For more than 30 years, Melissa Maranville, PhD has followed offenders wherever they go: from paper records and physical surveillance to the dark web, cryptocurrency, and AI.

As the founder and CEO of DeVille & Associates and DeVille Academy, Melissa Maranville is a forensic investigative consultant, law enforcement trainer, professor of psychology, researcher, author, and speaker specializing in child exploitation, victimology, criminology, and criminal forensics. She has trained local, state, and federal law enforcement, ICAC investigators, DAs’ offices, and legal teams in OSINT, dark web, and crypto investigations.

Her doctoral research on sex offender registry legislation is the foundation of her upcoming book, When Monitoring Fails: The Sex Offender Registry and False Sense of Safety.

In this interview, Melissa Maranville shares what she has learned from decades of investigating offenders and training investigators, including:

• What’s at the heart of effective OSINT investigations
• Her research into the sex offender registry and the prevention of child exploitation
• How crypto has changed the nature and scope of investigations
• Why preservation and verification matter more than ever in the age of AI
• How investigators can protect their mental health in this field
• The most important elements investigators and law enforcement need to focus on during a case

Read the interview or watch the video below for Melissa Maranville’s insight on OSINT & criminology and what investigators need to prepare for next.

Editor’s Notes: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Please also be advised this interview discusses child sexual exploitation and abuse. Take care of yourself.

Kyla Sims: Today, I'm here with Melissa Maranville, the founder and CEO of DeVille & Associates and DeVille Academy. She's a forensic investigative consultant, law enforcement trainer, professor of psychology, researcher, author, and speaker specializing in sex crimes, victimology, criminology, and criminal forensics. Thank you for being here with me today. You have an incredible background. Can you take us through your career journey?

Melissa Maranville: Well, first of all, thank you, Kyla, for having me. Let's see, where do I begin? My career has evolved over more than 30 years across criminal justice, investigations, forensics, higher education, and criminal psychology and forensic psychology.

A significant portion of my work has focused on sexual offending, child exploitation, human trafficking, and now technology-facilitated crime. I've just kind of grown with the field over the many, many years. As offenders have increasingly evolved over time, my work has followed them. For well over 30 years, I was investigating offenders and even studying the behaviors behind their motivations, even when we didn't have high technology like we do today. That ultimately led me deeper into sociology, investigations, open source intelligence, even the dark web and cryptocurrency, which is a lot of my work, and leaked data, and of course digital evidence.

Kyla: There's a lot of different pieces to the work that you do. What is the biggest misconception that people have about your work?

Melissa Maranville: I would say the biggest misconception people have about the work I do is probably that OSINT means Googling somebody or scrolling through social media. I don't think they really understand the complexity behind this work. When we're talking about OSINT, we're talking about tools.

That's not the investigation. The real work is finding relationships between pieces of information, verifying what you find, documenting the methodology that I used, and preserving the information appropriately. I think another misconception is that because something is made publicly available, it automatically becomes good evidence, and it doesn't. Like I said, it's almost like working a complex puzzle. We have to be able to find something that's gonna be meaningful and something that we can actually preserve and use as proof. Evidence.

Kyla: So most of your career has been spent focused on child exploitation, and most recently you've earned a PhD in psychology. Your dissertation focuses on sex offender registry legislation. Can you tell us about that research?

Melissa Maranville: Oh, boy. Without giving it away? The dissertation is actually placed on hold, other than the title, abstract, and author. The reason I did that was because I have a book coming out, and I wanted to be the first to take my research and publish it.

So if anybody's looking for it, that's why they can't find it. It will be officially released, I believe, January, February. Coming soon, actually. My dissertation for my PhD actually grew out of something I had been questioning professionally for many years. We have built an enormous sex offender registry, and the public often interprets that registry as a map of people they primarily need to fear.

My concern is that it creates a false sense of safety. Sexual offending is far more complicated than, say, dots on a map. My research looked at the relationship between legislation, public perception, psychology, and actual public safety. I interviewed law enforcement officers across the nation: those that actually investigate sex crimes, investigate sex offenders, monitor the registry, et cetera.

I was particularly interested in whether resources are being directed towards strategies that prevent victimization rather than simply monitoring individuals after a crime has already occurred. Now, I want to say for the record, I am completely supportive of the sex offender registry.

