Florida Cybercrime Unit Tampa

A new CyberCrime Unit was officially opened in the Bay area Wednesday. The Jacksonville unit opened last year. The Tampa unit will perform online investigations of potential child predators. Other offices are in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. The unit will expand to 56 people throughout the state. The program hopes to provide support for local law enforcement agencies for investigating, arresting and prosecuting Internet predators and child pornographers.

Fort Myers, Tallahassee and Pensacola are also scheduled to open in the next several months.

W.F. "Casey" Ebsary, Jr. is a Board Certified Criminal Trial Lawyer, an expert, available to help in these complex computer cases at 1-877-793-9290.

Florida Computer Crime Center

Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) has created a Florida Computer Crime Center, code named "FC3." They will investigate computer related crime and investigate complex computer crimes. FC3 will also assist with regional investigations and work to identify computer criminals. Investigations will include cases where computers are used to facilitate or help with the crime - child pornography, fraud, banking scams, drugs, and child exploitation, hacking, denial of service attacks, virus replication, network intrusions and cyber terrorism. FC3 intends to identify and harden potential cyber targets in Florida.

Innocent Images Task Force

Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa, explained that the Innocent Images Task Force is made up of FBI agents and detectives from local law enforcement and the U.S. Probation Office. The proliferation of child pornography and child sexual exploitation facilitated by the Internet is viewed as a major law enforcement task. Cole said, “The mission of the Innocent Images Task Force is to reduce the vulnerability of children to acts of sexual exploitation and abuse through computers,” he said.

Using the Department of Homeland Security's resources for computer forensics, the task force seeks convict internet users of computer crimes. most of even the most minor offenses include a stint in federal prison.