Richard Ring is the CEO of F3 Intelligence Corp, an Orlando based Private Investigation firm that is unique in many regards, but stands alone in the industry for being able to conduct both on-chain / off-chain investigations. Before forming F3, Richard started his career in Air Force Intelligence, eventually becoming a Human Targeting Officer for the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Richard’s CV is unique in that he comes from an intelligence background and a counter threat finance background, eventually entering the crypto realm years ago as both an investor and forensics specialist.
Richard’s private investigation firm consists of only former U.S. Intelligence analysts, Federal Law Enforcement, and retired U.S. Assistant Attorneys. Four years ago, the firm formed a 501c3 after discovering that their past experience conducting counter terrorism operations had direct carry over to finding missing and exploited children, as well as the perpetrators themselves. As a proof of concept, the team at F3 spent the last four years conducting investigations into missing children’s cold cases in parallel to their law enforcement partners. In that time the team at F3 were able to successfully revaluate over 2000 cold cases, recover 37 children, and locate two child predators that had fled the U.S.. The team at F3 even went so far as to help recover children stuck behind Russian lines in Ukraine by partnering with another NGO, Project Apollo.
Conducting private investigations in parallel to law enforcement was never seen as the long-term solution by the team at F3. Richard explained, “We identified three limiting factors in our assessment of why missing children’s cases were going cold in the first place. Those are; the methods that law enforcement is currently using is outdated or not being utilized efficiently; a serious lack of intelligence sharing at the local and state level among law enforcement; finally, the time constraints that law enforcement have to spend on a single case. We think we’ve solved the first two, which should have an impact on the third.”
The team at F3 has addressed the issue of outdated methods through a contract with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to develop a multi-course curriculum in advanced investigative methods that will be taught at the police academies to currently serving sworn detectives throughout the state. To solve the intelligence sharing issue, Richard and his team at F3 have turned towards Distributed Ledger Technology. Richard highlighted, “At the end of the day the quicker and more securely intelligence data can be disseminated to all law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S., the quicker a child can be found, preventing the case from ever going cold. DLT is how we do that.” The details of what they are currently building are still under wraps, but the team at F3 has brought in heavy hitters throughout the Web3 community to advise on the DApp’s development with the goal of giving this initial intelligence tool to all law enforcement throughout the nation. “We’re already using tools like this throughout the intelligence community overseas, we’re simply updating those tools with DLT to make them even more effective. I’m extremely grateful for all the interest shown from the Web 3 community in working on this righteous cause.”
