Since Sept. 2007, the North Carolina Department of Insurance hasclosed 442 cases for insurance fraud and recovered $14.2 million inrestitution. Given that kind of success, Claims' managing editorEric Gilkey sat down for a chat with the state's insurancecommissioner, Jim Long, to find out how insurers and investigatorscan better work with their individual state departments ofinsurance.

Care to share with our readers the secrets to yoursuccess?

It's really all about the preparation that our investigators putinto their cases and into their professions as a whole. We start bycultivating a crack staff of the best we can find. We haveexperienced white collar investigators, many of whom have been withNCDOI for years. They, in turn, cultivate relationships acrossNorth Carolina that benefit our cases. They have excellentrelationships with all 42 district attorney offices and the threeU.S. attorney offices in the state. Our folks prepare their casesfor a thorough prosecution, and carefully eliminate those casesthat they believe will not be accepted. That leaves us with strongcases that we can aggressively pursue once the district attorneytakes them on.