By coordinating their enforcement actions, the regulators say they hope to put a dent in the pervasive fraud associated with boiler rooms and micro-cap stocks.

It was operated, a Federal judge ruled yesterday, "as a pervasive fraud on First Jersey's hundreds of thousands of retail customers."

A wide-ranging federal investigation into what prosecutors describe as "pervasive fraud" in hiring and contracts at City Hall has led to 30 indictments, including two senior administrators close to the mayor, and a dozen cabinet-level resignations.

Fortunately, the state's high court ruled this misbegotten initiative invalid because of what it called "pervasive fraud" by out-of-state paid gatherers of signatures.

A 2000 Chicago Tribune investigative series on Benkin revealed pervasive fraud, misrepresentation, abuse of patients' rights, and maintenance of an environment seriously dangerous to highly vulnerable groups and individuals.

The Constitution was approved last November, officially by 85.8 percent of the population, but Western officials say that vote was marked by pervasive fraud.

"It was a pervasive fraud for a long period of time," Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in an interview on Tuesday.

F.B.I. Director William Sessions testified that though his agents had found "pervasive" fraud, the paper trail was so difficult to verify that it would take years to catch the thieves.

E-Systems' lawyers also said in those filings that the Army, by suggesting a pattern of pervasive fraud, was "inclined to make more of its allegations than they merit."

Foner wrote, "...every election [in Louisiana] between 1868 and 1876 was marked by rampant violence and pervasive fraud."