Tag Archives: Crime

Baldwin County GA Sheriff’s Office Deploys Case Closed Software for Investigation Case Management

Baldwin County, GA – (August 1, 2021)  The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office has announced the implementation of new investigation case management software from Case Closed Software, a leading provider of investigative technology solutions.

The new investigation management software will enhance the Sheriff’s Office’s ability to manage and solve cases by streamlining case management, reducing manual work, and providing real-time access to critical information. The system will provide investigators with powerful tools that will help them manage their caseloads, track evidence, and collaborate more efficiently.

The implementation of Case Closed Software will also allow the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office to streamline its investigation process, improve its ability to analyze case data, and increase collaboration between investigators. The software will also provide real-time updates to case status and allow investigators to share case files across departments and agencies.

“We are thrilled to partner with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office to help them take their investigative capabilities to the next level,” said Douglas Wood, CEO of Case Closed Software. “Our software is designed to give investigators the tools they need to manage their caseloads, track evidence, and solve cases more efficiently, and we are confident that it will make a real difference for the Sheriff’s Office.”

Case Closed Software is a leading provider of investigation case management software for law enforcement, state and local government agencies, and private sector organizations. The company’s software solutions are designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of investigations, streamline case management, and reduce costs.

What's with all the "Creepy Clowns"?

It had to be in the weeks running up to Halloween, of course.
killerclownsUnless you’ve been hiding under a big red nose and novelty wig, you probably know that there has been a rash of ‘creepy clown’ sightings in communities across the country. These creepy clowns – and the related threats they seem to pose – seem to range from crazy hoaxes to credible events. So what in the name of big, floppy shoes is going on here?
Some arrests have been made. Schools have sent out warning letters. Social media is crawling with creepy, homemade clown videos. And the subject even came up at the White House media briefing this week.
We need an explanation for why, all of a sudden, there are creepy clowns running around our neighborhoods and – in some cases – our wild imaginations.
CNN posted six possibilities in an attempt to answer that very question. It’s a very good article and accompanying video. The possibilities, according to the folks they’ve interviewed range from folklore to viral marketing, and more. Of interest is the viewpoint of Benjamin Radford, author of the book “Bad Clowns“.
As the Los Angeles Times points out in an article HERE, the stupidity began in South Carolina with upsetting accounts of clowns attempting to lure children into the woods. (Those accounts seem to have proven false, by the way.) That said, the craze has expanded and, according to the same LA Times article, clown sightings were reported in Modesto, CA prompting police to issue a notice to residents that read: “If you see anything or anyone suspicious, including individuals dressed as clowns, to avoid contact and report the circumstances to us immediately.”

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Insane Clown Posse

Even the Insane Clown Posse has weighed in on the subject. The Detroit-based hip-hop duo suggests the phenomenon is “basically nothing more than mass hysteria and moral panic.”
“Believe it or not, the same thing happened in 1981, too. Long before social media, Stephen King wrote (the horror classic) ‘It’ and Insane Clown Posse were in GRADE SCHOOL at the time! So there ARE no ‘killer clowns’ — it’s just jackasses being jackasses. Everyone relax!”, they posted.
In an article posted at Michigan Live HERE, it is pointed out that Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist who studies the folklore behind mythical beasts such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, came up with something called “The Phantom Clown Theory,” which attributes the proliferation of clown sightings to mass hysteria.
After some thorough research, it seems that the prevailing thought is that there are no credible threats from Creepy Clowns. Fuelling the hysteria, of course, are utterly false reports that continue to make the rounds in social media. Snopes, the myth debunking (or confirming) website talks about a report that creepy clowns are responsible for two dozen murders in Canada. Spoiler alert: It’s not true.
killerclowns2Perhaps the biggest concern is that these creepy clowns take it too far, a la the snowball effect. We should be concerned that someone could be legitimately hurt as the trend grows. It’s even more possible that someone will take one of these creepy clowns as a legitimate threat and take matters into their own hands. We hope neither of those things happen, but we’d sure love to see a lot less of this clowning around.
About the Author
Tyler Wood is Operations Director of Austin, TX based Crime Tech Solutions (www.crimetechsolutions.com). The company develops and deploys low price / high performance software for law enforcement including Case Closed investigative case management software, sophisticated Sentinel Visualizer link analysis and data visualization software, and CrimeMap Pro advanced crime analytics. The company also develops the popular GangBuster gang database, and IntelNexus criminal intelligence software for 28 CFR Part 23 compliance.
 

