Founder & Chief Executive Officer

William Brown

William (Wim) Brown is a recently retired US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent with 26-years of law enforcement experience. He specialized in targeting transnational organized criminal networks involved in drug, weapons, and wildlife trafficking, narco-terrorism, financial crimes, and other illicit activities. These investigations spanned Africa, Central and South America, Europe, Asia and the USA. For the last ten years he has established and mentored an elite, vetted unit in East Africa that conducted numerous investigations, one of which dismantled a major international drug and wildlife trafficking network. Wim is an accomplished investigator, small-team leader, and a committed law enforcement officer. As Founder and CEO of FCS, he is focused on reducing organized wildlife trafficking.

Chief Financial Officer

Rob Pilkington

Rob Pilkington is a qualified Chartered Accountant (South Africa) with 29 years of experience in senior financial and risk management. After 10 years with Ernst & Young, he joined the South African subsidiary of Diageo PLC, a global leader in beverage alcohol where he gained over 20 years of experience in financial controllership, risk management, and strategy. Specifically, he served as the Finance Director for the listed business in Ghana, Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited. During Rob’s many years of working in the African continent, he developed a keen interest in wildlife and now leads Focused Conservation’s financial management team.

Director of Investigations

Eric Stouch

Eric is a retired US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent with over 28 years of law enforcement experience.  Eric spent a majority of his career assigned to a highly specialized unit at DEA’s Special Operations Division and was responsible for investigating and bringing to justice the most dangerous, and the most violent transnational criminal networks. Eric has extensive experience with the leadership and management of multi-agency teams focused on proactive high impact international law enforcement investigations and recognizes the convergence of illicit wildlife trafficking with many other organized criminal networks.  Eric has a passion to apply his skill set to collectively take up arms against the atrocious crimes of illicit wildlife trafficking. 

Director of Special Wildlife Crime Units

Robert Asbury

With a 35-year career in law enforcement, most recently with the UK National Crime Agency.  Mr. Rob Asbury has vast experience in carrying out complex investigations both nationally and internationally, managing intelligence and risk at the highest levels including threats to national security and threats to life. Mr. Asbury successfully monitored, managed, and mitigated high risk programs in hostile environments around the world, resulting in the delivery of innovative international investigative cooperation. He’s led international and multinational investigations resulting in record drug seizures in Kenya and Tanzania and the arrest and conviction of pedophiles and fugitives wanted for murder following manhunts across Africa. He was also responsible for creating and initiating the Transnational Organized Crime Unit concept that now exists across a number of African countries that takes the fight to organized crime. Currently, Mr. Asbury is the Director of Special Wildlife Crime Units and is responsible for managing the Crime Units in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and Liberia.   These units lead the fight against wildlife traffickers in the regions and are the model for future units across Africa.

Special Wildlife Crime Units

Our Technical Advisors & Wildlife Crime Investigators support the management of trusted and successful Wildlife Crime Units currently in based on Uganda, Kenya, Liberia and Nigeria.

Director of Training

Ron Oberhleman

Ron is a retired US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent with over 25 years of law enforcement experience. Additionally, he is a respected law enforcement & military firearms and tactical instructor. A leader in the development, design and execution of training programs, he distills complex concepts into easily understood and compelling presentations and drills. As a former Weapons/Communications Sergeant and Sniper in the U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group (Green Berets) who served in Central and South America, Ron has exceptional interpersonal skills and a proven leadership approach that emphasizes genuine understanding and respect for his trainees.

Director of Digital Evidence Programs

Ed Lewis

Edward Lewis retired from a 28-year law enforcement career in 2018 and for the  last 16 years prior to retirement, Ed was a Special Agent with the US Fish & Wildlife  Service.  

Ed has been actively involved in the field of cybercrime for over 20 years, including extensive training and experience performing digital evidence recovery,  digital forensic analysis, establishing a cybercrime training curriculum, providing  cybercrime instruction both domestically and internationally, and establishing/managing a digital evidence laboratory.  

