Remarkable Studies | Georgia Southern Magazine

Williamson “There is always a risk that officers may collect evidence that is not in the search warrant. For instance, what happens if an officer enters an office to search for documents like bank ledgers, opens a drawer and finds a bag of marijuana, but that is not in the search warrant? That is contraband and no one has a legal right to have contraband so it can be seized. However, if it’s a gun, we don’t know if the suspect has a legal permit to own it so it can’t be seized because it’s not listed in the search warrant.” – J. Charles Williamson

The legal studies class “White-Collar Crime” is required of all fraud examination minors, an interdisciplinary minor in the College of Business Administration. Williamson
has three decades of experience investigating tax fraud, embezzlement, bribery, money laundering and public corruption cases. Prior to joining the Georgia Southern faculty in 2011, he was Special Agent in Charge of the Tax Fraud Investigations Division of the State of New Mexico and taught a tax course as an adjunct faculty member at the University of New Mexico.

Williamson began considering teaching full time and, as he neared retirement, said, “An opportunity came up at Georgia Southern to join the faculty teaching in the forensic accounting /fraud examination area as well as teaching tax.”

Notable Case

While a special agent in charge of the Tax Fraud Investigations Division of the State of New Mexico, Williamson recalls:

“I was involved in a case in Albuquerque that has been on ‘Dateline NBC’ and several other news magazine shows. It involved Ellen Snyder, who killed her husband, Mike Snyder, in January 2002. I became involved when we discovered that state tax returns had been filed in the name of Mike Snyder several years after Ellen had claimed that he was ‘missing’. The refunds claimed on the returns were deposited in Ellen’s bank accounts. After years of her insistence that he was alive, Ellen finally admitted (in 2010) shooting Mike in the back three times and burying him in the backyard.”