FINANCIAL CRIME: APD partners with federal agencies

Published 5:30 am Saturday, August 12, 2017

A recent partnership between the Athens Police Department and Internal Revenue Service could result in more financial crimes being solved and more perpetrators brought to justice, an official said this week.

Athens Police Chief Floyd Johnson said his department was offered the chance to work with the IRS and U.S. Attorney’s Office as part of a financial crimes task force, and he gladly accepted. As part of the partnership, the department will assign an investigator to work exclusively on financial-related crimes like forgery, identity theft and embezzlement cases.

Johnson explained some of those cases may be confined to Athens or Limestone County. In some instances, he added, there may be a case where someone who lives here is perpetrating the crimes in other parts of the country or world.

“It allows us to work with a bigger agency that has more resources. We can greatly enhance our service to the public by doing it,” he said. “These partnerships are a good thing, especially when they don’t require more manpower from us.”

The local investigator went through computer training as part of the partnership so he could learn how to access necessary information from the IRS and also learn what needed to be shared with federal authorities.

“It’s all very controlled and not a free-for-all,” Johnson said.

Athens isn’t the only police department in Alabama to sign up for the task force partnership. The Huntsville Police Department, Birmingham Police Department and Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office are also working with the federal government.

Financial crimes up

The partnership between the IRS and U.S. Attorney General’s office comes as financial crimes are steadily continuing to rise. There were nearly 400,000 identity theft cases reported last year, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Even more startling is this — reports of fraudulent credit card purchases jumped from 16 percent in 2015 to more than 32 percent last year.

The chief said he attended a recent meeting with officials from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office where he and other law enforcement officials learned about financial crime trends and what impact the local and federal partnership would have on the community. His department has already worked hand-in-hand with other federal agencies, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“We’ve got several federal cases that may be in federal court soon,” he said.