Crime Tech Solutions Acquires Case Closed Software

June 1, 2016 (Austin, TX)   Crime Tech Solutions, LLC, a leading provider of analytics and investigation software for law enforcement and commercial markets, today announced that it has acquired Cleveland, TN based Case Closed Software in a cash transaction. The terms of the deal were not released, but according to Crime Tech Solutions’ founder and president Douglas Wood, the acquisition brings together two dynamic and fast-growing software companies with an unparalleled complement of technologies.
For Crime Tech Solutions, the opportunity to add Case Closed Software into the fold was too good to pass up” said Mr. Wood. “We think that the technology offered by Case Closed helps to further differentiate us in the market as the price performance leader for this type of investigative solution.PNG
Crime Tech Solutions, based in the city of Leander, TX, delivers advanced analytics and investigation software to commercial investigators and law enforcement agencies across the globe. Their solution suite includes criminal intelligence software, sophisticated crime analytics with geospatial mapping, and powerful link analysis and visualization software. The company says that the addition of Case Closed Software expands those offerings even further.
Case Closed Software develops and markets investigative case management software specifically designed for law enforcement agencies. The suite is built around four primary software products including best-in-class investigative case management software, property and evidence tracking, a gang database tool, and an integrated link analysis and data visualization tool. The company also plans to release the solution as Case Closed Cloud for cloud-based access.
Case Closed couldn’t be happier than to be joining Crime Tech Solutions,” said Keith Weigand, the company’s founder. “The blending of our technologies creates a suite that will add tremendous value to our mutual customers, and will be hard for others to duplicate.
According to both Mr. Weigand and Mr. Wood, the name Case Closed will continue on as the product brand, given its widespread popularity and loyal customer base. Crime Tech Solutions is expected to retain all Case Closed employees, with Mr. Weigand joining as the company’s chief technical officer.
Crime Tech Solutions says it expects continued growth via ongoing software sales and strategic acquisitions.
About Crime Tech Solutions
(NOTE: Crime Tech Solutions is an Austin, TX based provider of crime and fraud analytics software for commercial and law enforcement groups. Our offerings include sophisticated Case Closed™ investigative case management and major case management, GangBuster™ gang intelligence software, powerful link analysis software, evidence management, mobile applications for law enforcement, comprehensive crime analytics with mapping and predictive policing, and 28 CFR Part 23 compliant criminal intelligence database management systems.)

Using Link Analysis to untangle fraud webs

Posted by Douglas Wood, Editor.
NOTE: This article originally appeared HERE by Jane Antonio. I think it’s a great read…
Link analysis has become an important technique for discovering hidden relationships involved in healthcare fraud. An excellent online source, FierceHealthPayer:AntiFraud, recently spoke to Vincent Boyd Bryant about the value of this tool for payer special investigations units.
A former biometric scientist for the U.S. Department of Defense, Bryant has 30 years of experience in law enforcement and intelligence analysis. He’s an internationally-experienced investigations and forensics expert who’s worked for a leading health insurer on government business fraud and abuse cases.
How does interactive link analysis help insurers prevent healthcare fraud? Can you share an example of how the tool works?

Boyd Bryant: Link analysis is most often used to piece together different kinds of data from multiple sources–to identify key players, connections between those players and patterns of behavior frequently missed. It can simplify an understanding of the level of involvement of individuals and criminal organizational hierarchies and can greatly simplify visualizing and communicating the operations of complex criminal enterprises.

One thing criminals do best is hide pots of money in different places. As a small criminal operation becomes successful, it will often expand its revenue streams through associated businesses. Link analysis is about trying to figure out where all those different baskets of revenue may be. Insurers are drowning in a sea of theft. Here’s where link analysis becomes beneficial. Once insurers discover a small basket of money lost to a criminal enterprise, then serious research needs to go into finding out who owns the company, who they’re associated with, what kinds of business they’re doing and if there are claims associated with it.
You may find a clinic, for example, connected to and working near a pharmacy, a medical equipment supplier, a home healthcare services provider and a construction company. Diving into those companies and what they do, you find that they’re serving older patients for whom multiple claims from many providers exist. The construction company may be building wheelchair ramps on homes. And you may find that the providers are claiming payment for dead people. Overall, using this tool requires significant curiosity and a willingness to look beyond the obvious.
Any investigation consists of aggregating facts, generating impressions and creating a theory about what happened. Then you work to confirm or disconfirm your theory. It’s important to have tools that let you take large masses of facts and visualize them in ways that cue you to look closer.
Let’s say you investigate a large medical practice and interview “Doctor Jones.” The day after the interview, you learn through link analysis that he transferred $11 million from his primary bank account to the Cayman Islands. And in looking at Dr. Jones’ phone records, you see he called six people, each of whom was the head of another individual practice on whose board Dr. Jones sits. Now the investigation expands, since the timing of those phone calls was contemporaneous to the money taking flight.
Why are tight clusters of similar entities possible indicators of fraud, waste or abuse?
Bryant: When you find a business engaged in dishonest practices and see its different relationships with providers working out of the same building, this gives rise to reasonable suspicion. The case merits a closer look. Examining claims and talking to members served by those companies will give you an indication of how legitimate the operation is.
What are the advantages of link analysis to payer special investigation units, and how are SIUs using its results?
Bryant:  Link analysis can define relationships through data insurers haven’t always had, data that traditionally belonged to law enforcement.
Link analysis results in a visual reference that can take many forms: It can look like a family tree, an organizational chart or a time line. This reference helps investigators assess large masses of data for clustering and helps them arrive at a conclusion more rapidly.

