MARK RIORDAN, PRINCIPAL AND CO-FOUNDER
Lieutenant Mark Riordan served almost 32 years with the Texas Department of Public Safety and retired January 31, 2007. Originally assigned to the Executive Security detachment where he provided personal protection services to department and elected government officials, Mark Riordan transferred as a State Trooper to the Texas Highway Patrol Service and patrolled for many years in rural and urban areas of Texas. During his tenure as a State Trooper, Mark Riordan also worked in the Safety Education Service where he honed his public speaking skills and acted as the media representative for his Department during numerous historic but tragic events.
Promoting to the Criminal Intelligence Service in 1994, Sergeant Investigator Riordan was stationed in Houston and Austin. In 1996, computer and Internet-based crime was becoming prevalent and Sergeant Riordan was assigned to the first team of trained computer forensic investigators for the Texas state police.
In 1997, Sergeant Riordan was promoted to Lieutenant and was assigned to lead a sub-district of criminal and intelligence investigators in Houston, as well as originally co-leading his Service's "Computer, Information Technology, and Electronic Crime" (CITEC) unit.
During his tenure in the Criminal Intelligence Service (briefly renamed the Special Crimes Service for several years), Lieutenant Riordan served with distinction on several committees and aided in streamlining and modernizing Department policy and procedures. He was involved in writing his Department's "Other Employment" policy, performance evaluation policy, computer crime investigations policy, Criminal Law Enforcement Reporting and Information System policy, and the Criminal Intelligence Service's policy and procedures manual. Mark Riordan also served with others as an integral part of redesigning and deploying his agency's upgrade to digital intelligence files.
As a computer forensics expert, Lieutenant Riordan served as the Charter President of the High Technology Crime Investigation Association, Austin Chapter, and the Charter 1st Vice-President and later President of the same Association's Texas Gulf Coast Chapter. Due to his Internet crime investigative expertise, Lieutenant Riordan was assigned as a member to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Scientific Working Group on Illicit Business Records Analysis in Washington, DC. Lieutenant Riordan provided computer and Internet crime training for two years consecutively at the California Department of Justice Annual Conference as well as for the national Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit's Annual Conference in San Diego. Additionally, Lieutenant Riordan has provided computer and Internet crime training seminars for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) Lathe Gambit conferences in Seville, Spain and Glasgow, Scotland as well as instructed officers of the Polish national law enforcement command staff during the Lathe Gambit seminar in Warsaw, Poland. Lieutenant Riordan also worked as a part-time instructor for Guidance Software at their Pasadena, California office, teaching the use of Encase®, their premier forensics software product, to law enforcement and civilian experts.
One of Lieutenant Riordan's most thrilling and personally satisfying assignments has been as a member of the Sheriffs' Association of Texas, Cold Case Review Team, formerly named the Major Crimes Assessment Committee. Having served on the team for more than a dozen years and still currently participating, Lieutenant Riordan, along with a distinguished panel of some of the most experienced and successful criminal investigators in the State of Texas from local, county, and state law enforcement agencies, meet and work on a quarterly basis for two or three days at a time, when needed, to provide assistance with unsolved homicides and missing person cases from throughout Texas and other States.
In 2006, Lieutenant Riordan was chosen to lead a team of Department investigators in their due diligence investigation of the merger between a multi-billion dollar American company awarded a state contract and a multi-billion dollar Italian company. This complex investigation involved several months of work from as many as eight investigators and support personnel, many dozens of interviews with many of those conducted with the assistance of an interpreter, international travel, and testimony in public hearings and legislative subcommittees, all under the watchful eye of the news media.
Throughout his career, Lieutenant Riordan has interviewed thousands of witnesses, victims and criminal suspects. Lieutenant Riordan knows that the single most important "skill set" of an investigator, no matter what their law enforcement specialty may be, is interviewing and interrogating. Lieutenant Riordan believes that he can continue to contribute to the safety of the citizens of the world by teaching his interviewing and interrogation skills to law enforcement and private sector professionals.
One of the most interesting fields of endeavor that Lieutenant Riordan has entered into is in the use of Forensic Hypnosis to refresh the memory of crime victims and witnesses. Lieutenant Riordan currently serves as the 2008-2009 President of the Texas Association for Investigative Hypnosis, and has served in the past as Vice-President, Secretary and Central Region Director. Lieutenant Riordan trained under the mentoring eye of Texas Department of Public Safety Inspector Marx Howell (Retired), the recognized worldwide authority on Forensic Hypnosis.
Lieutenant Riordan holds his Master Peace Officer's Certificate, Forensic Hypnosis Certificate and Instructor's Certificate from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. Lieutenant Riordan has been certified by the International Association of Computer Investigative Specialists (IACIS) as a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner (CFCE) and as an Encase® Certified Examiner (EnCE) through Guidance Software. Lieutenant Riordan holds his Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership through Mountain State University.
After almost 32 years of distinguished public service to the citizens of Texas, Lieutenant Riordan retired in 2007 and opened a Houston-based private and corporate investigations and security consulting company. Operating as Riordan Investigations, Inc., Mark Riordan is committed to serving his clients with proven integrity, determination, and discretion.
