Steve Edwards

Monte Bello Lodge #10
Inner Guard Alabama Grand Lodge
Knights of Pythias

In December 2017 Brother Steve Edwards became a member of the Knights of Pythias, Monte Bello Lodge #10 in Florence, Alabama. In June 2018 Edwards was elected by the members of the Grand Lodge to serve as the Inner Guard.

Distinguished Carrier

Edwards was an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) between 1973 and 2005. He retired as the Special Agent in Charge of the Financial Investigations Unit/Computer Crimes Unit and Commander of the Georgia Internet Crimes against Children Task Force in April 2005. Edwards spent the last 19 years of his career in financial investigations, health care fraud, crimes against children and computer crime investigations. In the first 13 years of his career, he worked as a narcotics investigator, regional Special Agent, and polygraph examiner. Edwards is certified and trained as a polygraph examiner, fraud examiner, information forensic investigator, police officer, police instructor, and police manager. He is also trained and experienced in forensic computer data recovery. Edwards has been recognized by state courts and federal courts as an expert in polygraph, money laundering, and computer forensics. He has lectured both nationally and internationally on financial crimes, money laundering, identity theft/fraud, computer crimes, computer forensics, and Internet crimes against children. He has written numerous articles on these subjects and has edited the works of other authors before their publication. He testified in 2003 before the Congress about the use of Social Security numbers in Identity Fraud Crime.

Edwards served on several boards as a director including

• The National White Collar Crime Center

• The Department of Justice’s Internet Crimes Against Children

• The Department of Justice Cybercrime Training Partnership

• The FBI Atlanta InfraGard

• The Georgia Cybercrime Task Force

• Kennesaw State University’s Southeastern Cybercrime Training Institute

• The Georgia Stop Identity Theft Group.

He has had guest appearances on numerous news shows including

• CNN

• C-Span

• local area television and radio stations

• The Gravedigger, a syndicated show on the Christian Network

Edwards has received several National Awards for his efforts

• The Mike Burns Award from the National White Collar Crime Center

• Recognition from former FBI Director Robert Muller for Outstanding Public Service

• Recognition from the Treasury Department for his efforts as both an instructor and as the state coordinator for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Section

• Recognition from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

• The Internet Crimes Against Children for his efforts in protecting children

• The GBI Director’s Award and Deputy’s Award for Investigation of the Year.

Family

In 2014 Brother Edwards and his wife decided to move to Florence, Alabama. He and his wife have two children and four grandchildren. Basically, Edwards is now in the retirement mode providing assistance to his local and Grand lodges and spending time with his family and grandchildren as much as he possibly can.

Continued Service to the Community After Retirement

After retiring from the GBI Edwards along with his wife Nita opened their own business known as SNS Forensic Examinations, Training and Evaluation working for entities such as Fox Valley Technical College, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the University of Tennessee, Martin Lockheed, Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office, and several other clients including attorneys and other Universities. In this role, he assisted in the development of training, facilitating training, and evaluating training and law enforcement programs. Edwards also assisted in the search and rescue of missing children and cold case investigations involving missing children and adults. He also assisted in identifying unidentified human remains.

Since moving to Florence Edwards has assisted in training for law enforcement in-service classes at the University of North Alabama on a minimal basis. He has also provided classes to school age about the dangers on the Internet and ways they can avoid them and how DNA is used in criminal investigations.