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GCN Home > 01/27/03 issue

E-crime Squad

By William Jackson, GCN Staff

Secret Service goes where the crime is—into cyberspace

The Secret Service, formed in 1865 to combat counterfeiting, has become the lead agency in investigating electronic crime.

It was a natural evolution, said Michael Stenger, special agent in charge of the Washington field office, because “the majority of counterfeit money in the United States today is produced on computers.”

Not only has counterfeiting become high-tech, but credit card fraud, check forgery and even threats against the president have all “gravitated to electronic media,” Stenger said. “We had to develop the expertise to handle the investigations we are doing now.”

Wayne Peterson, a member of the Washington office’s Electronic Crimes Task Force, said, “Just about every search warrant we execute now involves a computer.”

Even if a crime is not electronic in nature, computers frequently produce evidence for the investigation. About 100 agents across the country have been trained in computer forensics by the Secret Service’s Electronic Crimes Special Agent Program.

The 2001 USA Patriot Act called for the Secret Service to establish a network of task forces, and Washington’s is one of nine so far. The first came into being in the 1990s in New York because of online banking crimes.

Bankers “started calling their friends at the Secret Service,” said Chris McFarland, assistant to the special agent in charge of the Washington office.

New York’s model helped in setting up the Washington field office. Today its e-crimes task force includes law enforcement agencies from Baltimore to Richmond, Va., as well as organizations such as AOL Time Warner Inc. and Nextel Communications Inc.

The Washington office has 12 agents dedicated to the task force, five of them trained in forensics. Other task forces, all sharing information and resources, are near Boston, Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco.

Cooperation among the task forces is a product of the Secret Service’s small size. “Historically we have had good relations with other agencies,” Stenger said.

Corporate cooperation with the task force usually is informal, but law enforcement agencies commonly sign a memorandum of understanding, McFarland said. Local departments might have an officer sworn in as a special federal deputy to ease investigations across jurisdictions. About 20 special deputies from local enforcement agencies work with the Washington task force.

More news on related topics: New Products / Technology, IT Management