Those same three counties continually suffer from public corruption, as evidenced by the elected and appointed officials who are either under criminal investigation, facing indictment or serving prison terms.

Finally, South Florida is the national epicenter of the two major fraud areas of our time that contributed mightily to our nation's economic difficulties, namely health care fraud and mortgage fraud.

South Florida is one of the fraud capitals of the world, I regret to say. But similar problems exist worldwide. Where public corruption thrives, so will fraud.

The major priority for law enforcement should be the attack on public corruption. The only solution is a greatly beefed-up focus by federal and state prosecutors and law enforcement agencies on public officials through creative and aggressive investigations. I am encouraged by the more aggressive approach shown by the FBI lately in this area.

This blog post is adapted from an interview given to the South Florida Business Journal.