When Ed retired, he was the Special Agent in Charge/Laboratory Director for the  USFWS Digital Evidence Lab and Technical Surveillance Program, which he  established and managed for over 9 years. 

Since his retirement, Edward has been the contracted Program Manager for the  “Wildlife Trafficking Cybercrime Program” operating under the direction of the US  Fish & Wildlife Service.  

Ed is also a Project Coordinator and Instructor/Mentor for the US Department of the Interior’s “Digital Evidence Exploitation Specialist Program”, working to  establish an expert level of Digital Evidence capability within Counter Wildlife  Trafficking Units in Africa and Latin America.

Senior Advisor - Wildlife Trafficking Programs

Tim Santel

Timothy Santel grew up in a rural Midwestern US town and spent much of his childhood in the woods where he developed an overwhelming curiosity and passion for nature and conservation.  Shortly after receiving his university degree in Wildlife Ecology, Tim began a lengthy 32-year career with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service working as a Wildlife Inspector, Wildlife Biologist, and for the last 28 years before retirement, a Special Agent for the FWS-Office of Law Enforcement.  

Throughout his law enforcement career, Tim was actively involved in conducting large-scale undercover wildlife trafficking operations, including some of the largest criminal investigations ever conducted in the history of the Fish and Wildlife Service.   Investigations such as Operation Snow Plow, which documented the gruesome killing of big cats such as tigers, lions, leopards, and cougars in cages for their body parts.  Operation Crash which resulted in nearly 50 prosecutions globally for trafficking in rhino horns and elephant ivory, and the covert operations Tim led helped raise global awareness of the issue of international wildlife trafficking. 

As the Special Agent in Charge of the FWS-Special Investigations Unit, Tim developed and oversaw a team of elite covert federal agents tasked with investigating transnational criminal organizations that were illegally trafficking wildlife globally.  Tim managed and supervised several high-profile investigations such as Operation Apex involving international shark fin trafficking, money laundering, and narcotics, and Operation Manhattan, which involved rhino horn and heroin trafficking by the Kromah syndicate in Africa.

In recognition of his efforts, Tim received numerous awards throughout his career including the prestigious Guy Bradley Award; Samuel J. Heyman Service to America medal; North American Wildlife Officer of the Year; Midwest Wildlife Officer of the Year, Interior Department Meritorious Service Award; US Department Of Justice Commendations of Excellence Awards, etc.

Tim has been actively involved in international wildlife training for over 20 years, having built and delivered training programs in Europe, Africa, and Asia.  Since retirement, Tim has been working in a contracting role as a Project Coordinator and International Instructor for the U.S. Government-funded international program “Wildlife Seizure Training Program” serving Africa and Asia.

Tim is currently the Senior Advisor on International Wildlife Trafficking programs for the non-profit organization – Focused Conservation.

Senior Analyst

Dr Patricia Raxter

Tricia Raxter serves as the Senior Intelligence Analyst for United for Wildlife. Before coming to UfW in 2020, Tricia served as an intelligence analyst with the United States government for more than a decade.  She was awarded her Doctor of Philosophy in International Studies from Old Dominion University in 2015.

Technical Advisors

In addition to providing technical and operational support to the Units, our technical advisors work closely with mandated Government and NGO partners to manage a proactive team of investigators to tackle the threat of illegal wildlife trafficking in the host country as well as supporting multinational investigations in wildlife trafficking.  

Our TAs coordinate and conduct Counter Wildlife Trafficking(CWT) training, provide investigative and intelligence support, and convene trusted and mandated in-country and international CWT stakeholders.  This involves working complex wildlife crime investigations, advising on routine practices of seizing evidence, report writing, surveillance, source handling, analysis, and evidence exploitation as well as coordinating with domestic, regional, and international partners involved in the investigation of illicit wildlife trafficking. 

Our TAs are recently retired law enforcement personnel each with over 30 years of working nationally and internationally against the highest echelons of criminality.  They are also subject matter experts who understand the complexities of transnational crime each with decades of specialized CWT operational and technical experience with several international governmental and non-governmental organisations.  They have geographical expertise in all of the seven continents with a unique understanding of how to work with governmental agencies to bring wildlife traffickers to justice.