Using link analysis, an investigator can dump in large amounts of data–such as patient lists from multiple practices–and see who’s serving the same patient. This can identify those who doctor shop for pain medication, for example. Link analysis can chart where this person was and when, showing the total amount of medication prescribed and giving you an idea of how the person is operating.
What types of data does link analysis integrate?
Bryant: Any type of data that can be sorted and tied together can be loaded into the tool. Examples include telephone records, addresses, vehicle information, corporate records that list individuals serving on boards and banking and financial information. Larger supporting documents can be loaded and linked to the charts, making cases easier to present to a jury.
Linked analysis can pull in data from state government agencies, county tax records or police records from state departments of correction and make those available in one bucket. In most cases, this is more efficient than the hours of labor needed to dig up these types of public records through site visits.
Is there anything else payers should know about link analysis that wasn’t covered in the above questions?
Bryant: The critical thing is remembering that you don’t know what you don’t know. If a provider or member is stealing from the plan in what looks like dribs and drabs, insurers may never discover the true extent of the losses. But if–as a part of any fraud allegation that arises–you look at what and who is associated with the subject of the complaint, what started as a $100,000 questionable claims allegation can expose millions of dollars in inappropriate billings spread across different entities.

SEC taking stock of analytics (and a cool use case for stock exchanges)

Image Posted by Douglas Wood, Editor.
I read with interest today an article about the SEC’s use of analytics in the ongoing fight against financial crimes. The link to that article is below. It reminded me of some work I once did with a major stock exchange around insider trading.
As a passionate anti-fraud technologist, I was thrilled with the challenge of helping the stock exchange better recognize cases of illegal insider trading. The results of the work we did was pretty cool.
The stock exchange – as do all exchanges – had a great deal of data at their disposal. They knew, for example, the names of each and every ‘insider’ within every company listed on their exchange. Insiders include senior executives, board members, legal counsel, auditors, and so on.  Basically, everyone who knew – or ought to have known – about an upcoming event that would likely cause a significant change in stock price.
They also knew, of course, the identity of investors who traded profitably prior to the public release of that information. The problem was exposing the hidden relationships that might exist between Insiders and investors.
Here is an actual example… Joe Blow was an associate partner at the independent accounting firm responsible for auditing the quarterly financial results of publicly traded Company A. By definition, Joe is an insider. He knows Company A’s financials. Jane Doe dumped her entire position in Company A mere days ahead of what turned out to be very poor results. The stock plummeted, and Jane was saved from significant losses.  She was seemingly a complete outsider. So, did she somehow know Joe Blow (or any other insider)? Or was she just one lucky gal.
Using link analysis, crime mapping, and behavioral analytics, we set about the challenge of finding out. Here’s what the analytics exposed:
Joe Blow, the insider by way of being employed at Company A’s auditing firm, shared an address with… oh, let’s call him “Rich Quick”. Rich held no positions with Company A whatsoever.  He did, however, own a pet food store with a lovely young lady.  Can you guess her name?  Yep.. Jane Doe. So, the analytics exposed that Company A had an insider relationship with Joe Blow. Joe lived with Rich Quick. Rich owned a business with Jane Doe. Coincidence? Not likely.
Without the ability to draw out hidden links between individuals and organizations, this case may never have been discovered.  It’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only with much higher stakes. All of the suspects were investigated and prosecuted.
(Note: All the names in this example are fictitious, but the case is not. If your name happens to be Jane Doe, Joe Blow, Rich Quick… or if you work for an organization called Company A, rest assured that I’m not talking about you.)
Here is the link to the SEC article.  http://fcw.com/articles/2013/09/18/sec-taps-analytics-to-predict-risk.aspx?s=fcwdaily_190913 .

Prayers, Caregivers, and Breaking Bad – Selected Financial Crimes Snapshot 9/18/2013

Posted by Douglas Wood, Editor.  http://www.linkedin.com/in/dougwood
Does KYC mean Know Your Caregiver?
http://onlineathens.com/breaking-news/2013-09-18/savannah-woman-sentenced-51-months-federal-prison-embezzling-71k-elderly
Another great example of the need for systematic 314(b) programs?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/suburbs/joliet_romeoville/ct-tl-0926-sw-joliet-financial-crime-20130918,0,464668.story
Breaking Bad?  Financial Crimes Investigator indicted for fraud.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-financial-crimes-investigator-indicted-for-fraud-theft/
Holy Fraud Scheme!  Better say their prayers.
http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/09/16/sdoe-reveals-monastery-fraud/
Posted by Douglas G. Wood. Click on ABOUT for more information.