But I do believe that the sex offender registry is just one tool in our child protection toolkit. That research has also become the foundation for my book that's coming out next month, titled When Monitoring Fails: The Sex Offender Registry and False Sense of Safety.

Kyla: It sounds like the registry is important for monitoring, but it doesn't stop things before they happen.

Melissa Maranville: Yeah, exactly. And part of that research, without giving away everything, 'cause I do want people to read my book, is that people tend to turn a blind eye toward sex offenders that primarily abuse children, and those are people within the homes.

Those are people who have access to children, whether it's school teachers, churches, neighbors, family members, et cetera. The sex offender registry tends to put blinders on individuals, as in: if a sex offender lives two streets away, I'm not gonna let little Becky ride her bicycle two streets away, but my neighbor is perfectly safe.

It's a misconception, and we need to change that to better educate the public on what the real dangers are. Yes, we need to be aware of the predators, the pedophiles that live two streets away, absolutely, and I support the registry for that.

But we also need to educate the public on what to look for. We need to focus on prevention.

Kyla: So if you had a magic wand, what would you change about the system?

Melissa Maranville: Oh, that's a great question. I would move away from treating everyone as though they present exactly the same type or the same level of risk. I would change the system to where not every offender is treated the same.

They are all different. Sexual offending is extremely heterogeneous. Based on motivation, it could be victim selection, it could be behavior, treatment needs, and risk. They all vary considerably across the board. I would also like to see a much more individualized, evidence-based system that allows us to direct resources toward the actual risk, and I would dramatically increase our focus on prevention.

Monitoring after conviction has a role, and it's great, and it's needed. But it cannot become our definition of prevention.

“Monitoring after conviction has a role. But it cannot become our definition of prevention.”

Kyla: That makes perfect sense. If you had infinite time and energy to look into more of this work, do more of this research, or maybe something you hope other people look into, what else do we need to look at in this system?

Melissa Maranville: Oh, yes. My research for my doctorate took about six years, on and off, to complete and to completely exhaust all the data and the research. One of the things I found is that there's a gap when it comes to researching sex offenders, sex offender behavior, and online behavior and digital technology. When we look at psychology, criminology, cyber crime, and digital forensics, these are often studied separately, even though offenders don't operate within those academic boundaries. We need to be able to look at this as a whole. We need to be able to pull it all together and be able to understand offending.

I want to understand how offenders behave across platforms, how grooming changes online, what causes movement between these different digital environments, how networks form across the web, and how technology actually affects that opportunity. I think AI — if I can mention AI, I don't wanna go down the rabbit hole — but AI is gonna become an enormous part of this discussion. I can already see it happening. Part of my doctorate is also AI, algorithms, and heuristics, so I've already been working on this side of the conversation. So yeah, AI is changing all of that. And technology moves much faster than legislation and academic research.

So we have to become much better at studying behavior while those changes are actually happening.

Kyla: It sounds like there's a lot of work to be done.

Melissa Maranville: Oh, yes, there is. And I need some protégés. I need some folks who are willing to learn, and let me put them to work.

Kyla: You're in such a unique position, being in the role that you're in for 30 years. You saw the internet start to gain speed, everybody getting on there, and it's really changed the way that these crimes are committed. So I'm really curious about your perspective on OSINT changing over the course of your career, and the role that things like crypto and blockchain play in trafficking today.

Melissa Maranville: Oh, wow. That's also a great question. The sheer volume of information has changed dramatically.

Years ago, investigations depended much more heavily on records, interviews, physical surveillance. Old school stuff. Today, one person may leave thousands of digital traces. I think that's why it's so important that we continue to train our local, state, and federal agents, and I do a lot of that work, too.

More information does not necessarily make investigations easier. I think today's investigators need to be educated and trained more on tech because they are dealing with volume, attribution, verification, preservation, deleted content, changing usernames. An offender has been shown in research to have 25, 30 different usernames. How do we connect all of that information, all that data, together? We also know identities spread across multiple platforms. I think this is also why preservation has become so important in my training and my research.

To be honest, I have recommended Pagefreezer in my social media and OSINT investigative courses to local, state, and federal law enforcement, because investigators need to think about preserving online evidence when they find it. That is so important because it can change later on.

“I have recommended Pagefreezer in my social media and OSINT investigative courses to local, state, and federal law enforcement, because investigators need to think about preserving online evidence when they find it.”

