CAMDEN — A 20-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation spoke at Tuesday’s Rotary Club meeting, sharing a little about what the FBI does and answering questions from Rotary members.
Supervisor Special Agent Cliff Carruth is based at the FBI office in Little Rock, but has worked in offices around the country and even internationally.
Carruth said that there are FBI offices throughout the world that work with local law enforcement agencies. He said that working with local agencies is critical to know be able to know what is going on in that city.
He talked about a few different FBI divisions that are utilized to investigate different crimes. Those he mentioned were violent crimes, white-collar crimes, cyber crimes, counter-terrorism, and national security cyber crimes.
The agent stated that cyber crimes are the biggest issue the world is facing today.
“Everyone in this room has either been touched by a cyber crime or knows someone who has, whether it is being hacked or having information stolen,” said Carruth.
Cyber crimes can happen to anyone who uses a computer or other technologies, but he said that the national security cyber crimes division focuses on foreign governments. Carruth told the group that some countries have special government divisions that have the specific task of attempting to exploit other government’s secrets by way of cyber hacking. The national security cyber crimes division is meant to stop these hackers.
Carruth then took questions from Rotary members who wanted to know more about the FBI’s work.
L.E. Lindsay asked Carruth about forensics shows on television compared to how forensics work in reality.
“I really wish it worked the way it does on TV, but that’s not the case," Carruth responded. "We have to get a court order to collect the evidence, a court order to send the evidence to a lab, and it isn’t an instant result.”
Paul Lindsay asked Carruth about phone scams and if there was a way for the FBI to shut them down.
The agent explained that scams are very complicated because most of the people conducting these scams are located outside of the country. He stated that if there was a phone that has been identified as a number that is operating a scam, the phone can be blocked from use. But the scam artists just get a new phone and a new number. The best thing to do is to inform the public of new scams and how to avoid becoming a victim.
Before the meeting ended, Carruth shared a story about a case he worked while he was based in Texas. Carruth stated that for three years, he and other agents investigated the sales of rocket-propelled grenades - RPGs - to a major Russian crime ring located in New York that had a network throughout the country.
“I am not talking about selling one or two RPGs, I mean shipping containers filled with them,” Carruth said.
He said that 24 people were arrested and that 20 were on trial at the same time - each with the person's own attorney. Carruth stated that his testimony in the case took three days because he had to be cross examined by 20 different attorneys. He stated that one day after court, he was driving back to his hotel and noticed a car full of Russians following him. He said in all his time in the FBI, that was the most nervous he had ever been.