Our TAs have decades of experience building investigations and assisting numerous operations that have brought illegal traffickers to justice.  Some of these high-profile cases include:   

• KROMAH Network conspired to transport, distribute, sell, and smuggle approximately 190 kilograms of rhinoceros horn and approximately 10 tons of elephant ivory from or involving various countries in East Africa, including Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, and Tanzania, to buyers located in the United States and across Southeast Asia.
  Wildlife Trafficker From Uganda Sentenced To 63 Months For Large-Scale Trafficking Of Rhinoceros Horns And Elephant Ivory

• ‘Lin-Zhang’ criminal network in Malawi in 2018-2020. resulted in the conviction of 14 people for wildlife trafficking offences Malawi Court Hands Lengthy Prison Term to Chinese Wildlife Trafficker 

• Op Bilker, a seizure of 500kgs of Cocaine recovered from a Private Charter Jet at Farnborough Airport  Farnborough Airport Cocaine:  Four Found Guilty of Smuggling

• Op Lourdes a seizure of 13.4 tonnes of cocaine in Northern Colombia Colombia Reports A Historic Seizure Of Cocaine: More Than 13 Tons

• Op Lapworth transatlantic conspiracy to bring firearms from US to West Yorkshire, England. Bradford Based Ring Imported Weapons from United States

Investigative Liaisons

In South Africa, FCS currently employs two experienced, trusted and credentialed ILs who have extensive backgrounds and capabilities in law enforcement, wildlife investigations,  intelligence gathering and sharing, and transnational IWT. Our ILs are South African and both have decades of practical experience through their work with SA HAWKS and the SA Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment. Over the past several months, FCS successfully built and actioned several complex transnational investigations into organized wildlife tracking networks.

Digital Evidence Exploitation (DEES) Subject Matter Expert

Mark Sletto

Mark Sletto retired in April 2022 from a 23-year federal law enforcement career where he served as a Special Agent with the US Secret Service and most recently with the US Fish & Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement Digital Evidence Recovery and Technical Support Unit in Jacksonville, Florida. Mark worked as a digital evidence forensic examiner, responsible for acquiring and analyzing digital evidence in support of worldwide investigations conducted by the US Fish & Wildlife.

Mark began working in digital forensics in 2001 when he completed the Basic Computer Evidence Recovery Training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy in Glynco, Georgia. Mark continued to be actively involved in digital forensics by attending additional training, performing digital evidence recovery and analysis, and developing training curriculum and instructing. Mark has earned multiple certifications, including the IACIS Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Cellebrite Certified Mobile Examiner, Magnet Certified Forensic Examiner, and others related to digital forensics.

Mark is currently contracted as a Senior Instructor / Subject Matter Expert with Focused Conservation working for the Department of Interior’s “Digital Evidence Exploitation Specialist Program”. This program is designed to establish expert level of digital evidence capability with Counter Wildlife Trafficking Units in Africa and Latin America.

Digital Evidence Exploitation (DEES) Subject Matter Expert

Willie Fortuno

Willie Fortuño retired in January of 2021, after serving more than 42 years in U.S. federal law enforcement.  During his last 20 years, he founded and directed the National Computer Forensics Laboratory of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division (CID). Prior to joining EPA CID, he served as a Senior Special Agent with the US Secret Service, investigating cybercrimes and conducting computer forensics.

Willie holds two professional certifications with the US National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C); Certified Cyber Crime Examiner and Certified Cyber Crime Investigator.  

Since his retirement he served as a contract senior instructor in the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Virtual Wildlife Training Cybercrime Program, providing training for multiple countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. 

Willie currently serves as a Project Coordinator and Instructor/Mentor for the US Department of the Interior’s “Digital Evidence Exploitation Specialist Program”, working to train and mentor participants in Counter Wildlife Trafficking Units in Africa and Latin America, in topics such as digital forensics, internet investigations and open source intelligence.