Dr. Jeff Wasel holds Masters and Ph.D degrees from the London School of Economics (LSE), and a BSc in Management (Hons) from St. Mary’s College of California. He is an expert in financial crime and related criminal behaviors, risk, and compliance.
As a researcher within the LSE’s Information Systems Innovation Group, he was one of the earliest, post-9/11 investigators to examine the use of behavioral profiling, data mining and data analytics, in uncovering, understanding, and disrupting the use of money laundering, hawala, and other terrorism-related financial networks, as well as those of trans-national criminal organizations (TCOs).
Additionally, Dr. Wasel and his LSE colleagues contributed to an EU-sponsored, multi-year, multi-disciplinary, profiling, data privacy and data protection research initiative, the Future of Identity in the Information Society, (FIDIS). Outcomes from the FIDIS initiative, made a significant contribution to the enactment of the robust, EU-wide data protection statutes now in place, and recently used so effectively by Hungarian authorities against Scientology in Hungary.
Currently, Dr. Wasel is an independent consultant and author, whose work involves researching finance irregularities in New Religious Movements, (NRMs), financial crime in general, change management, as well as corporate and government risk, compliance, and governance. He also consults in the area of healthcare informatics and strategy. Prior to academia, Dr. Wasel held various sales and consulting management positions in high tech, and also served 13 years in Marines, both regular and reserves, in the infantry, reconnaissance, small arms, and intelligence fields. He is married with one daughter, and lives in Northern California.