Detective Work

Perspectives: Research and Creative Activities at SIUC, Fall 2007

:: research survey ::

Detective Work

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of the Treasury are using crime-fighting software developed at SIUC.

The treasury department recently asked Jake Rose, associate professor in the School of Accountancy, to create software that detects fraud in financial and tax data. Rose met the challenge by designing software that identifies irregularities in the distribution of digits in large sets of data—patterns indicative of financial and tax fraud.

"I designed the software to allow agents with very little technology training to take advantage of the information available in large financial datasets," says Rose, who won the College of Business and Administration's Research Excellence Award for 2007.

He also provided the agency with custom training materials and practice cases.

Federal officials were so impressed, they recently announced Rose's software will also be used for training and field use by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement agencies.

"Digital fraud detection techniques can greatly increase the efficiency of field investigations," Rose says. "I am very hopeful that the software will allow federal law enforcement agents to prevent and detect financial and tax fraud more quickly and effectively."

—by Sun Min