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Confidential Informant

Confidential Informant

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Abstract

There are basically two types of police investigation, reactive and proactive. In the former, a crime is reported to the police and an investigation is initiated; in the latter, police uncover or seek out the criminal activity. Each is concerned with identifying and arresting the perpetrator of a criminal act. In order to identify and obtain evidence against persons involved in criminal activity, the police often use confidential informants. Both types of investigation require the securing of information that comes from within a criminal esubculture. Within this criminal subculture, deals are made, plans for the future as well as past and present crimes are openly discussed, and a general wealth of criminal intelligence is exchanged. The confidential informant, therefore, becomes the ideal tool for penetrating their criminal subculture. Detectives have their own personal cultivated sources as well as registered confidential informants. Informants have various motives for giving information...

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Informants & Whistleblowers

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Criminals are sometimes the best people to use to catch other criminals. However, CFEs should follow the important rules when using and managing informants, whistleblowers and cooperating defendants to avoid sabotaging their cases.

This article is excerpted and adapted from “Faces of Fraud: Cases and Lessons from a Life Fighting Fraudsters,” by Martin T. Biegelman, published by John Wiley & Sons Inc. © 2013 used with permission.

No one knows the faces of fraud better than those people intimately involved in misconduct, whether as willing participants or eyewitnesses to wrongdoing. Experience teaches us that fraud is often uncovered and reported by people with inside knowledge, including employees, vendors and customers. The longtime administrative assistant or bookkeeper who has been with the company for ages may know where all the “bodies are buried,” and if given the opportunity will provide valuable information to an all-too-willing-to-listen federal agent, prosecutor or news reporter....

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