the largest indoor mall in Colorado, are two major retail areas in the county, although the scope is much broader than those two malls.

“We're kind of the baby, if you will, of these task forces,” one deputy said. “We're a launch pad in Colorado for having a specialty in these type cases.”

Specifics about any invesitigations could not be released as they are ongoing.

The Douglas County Sheriff's Office has detectives trained to handle various types of financial crimes, part of its Financial Crimes Unit, including crimes involving bad checks, credit cards, embezzlements and consumer frauds, according to its website dcsheriff.net. FIRST collaborates with local agencies, like Castle Rock and Lone Tree police departments, to get a clearer scope of these cases.

“Organized retail crime has been, over the years, swept under the carpet, especially by the (district attorney's) office, as just shoplifting,” one sheriff's deputy said, “when, in reality, it's more than just shoplifting. It's groups of people.”

Castle Rock Police Chief Jack Cauley and Lone Tree Chief Kirk Wilson both approached the sheriff's office and made a presentation to assemble a team like this.

"It’s an everyday event in the City of Lone Tree that in one of our retail locations we have someone committing a theft or committing a fraud," Wilson said. "Being able to coordinate better with other agencies is going to be a better way to protect businesses in the City of Lone Tree."

The Secret Service specializes in financial crimes, and helps the Douglas County financial task force with matters mostly concerning subpoenas and requests from other jurisdictions.

“What we brought to the table on this one is, there's a focus in this group on organized retail crime, which doesn't just exist in Douglas County,” said Matt Cybert, the Secret Service of Denver's assistant special agent in charge. “We can extend well beyond the Douglas County borders.”

The task force reported it's made several arrests since the its inception in October related to large-scale financial crimes, but have not closed the book on any cases so far.

“Our objective is to dismantle and disrupt these criminal organizations,” one deputy said. “We don't want to just get one person, we want to cut he head off the dragon, so to speak.”

FIRST is currently investigating five cases in the county. The sheriff's office said it could take months to years to solve a given case.

Cybert hopes this task force can serve as a model to the future forming of similar task forces throughout Colorado. The leadership from Cauley and Wilson, Cybert said, made the difference in putting together a task force like this.

“I think this is a brilliant concept,” Cybert said. “You have to have a good cohesive group, and that's what they have going here. That's what is going to make a successful task force. They're forward thinkers. They took something that was a concept and made it happen.”