WASHINGTON — The Obama administration announced a governmentwide task force to combat financial fraud after the U. S. recession led to an increase in economic crimes.

President Obama on Tuesday signed an executive order creating the task force that seeks more cooperation among federal government agencies, and state and local officials, to investigate and prosecute cases.

The initiative, detailed at a Justice Department news conference, replaces a corporate fraud task force created under President George W. Bush in 2002. The U. S. economic decline sparked an increase in mortgage fraud, white-collar crime and health-care fraud, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The aim of the new task force is “to prevent another meltdown from happening,” Attorney General Eric Holder said. “We will be relentless in our investigation of corporate and financial wrongdoing.”

The task force will pursue crimes including mortgage fraud, securities fraud and fraud involving funds from the government’s economic stimulus program, according to Holder.

Led by the Justice Department, the task force will include representatives from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies.

The SEC said it opened more inquiries and doubled sanctions in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. Fines and orders to forfeit illegal profits jumped to $2.4 billion in the 12 months through Sept. 30, compared with $1.03 billion a year earlier, the SEC said in a statement. New probes rose 6 percent to 944, according to a report.

The financial crisis helped expose Ponzi schemes and investment frauds, according to the SEC’s report. Bernard Madoff, whose $65 billion Ponzi scheme unraveled in December, is serving a 150-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to criminal charges in July. In a Ponzi scheme, money from the newest investors is used to fund the returns that have been promised to previous investors.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that tougher regulations and stronger protections are needed, along with “proactive” enforcement.