School of Business hosts former, current FBI members for financial fraud crime panel

The Liberty University Accounting Society, in partnership with the School of Business, hosted several current and former members of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation for an “Investigating Financial Crimes” panel discussion on Monday.

The panel featured former FBI members John Wyman, Tom Chadwick, and Adam Lee, as well as current FBI employee Dave Johnson, a supervisory special agent who oversees financial crimes for the Richmond (Va.) FBI office. Prior to the FBI, Johnson spent 18 years combatting violent crimes and four years as a special agent for NCIS in the Norfolk, Va., area.

The auditorium was packed with interested students. The panelists shared examples of cases that significantly impacted their careers. The discussion was moderated by senior accounting major Grace Phillips.

Wyman, who served with the FBI for 23 years and is currently the director of security intelligence and investigations for Smithfield Foods, recalled a case involving his team recruiting a Pakistani man who had run into trouble with the law to spy on another Pakistani individual who had openly volunteered for al Qaeda. This partnership led to agents arresting the target after catching him planning to bomb a D.C. metro station. Wyman also shared how he once investigated a mentally ill man who had sworn allegiance to ISIS and eventually helped get the man on medication for schizophrenia. Once healed, the man forsook his terrorist affiliations and returned to Wyman a year later to thank him for helping him find treatment.

Wyman spent most of his time with the bureau as a special agent in both Washington, D.C., and Richmond. He also served in the FBI behavioral analysis unit.

Chadwick, the director of physical security and aviation for Dominion Energy who spent the majority of his career with the bureau investigating public and other types of corruption, emphasized the important work that the FBI does, including serving the very individuals it prosecutes.

“You see the TV shows and things like that, but what I don’t think people realize is the FBI helps a lot of people,” he said in an interview after the event. “A lot of people I have investigated over the years were involved in some bad things. It can be any variety of reasons why they decided to do those things, but very often being caught and being held accountable was the best thing that ever happened to them in terms of restoring them and enabling them to move through the rest of their life and be productive citizens.”

Lee was an executive in the FBI’s Public Corruption Program and served as the special agent over the Richmond division of the FBI before retiring in 2018. He also worked as a prosecutor in San Francisco, Calif. He is now the vice president and chief security officer for Dominion Energy.

Lee likewise stressed the important work the FBI does and noted that it was precisely because of the good the bureau does that he decided to join.

“The thing that attracted me to the bureau since I was a kid — it was kind of a childhood dream to join the bureau and I was very fortunate to be able to do it — was the mission,” he said. “It’s not carrying a gun, it’s not wearing the suit every day and all that stuff; it’s the opportunity to find the evil in the world that leads to people losing their retirements, people being victimized by street gangs, by drug trafficking organizations, and in recent history by terrorist organizations, and being able to personally get involved to try and do something to mitigate that harm.”

“There really is no (better) place where you can get right up against evil and do something about it than the FBI,” he added.

The guests also noted the importance of speaking to college students. Not only does sharing their experiences help rectify any misconceptions about the FBI, but it also serves as a valuable tool for recruiting future employees.

“It’s a great opportunity for the FBI to recruit from a school like Liberty that’s got a great reputation,” Chadwick said. “Liberty students are passing background investigations; they pass the polygraph. They’re a group that because of their strong faith, they’re committed to God and country and to serve. Those are the kind of people really any company, but especially organizations in the U.S. intelligence community (need) … people who are committed to a good cause protecting America, protecting American infrastructure.”