NORTHAMPTON — With his retirement on the horizon, Bob Harrison is trying to solve some of his last puzzles for the Northwestern district attorney’s office.
That’s how the forensic investigator best describes to people what he did: He pieces together puzzles — making sense of bank statements, tracking down defendants, navigating paper trails, working with financial institutions. His mantra is “follow the money.”
“But sometimes, it is a box of stuff that you have to choose to go through, and you have to know you’re not going to get this done today or tomorrow,” Harrison said. “It may take you a month or two from now to try and solve this puzzle and compile everything.”
When Harrison was hired in August 2012 to the then newly formed financial crimes unit, Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan told the Gazette: “Bob’s role is to really light the fire under prosecutors to make sure they are pursuing these cases.”
After four years on the job, and roughly 40 cases later, Harrison is leaving the office to fully enjoy his retirement — taking time to plan various travel excursions, like to Montana, and also spend time with his infant grandchild.
Harrison, a former Easthampton city councilor and chief internal auditor for the the University of Massachusetts system, usually worked two days a week at the DA’s office. He also previously worked with Internal Revenue Service where he investigated financial crimes. Aside from being a certified public accountant in Massachusetts, Harrison also carries a fraud examiner certification.
Harrison’s contributions to the unit have been invaluable, First Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Steven Gagne said, and have helped prosecutors there become more fluent, so to speak, in handling so-called paper cases.
“When you do all that legwork up front, and when you make sure that every dollar you’re alleging someone stole is backed up by documentation, it leaves very little, very few openings or weaknesses for the defense to exploit,” Gagne said. “And that’s really key.”
In 2012, a grant from the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts helped make the role possible by offering up to $10,000 to support Harrison’s part-time duties. The DA’s office announced Jan. 30 it received $25,000, also from the fraud bureau, to bolster its efforts prosecuting insurance fraud cases. A portion of that money will be used to continue to fund the role previously occupied by Harrison. Gagne said he hopes to make the new hire within a month or so.
“In my first 10 years of prosecuting, I never had the benefit of someone like Bob to help out with financial cases,” Gagne said. “These cases, from a prosecutor’s perspective, they’re kind of intimidating. You don’t really know what you need to look for, what records you need to get, how to get them and, once they come in, how to make any sense of them. And the mountain of paper that’s involved in these cases can just be daunting and somewhat intimidating.”
Harrison, whose last official day of work was Dec. 28, will continue to come and go from the DA’s office in the coming weeks to see through several pending cases.
Since August 2012, Harrison’s efforts on the four dozen or so cases he’s worked on have substantiated losses worth $2.9 million of the $5.3 million reported by victims. That means Harrison and prosecutors convinced grand juries to hand up charges related to the loss of $2.9 million of the $5.3 million, he said.
Harrison has traveled as far as Yucca Valley, California, driving through hundreds of miles of desert, he said, to track down a defendant. It was there he established contact with Andrew Wakewood — a man who ultimately admitted to writing $15,000 worth of bad checks in the name of Newman Catholic Center at the University of Massachusetts.
“If you don’t enjoy solving puzzles … it’s probably not a good line of work,” Harrison said. “The satisfaction comes when you are helping a victim. Without question, if it’s an elderly victim, it’s double satisfaction.”
Michael Majchrowicz can be reached at mmajchrowicz@gazettenet.com.