Published: June 30, 2009 12:28 am      

NW3C fights economic and high-tech crime

FAIRMONT — Fighting economic and high-tech crime is what the National White Collar Crime Center does best.

The National White Collar Crime Center, or NW3C, is located in Fairmont in the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation’s Alan B. Mollohan Innovation Center. This site houses the computer crime instructors, training center, research center and Internet Crime Complaint Center.

NW3C’s office in Richmond, Va., is the home of the investigative support section and communications section. The center also has instructors in its “virtual offices” who live across the country and travel to provide on-site training.

Don Brackman, director of NW3C, said this nonprofit membership organization was started in 1978 by a group of law enforcement agencies working on investigations related to coal and mineral gas fraud.

After having discussions, the investigators realized that these fraud cases were happening across the nation and involved a large quantity of money and a high volume of victims. The group received money from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is within the U.S. Department of Justice, to help them work together to arrest the criminals, Brackman said.

The program, initially called the Leviticus Project, was so successful that its funding was continued. The entity became incorporated in the state of Virginia in the late 1980s, and it became NW3C in 1990, he said. The center wasn’t only investigating fraud cases in oil and gas, but had moved into other areas of interest.



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