Neil Smith Email & Phone Number

Taunton, Gb

Preston, England, United Kingdom

Taunton, England, United Kingdom

UK-OSINT.NET is the training and resource website that I operate

United Kingdom

Locate International is a UK Registered Charity which I Co-Founded & helped create with Dave Grimstead. It uses vetted & trained volunteers, to help trace Missing People and to Identify Unidentified Bodies, helping the Families & the Police at no cost. I supplied the OSINT Training and ran the OSINT Team, which during 2022 - 2024, assisted in over 350 cases, which resulted in over 70 cases where people were removed from the Missing People or Unidentified Bodies were positively identified. In October 2024 I left my role with Locate to pursue some new ventures but remain as an OSINT Advisor and will be running the occasional online event for them.

Based In The Uk & Europe But Operating Worldwide

Qwarie is a one-stop shop for OSINT; running training courses, carrying out investigative research for clients and in developing online research tools. Although we only formed in 2016, its Directors & Managers have a long history in business and in OSINT both investigations and training.

After serving over 10 years as a police officer in a major UK police force and time spent working as a counter-fraud specialist for a government department and as a fraud investigator for insurance companies, I have spent most of the last 12 years as a full time investigative researcher for a mixture of clients, from insurance companies to law enforcement agencies.Over the last 12 years I have also taught many hundreds of investigators, mostly from law enforcement, local authorities and insurance companies, in the art of using the Internet as an investigative tool. These courses have taken me all around the world.From 2013 these courses were recognised by the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Criminal Justice Studies and were independently assessed by the CPD Certification Service.I also run a website full of useful links for investigators, which is free for them to use.I have spoken on the subject of using the Internet as an Investigative Tool at a large number of conferences and events both in the UK and around the World, to groups from law enforcement, local authority investigators, commercial & corporate investigators and from the insurance industry.From 2008 onwards I started providing my trace & research services to The Innocence Network UK.From 2011 onwards I also started providing my services as a trainer & researcher to The Centre for Investigative Journalism & and giving regular lectures on Journalism courses at Goldsmiths University.In the summer of 2013 I became a regular contributor to Police Oracle, submitting articles about my experiences in using OSINT.From 2016 I also operated as an Open Source Intelligence trainer for The International Governance and Risk Institute (www.govrisk.org), ExPol (www.expol.co.uk), Onside Secure Solutions (www.onsidesecuresolutions.co.uk) and Open Briefing (www.openbriefing.org).

In addition to my own work and my own training I assisted the NPIA as a trainer on their Open Source Intelligence (RITES) Course at Wyboston, Bedfordshire until the cuts in the NPIA budget & staff levels.

I was employed, on a full time basis, as an Accredited Local Counter Fraud Specialist within the NHS, working in the Bristol area, covering many of the NHS Trusts within the old Avon area, including the 5 Primary Care Trusts and the 2 Acute Trusts, which include the hospital networks of the BRI and Frenchay & Southmead. These organisations have vast budgets and staff numbers, and so had the associated fraud issues like any other business. The role of the Local Counter Fraud Specialist within the NHS is to investigate any suspected fraud in relation to NHS funds, collecting and analysing the evidence, interviewing witnesses and suspects in accordance with all appropriate legislation, as well as giving Fraud Awareness Presentations to all levels of staff, from hospital porters to Directors of the Trust Boards.I felt under-used so decided to go back to the commercial sector.

I worked for a number of large companies, mostly in relation to insurance claim fraud, the majority of which was in relation personal injury claims. This required me to gather evidence of fraudulent activity by means of surveillance and enquiries. I was also involved in the investigation of product counterfeiting and patent disputes, making test purchases and producing evidence for legal departments / officers.In the last few years I started to specialise in using Open Source Intelligence to research the subjects of our investigations and then supplied this information to the surveillance teams doing the enquiries on the ground.

After my initial training I was stationed at Bridgwater Police Station in Somerset, conducting general uniformed duties. In June 1988 I transfer to Bristol, where I spent the next 8 years at various stations and within different units around the City, including the Task Force where I dealt with incidents of public disorder, conducted crime scene searches and security searches for Royal and V.I.P visits. I also spent time attached to the “on call firearms unit” as an Authorized Firearms Officer.I then spent time attached to the to the plain clothes Street Offences Squad, the Burglary Squad and the Force Drug Squad.In 1994 I was asked to set up a plain clothes unit, attached to an Intelligence Office, to deal with all aspects of vehicle related crime. This meant that as well as running the office, I had to deal with informants and conduct prison visits. I would routinely received raw intelligence concerning vehicle related crime and had to analyse it and then formulate operations, both overt and covert, against known criminals and areas of high crime, to tackle these types of crimes. In December 1996 I was medically retired from the Police Force.