Angelo Floiran

Dr. Floiran is a former Major Crimes Detective from Texas with specializations in cyber and financial crimes.  Dr. Floiran used his experience investigating cybercrimes to help the creation of a major crimes division. Like so many other detectives, Dr. Floiran led complex investigations involving fraud, online scams, digital evidence, and technology-facilitated crime, including international cases that resulted in arrests and the recovery of stolen victim funds.

Dr. Floiran used that experience to shape his teaching method: His focus on making investigative concepts practical, case-driven, and relevant to the work public agency professionals face every day. Dr. Floiran teaches cybercrime not as a purely technical topic, but as an investigative discipline grounded in evidence, victim impact, documentation, collaboration, and sound investigative procedure.  With the world being connected, the methods used to investigate cybercrimes are the methods used for all major crime investigations.

Dr. Floiran developed an approach to teaching Locard’s Exchange Principle in cybercrime by applying the traditional forensic concept—“every contact leaves a trace”—to the digital environment. In major crimes investigations, physical contact may leave fingerprints, DNA, fibers, or other trace evidence; in cybercrime, suspects leave digital traces through account activity, metadata, device artifacts, IP addresses, transaction records, communication platforms, login history, and network logs. By connecting Locard’s principle to real cybercrime cases, including scams and international investigations, students understand that digital evidence is not invisible or abstract. It is the modern form of trace evidence, and when properly identified, preserved, and analyzed, it can help identify offenders, support arrests, recover victim funds, and strengthen successful investigations.