This course provides an overview of the actions investigators can take at the outset of a financial crime investigation. Students learn to ask critical questions, gather documentation, and analyze information for leads. Topics include obtaining and working with financial records, red flags in financial cases, money laundering, investigative strategies for different types of financial crimes, and commingled funds.
This course covers the identification and extraction of artifacts associated with the Microsoft Windows operating system. Topics include the Change Journal, BitLocker, and a detailed examination of the various artifacts found in each of the Registry hive files. Students also examine Event Logs, Volume Shadow Copies, link files, and thumbnails. This course uses a mixture of lecture, discussion, demonstration, and hands-on exercises.
This course covers basic intelligence writing and briefing principles as well as methods for effective and clear intelligence sharing. Topics covered include creative and critical thinking, critical reading skills, source evaluation, privacy and civil rights, intelligence writing style and structure, and generating and presenting intelligence briefings. With guidance from experienced experts, students gain hands-on experience by working through data sets based on real cases to produce intelligence products. Instructors and peers provide feedback on briefings and reports produced and presented in class.
*Foundational skills. Creative thinking. Critical thinking. Critical reading.
*Information sources. Identify sources of intelligence information. Evaluate sources for validity and reliability.
*Analytical reports. Develop a structured and actionable analytical report based on a data set given in class.
*Privacy considerations. Ensure protection of privacy and civil rights while producing intelligence products.
*Briefings. Construct and deliver an intelligence briefing based on a data set given in class.
This course provides hands-on investigative training at a basic level. Students develop the practical skills, insight, and knowledge necessary to manage a successful financial investigation from start to finish, including the acquisition and examination of financial records, interview skills, and case management and organization. Additional topics include forgery and embezzlement, financial exploitation of the elderly, working with spreadsheets, financial profiling, and state-specific statutes and legal issues.
*Emerging issues. Current trends in various types of financial crimes. Recent cases and their implications.
*Financial records. Learn to obtain and manage bank records, including basic spreadsheeting skills.
*Working with data. Extract leads and draw conclusions from bank records and other financial data.
*Hands-on experience. Work a mock financial case as part of an investigative team.
This course provides expert guidance in the skills law enforcement officers need to conduct successful online investigations. Topics include IP addresses and domains, an overview of currently popular social media platforms, best practices for building an undercover profile, foundational knowledge related to the dark web, and the use of the dark web as an investigative tool. Instructors demonstrate both open-source and commercially-available investigative tools for social engineering, information gathering, and artifacts related to social media; as well as automated utilities to capture information and crawl websites.
*Internet basics. IP address assignment; resolving domains and IP addresses; networking overview.
*Popular sites. Facebook, Twitter, KiK Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, tumblr, and more.
*The dark web. Surface, deep, and dark web; how data flows through the internet. Who uses the dark web and how?
*Tor. How to access Tor; how Tor traffic works; how a Tor Hidden Service works; installing and configuring the Tor Browser Bundle.
This course builds on the concepts introduced in FC101 (FIPS) and FC105 (FREA), introducing investigators and prosecutors to emerging issues in financial crime. Topics include money laundering, analyzing large financial data sets, conducting effective interviews, and managing large amounts of financial evidence. This course consists of a mix of lecture, discussion, and hands-on exercises. Students conduct a mock investigation that includes interviews, data analysis, and the examination of various documents.
*Money laundering. Methods of laundering money. Tracing illegal funds. Emerging issues. FinCEN.
*Spreadsheeting skills. Spreadsheet architecture. Formulas and calculations. Pivot tables.
*Working with financial data. Benfords law analysis. Disentangling commingled funds.
*Hands-on experience. Work a mock financial case as part of an investigative team.
This course addresses the critical need for well-trained intelligence analysts to interpret growing amounts of information. Topics include the intelligence cycle, analytical thinking skills, the importance of strategic analysis, communication and social media analysis, recommendation development, and legal and ethical issues. Students work hands-on with specialized software to synthesize information and develop various products of intelligence. The course was developed by a consortium that included NW3C, Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIU), the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysis (IALEIA), and the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS).
*Analysis basics. History and purpose of intelligence analysis. Legal issues and ethics. Sources of information. The intelligence cycle.
*Types of analysis. Crime patterns. Associations. Flow. Communications. Financial analysis.
*Creative and critical thinking. Brainstorming. Mind mapping. Steps to critical thinking.
*Deterring crime. Strategic analysis as a tool for law enforcement personnel.
*Hands-on experience. Work as part of a team to analyze information pertaining to several hypothetical cases.
This course promotes a multi-agency approach to the problem of financial exploitation of senior citizens. Topics include working with senior victims, examining documents like bank records and power of attorney, and resources for investigation and community awareness. Detailed examination of a case study from initial complaint to prosecution reinforces and illustrates the course content. With a dual focus on financial abuse by trusted persons and common scams aimed at seniors, the course introduces senior-specific investigative skills while facilitating networking and cooperation that can extend out of the classroom and into real cases.
This course provides hands-on investigative training at a basic level. Students develop the practical skills, insight, and knowledge necessary to manage a successful financial investigation from start to finish, including the acquisition and examination of financial records, interview skills, and case management and organization. Additional topics include forgery and embezzlement, financial exploitation of the elderly, working with spreadsheets, financial profiling, and state-specific statutes and legal issues.
*Emerging issues. Current trends in various types of financial crimes. Recent cases and their implications.
*Financial records. Learn to obtain and manage bank records, including basic spreadsheeting skills.
*Working with data. Extract leads and draw conclusions from bank records and other financial data.
*Hands-on experience. Work a mock financial case as part of an investigative team.
This course introduces analysts to the broader concepts of connecting the dots through link analysis. A critical portion of conducting a successful analytical investigation is the ability to link together and understand the complexities of the connectedness between people and organizations. Introduction to Link Analysis (ILA) expands on the basic principles of link and association analyses explored in the Foundations of Intelligence Analysis Training (FIAT) while building a framework for more advanced methods such as social network analysis.
Expanding basic knowledge of link and association analysis
Explaining the process of social network analysis
Understanding the visual mapping and mathematical components associated with link and social network analyses