The robberies came fast and furious, nearly a dozen targeting 20 people over two weeks in the fall of 2020 in Northwest Washington. Police said people were held up at knife and gunpoint, and three were forced into vehicles.
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Authorities said they found a common thread in many of the attacks: The robbers stole cellphones and used mobile cash apps to transfer money from the victims’ bank accounts to their own.
In what officials described as a cyber twist in a run of brazen street crimes, three people were arrested on 98 criminal counts including armed robbery, kidnapping and fraud.
The FBI and D.C. police say a partnership between the two agencies helped build a financial trail to link the cases. It’s one of many collaborations that Wayne A. Jacobs, the newly named special agent in charge of the criminal and cyber division of the FBI’s D.C. field office, says is key to trying to reduce crime in the region and make sure law enforcement is strategically pursuing perpetrators.
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“It seems like a fairly simple thing, but I’ll tell you, historically, it is something that law enforcement has at times struggled with — finding the right targets for us to pursue,” Jacobs said in an interview.
Federal authorities and D.C. police routinely work together in a city where their jurisdictions often overlap. They recently formed joint task forces, including one specifically targeting carjackings across the region. Now federal and local law enforcement authorities are also staffing a command center as part of a group called the Violent Crime Impact Team.
Having “all the federal partners sitting in one shared space” enables them to quickly direct resources to small groups of people responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime, Jacobs said.
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A priority, he said, is “making sure we are operating in the right areas and pursuing the folks who are driving a large percentage of the crime. How are we identifying those individuals, and how are we dedicating the resources to making sure that we hold those individuals accountable?”
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The rash of robberies in Northwest began Oct. 17, 2020, near the campus of George Washington University and continued at a steady pace through Halloween weekend, when police said four groups of people were held up in a matter of hours in Tenleytown, Georgetown and the West End.
Police and the FBI developed leads through interviews and surveillance videos, and by tracking the alleged robbers “moving cash between accounts” on stolen phones, Jacobs said. That, he said, led to additional victims and expanded the scope of the case.
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Two 19-year-old men from the District have been charged with numerous counts of armed robbery and armed kidnapping. One man was arrested after police chased him through Georgetown; the second was arrested in California. A Maryland woman was charged with fraud and receiving stolen property.
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Jacobs grew up in South Brunswick, N.J., and joined the FBI in 2003. He has worked in New York, Los Angeles and Newark in jobs as varied as violent crime, financial fraud and counterintelligence. In his interview, he talked of the changing nature of gun crime and drug dealing, and their intersections with the quickly evolving computer age and social media.
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D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier in 2015 declared large open-air drug markets a relic of a bygone violent era, noting that the Internet had largely supplanted street corners in the sale and distribution of illegal drugs.
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People still sell drugs outside, but Jacobs said “you don’t need to do that right now.” He said, “We have folks who are leveraging the ‘dark net’ to order fentanyl straight to their homes.”
As drug markets have changed, so have motives behind the shootings once largely attributed to fights over turf. A consultant helping D.C. to form a plan to combat crime through public health initiatives has said a few hundred people are responsible for up to 70 percent of the city’s gun violence.
While much of the violence is still attributed to members of gangs or street crews, the consultant’s report listed personal disputes as among the top motives. Rather than arguments over territory or drugs, the report found shootings were driven by men switching between crews, forming alliances with rivals and perceived disrespect.
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Jacobs said about half of all the shootings in the District are connected to previous shootings. And he said social media has added to dangers, “stoking and driving beefs that just don’t stop” through online taunts, threats and chatter.
“Now, you have social media, nothing is being shut off,” he said. “People are going back and forth.”
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And, Jacobs said, gatherings such as marijuana pop-ups with “significant sources of cash,” advertise on line, attracting robbers as well as customers.
“And I don’t even need to guess where they are, right?” he said. “They’re telling me.”
Jacobs agreed with police that the proliferation of firearms, especially untraceable “ghost guns” built from home kits, is particularly troubling.
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An upside for police is that most crime now has “a cyber footprint” that opens up new avenues of investigation, Jacobs said.
One challenge, Jacobs said, is “How do we exploit that information?”
One way turned out to be simple for police investigating the string of robberies in Northwest Washington. Court documents say one of the men charged had used his personal email address in taking control of a victims’ Amazon account.