From John Kroger – the Oregon Attorney General
One of my highest priorities as Oregon's attorney general is to hold powerful corporations accountable when they violate our laws. The overwhelming majority of businesses in our state are good corporate citizens. They create badly needed jobs and pay billions of dollars in taxes that help pay for education, law enforcement and health care for our citizens. Unfortunately, many large multinational corporations do not have the same strong values and commitment to business ethics. They routinely violate our laws. In response, my office has aggressively pursued these corporations in court.
I took office on Jan. 5, 2009. The next day, I opened an investigation of Oppenheimer, the big Wall Street investment company, to determine whether it had committed securities fraud in connection with its management of the Oregon College Savings Plan. By March, my office had determined that Oppenheimer had, in fact, defrauded Oregon investors and sued it in Marion County Circuit Court. That lawsuit was swift and successful, recovering $20 million for Oregon investors trying to save money for their children's education.
That has not been our only big Wall Street case. Right now, we are also battling Union Bank of Switzerland, the world's largest private bank, on securities fraud charges in New York.
We have also tackled the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, which frequently engage in illegal marketing of drugs that have not received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This dangerous practice puts our families' health at risk and results in billions of dollars in illicit corporate profits. Over the past 18 months, my office has successfully concluded major legal cases against pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Bayer and Aventis, recovering roughly $17 million for Oregon taxpayers.
A third consumer protection priority is to crack down on mortgage and foreclosure fraud. This is critical because Oregon currently ranks third nationwide in foreclosures, leaving a huge number of our citizens vulnerable to unscrupulous scam artists who prey on folks who are worried about losing their home. When I became attorney general, the Oregon Department of Justice didn't have a single attorney assigned to combat mortgage and foreclosure fraud. Now, we have a special Mortgage Fraud Task Force, which has put crooked mortgage brokers in jail and banned several unprincipled California foreclosure relief companies from doing business in Oregon. We have also taken legal action against Countrywide Mortgage, the poster child of irresponsible predatory lending, twice. In our first case, we recovered $1 million and forced the company to renegotiate the home loans of almost 1,000 victims in Oregon, lowering interest rates and fees. In the second case, which is still underway, we seek to recover more than $25 million lost by Oregon retirees.
Other cases seek to protect Oregonians in their everyday lives. During the swine flu epidemic, the Kellogg's cereal company claimed, without any scientific evidence, that Rice Krispies boosted your child's immune system. We got them to stop making such claims — and to donate 500,000 boxes of cereal to food banks around the country to help feed our hungriest citizens.
This year, we launched a new consumer protection website which allows Oregonians to research thousands of companies in seconds, so consumers can protect themselves and ensure that they are doing business with principled businesses, not scoundrels. We started a new Oregon Scam Alert Network to help citizens avoid falling prey to scam artists on the Internet and over the phone. And on our consumer protection hotline, at 877-877-9392, a team of dedicated volunteer consumer protection counselors take calls from dozens of Oregonians every day, helping them avoid scams, file complaints and recover money owed to them.
Over the past 18 months, the Department of Justice has taken legal action against more than 100 companies, recovering nearly $60 million for Oregon workers, consumers and taxpayers. We've done this without spending a single taxpayer dollar. Instead, we fund all of our consumer protection activities with money recovered from companies that broke the law. This is a model of lean, cost-effective good government.
Our consumer protection and corporate accountability strategy is one of the most successful in the country. Our team is proud of our work and our success. If you need help with a consumer problem, call us. We're here for you.
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I've never lived in any state with an AG like John – nor have I ever told an AG "you rock" / but John does ROCK! He is a good person and an excellent AG… and – no – you can not have him for your state 
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