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Ohio cyber crimes agents say it isn't hard to catch the person behind a threatening post

Special agents with Ohio Attorney General's BCI Cyber Crimes Unit say social media threats have skyrocketed since the Parkland school shooting, and analysts are using hi-tech ways to help local police catch the person behind the post.

LONDON, Ohio - Special agents with Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation Cyber Crimes Unit say social media threats have skyrocketed since the Parkland, Florida school shooting.

Their analysts are using hi-tech ways to help local police catch the person behind threatening posts.

"We're looking for web history of them getting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, wherever these threats could have been coming from," computer forensic specialist Dylan Waggy said.

Fighting crime from behind a keyboard is how cyber agents catch the bad guys in the digital world.

"So we work homicides, theft, rape, inducing panic," special agent supervisor Vicki Angelopoulos said.

Computer forensic analysts and special agents are always busy tracking threats posted to social media.

"We've had these mass shootings in the past, but we didn't see this wave like we have, since Florida," Angelopoulos said.

Angelopoulos says the amount of online school threats has quadrupled.

"What young people really need to become more aware of is that they need to be smart as to what they're posting on these social media sites," Angelopoulos said.

Once local police contact the unit's headquarters in London, Ohio, the analysis begins.

"They may provide us with a post, maybe from Instagram, and we will work alongside our Criminal Intelligence Unit to kind of put a profile together," Angelopoulos said.

Working hand in hand with the Criminal Intelligence Unit, analysts like Julia Berry, will start clicking their way to a culprit.

"We do phone analysis, we do financial analysis, we do any kind of social media research," Berry said.

Berry is tasked with diving deep into the web and digging into a suspect's life through social media.

"Specifically with school threats we're looking to identify the user of a profile, where they live, who they're friends with, who follows them," Berry said.

It could only take a few minutes from a behind a keyboard to solve a cyber crime.

Agents warn those who might plan to post, to think again.

"Think twice about what you're posting. It really isn't that tough to find these people," Angelopoulos said.

Ohio BCI's Cyber Crime Unit has four offices in the state of Ohio.

The unit works with local, state and federal agencies.

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