Category: FBI

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Nakai’s job is to focus on the Native American communities in the Salt Lake City office’s jurisdiction, which reaches as far north as Montana. She grew up on a reservation in Arizona and has been with the Bureau for almost 30 years. She said when she learned about efforts to formally include Navajo in the FBI’s language translation offerings, she couldn’t say no.

“I feel like it’s a social responsibility,” said Nakai, whose father taught English and Navajo in their home when she was growing up. “I immediately thought, ‘I need to do this.’ And I went back to my early years when my father said, ‘You need to speak your language.’ And this was one of those times when I needed to do this.”

Public affairs personnel at FBI Headquarters immediately saw the value of translating materials into Navajo.

“I was thinking about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons initiative and our investigative publicity posters and realized that we translate these into other languages, so why not Navajo now that we have official resources?” said Courtney Miller-Hileman, who is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and served as chairperson of AIANAC. “We asked Frank (Fisher) if he was interested, and he ran with it.”

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Some tips may be sent to one of our Joint Terrorism Task Forces for further investigation. Other cases may go to state or local partners to work with the FBI’s support. Others, according to Wyman, may be worked mainly by entities outside of law enforcement.

“We are investigating this for a law enforcement purpose, but at the same time, we know that not all of the solutions are law enforcement solutions,” he said. “These are complex problems that require complex solutions. We will lean on a host of services including, mental health, social services, and probation and parole.”

Wyman said that the biggest challenge to the approach is in building connections and opening up communication among and between agencies and groups. “There are so many areas where information can be gathered but not shared,” he explained. “We need to break down traditional barriers to information sharing.”

The FBI is working to make connections among school and community groups, social workers, and mental health services and then ensure those are integrated with the FBI and other law enforcement partners.

BTAC also provides specialized training to agents serving as threat management coordinators in each of the FBI’s 56 field offices, so they can build those teams and relationships in local communities.

The system will never be perfect. But the more aware each person is of the signs that someone may be moving toward violence, the more connected agencies and entities are to one another, and the more engaged all of society is in providing services and support to someone who thinks violence is a solution, the more effective our prevention efforts will be.

If you are interested in speaking with the FBI about ways to build threat assessment and threat management teams in your community, reach out to your local field office and ask for the FBI threat management coordinator.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

As the lead federal investigative agency fighting cyber threats, combating cybercrime is one of the FBI’s highest priorities. We have attributed the JBS attack to REvil and Sodinokibi and are working diligently to bring the threat actors to justice. We continue to focus our efforts on imposing risk and consequences and holding the responsible cyber actors accountable. Our private sector partnerships are essential to responding quickly when a cyber intrusion occurs and providing support to victims affected by our cyber adversaries. A cyberattack on one is an attack on us all. We encourage any entity that is the victim of a cyberattack to immediately notify the FBI through one of our 56 field offices.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

On April 21, 2021, one of the most successful investigative tools available to U.S. law enforcement reached a major milestone: the 20 millionth DNA profile was contributed to the national DNA database via the CODIS software. CODIS links unknown DNA left during the commission of a crime to offenders who are legally required to provide samples for the database.

The FBI introduced the national DNA database in 1998. The program began with nine states and soon expanded to all 50 states. CODIS is currently installed in 203 federal, state, and local participating laboratories in the United States. It is used to share DNA profiles across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, federal law enforcement agencies, and the Department of Defense. The CODIS software is also used by 58 countries for their own law enforcement identification purposes; the international databases are not connected to the national DNA database in the United States.

Through the amendment and expansion of the DNA Identification Act of 1994, CODIS continues to help public forensic laboratories link crime-scene evidence to other cases or to persons already convicted of or arrested for specific crimes. The expansion of DNA collection laws at the state and local levels has broadened CODIS, which has helped more criminal investigations and led to more prosecutions throughout the nation.

A separate but equally important part of the national DNA database can help identify missing and unidentified individuals. This remarkable crime-solving tool has aided over 545,000 investigations since its inception in 1998, thanks to the dedicated efforts of the FBI’s CODIS Unit staff, participating laboratories, law enforcement, and other stakeholders.

For more than two decades, the continual development of the CODIS software has been a collaborative effort among the DNA and CODIS communities and other stakeholders, including laboratory accrediting bodies, law enforcement, defense attorneys, prosecutors, victims, and Congress. This collaboration has helped evaluate new technologies, create and update procedures and standards, and introduce legislation.

For additional information, visit the FBI’s CODIS page.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Director Christopher Wray has named Michael D. Nordwall as the special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh Field Office. Mr. Nordwall most recently served as a section chief in the Criminal Investigative Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Nordwall began his career with the FBI as a special agent in 2002. He was first assigned to the Phoenix Field Office, where he worked counterterrorism, violent crime, crimes in Indian Country, and organized crime matters. He was also a member of the SWAT team and an EMT.

In 2009, Mr. Nordwall was promoted to supervisory special agent in the Operations Unit of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate at Headquarters, where he managed FBI investigations of and responses to WMD threats in the U.S. and internationally.

Mr. Nordwall transferred to the Tampa Field Office in Florida in 2011 to oversee an organized crime drug enforcement strike force known as Panama Express. The interagency strike force countered transnational criminal organizations trafficking drugs on the high seas.

In 2014, Mr. Nordwall was selected as an associate director in the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces Executive Office, serving as the primary representative for federal law enforcement. He also oversaw the attorney general’s Consolidated Priority Organization Target program, which focused government efforts on disrupting and dismantling the most significant criminal organizations.

Mr. Nordwall returned to the Tampa Field Office in 2016 to oversee the Joint Terrorism Task Force. In June 2018, he reported to the Denver Field Office as the assistant special agent in charge of the Criminal Branch and all Colorado resident agencies.

He was promoted in 2019 to chief of the Transnational Organized Crime Global Section in the Criminal Investigative Division at Headquarters. The section manages investigations and intelligence collection against transnational criminal organizations based in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

Mr. Nordwall earned a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Auburn University in Alabama. Prior to joining the FBI, he worked in the petrochemical industry.