We need to be able to preserve that, hang onto it, and be able to add to it as we come across other identifiers for particular offenders. Not months later when someone asks them to prove what was there. We need to be able to build upon it and expand it.

Crypto has changed the complete financial landscape of these offenders, but it did not change the fundamental investigative principle, I will say. Before blockchain, we followed cash, bank records, credit cards, wire transfers, and other financial systems like we always have, following KYC and AML laws.

But today, crypto has changed that, particularly with anonymous exchanges, those exchanges that do not collect KYC or AML identifiers. That makes it much more challenging. I think there's a misconception that cryptocurrency automatically makes someone invisible. When they use the word anonymity, I always use the word pseudo-anonymity, because I don't believe anything is fully anonymous. They have to tie a username, tie an identity, or something somewhere across the blockchain. By following date and timestamps and the amount — say, if we were talking about Bitcoin, the amount of Bitcoin that's actually being transacted back and forth — we can now identify individuals, but it's gonna be based on digital behavior.

I know people often cringe when I say that, but there is a digital behavior. What's interesting about blockchain is that those transactions leave a persistent record in the blockchain. It's forever dated, timed, and stamped. You cannot go back in time and change it. So with that being said, it creates a digital footprint for us to be able to follow.

I think that's become very beneficial, but of course much more challenging. Law enforcement needs to be trained and educated on these different types of technology. So I teach investigators to connect wallet addresses with usernames, emails, different exchanges, devices, transactions, associates, even other intelligence. Basically, the technology changed, but the investigative principle did not change. We just have to learn the new tech that's coming along with it.

“The technology changed, but the investigative principle did not.”

Kyla: That's so fair. With all of this new tech, I'm curious, what is the first thing that you're doing in your investigations when you first get started and you get a case?

Melissa Maranville: Oh, you want me to give up my secrets?

Kyla: Yes. You gotta tell me all your secrets. Please.

Melissa Maranville: She's like, "Please." The first step is to slow down and think about it. Although I do kind of have a methodology, not every case is the same, particularly when it comes to digital activity and digital footprints. It's not all the same. Depending on what data point I have, that's really going to decide where I begin. If I have, for example, an email address, my first step most likely is I'm gonna go to leaked data and start looking to see if there's any leaked data in association with this email address.

I can also hopefully pull the passwords that come along with it. Now, of course, not passwords so I can go into the account. I would never do that, and nor should anybody else. I am looking for that behavioral footprint. For example, if I can locate an email address and I can locate a backup email address to that email address, and both email addresses have the same password, that strengthens my argument. So I look for that, and that's very important.

The next thing, say for example, I have a username. I would start out with identification software where I can look up different usernames and try to connect email addresses. Then of course, once I get the email addresses, I'm going back to leaked data to see what I can find.

It takes time. The first step, again, is to slow down and have patience. But once you start working with this data, you can actually start seeing the patterns that it's creating. And of course, if I have a wallet address, the first place I'm going is the proprietary crypto software that I use. That is where I'm gonna see if I can start tracking that wallet address to an exchange that would collect, say, KYC or AML data.

So it really does vary. It really does depend.

Kyla: We talked a little bit about evidence preservation — shout out to Pagefreezer, WebPreserver — but a lot of the investigators I've talked to have said they've been in that situation where they've seen the evidence. They're like, "Great, I'll come back later to catch it. Oh, no, it's all gone." So I'm curious, do you have cases where evidence was there but wasn't preserved properly or disappeared? And what is the impact of that?

Melissa Maranville: I learned this the hard way years ago. I was going through the same thing, and I think we all do when we first start in this field. I have law enforcement officers that will call me or text me and say, "Melissa, I saw it. It was there, and now it's gone." There's a lot of OSINT tools that we can use to try to see if a bot has captured it and saved it in the cloud somewhere.

But this happens far more than I would like to admit. Digital evidence is fragile. Posts get deleted, accounts disappear, comments are edited. Then someone says, "But I saw it." Knowing that something existed and being able to demonstrate that it existed are two very different things.

“Knowing that something existed and being able to demonstrate that it existed are two very different things.”

We have to be able to preserve that evidence, and we need to be able to preserve it every time it changes or disappears or comes back or pops up somewhere else, et cetera. Then over time, as we collect that data and preserve that data, we can go back and build the case out based on the data that's continuing to expand. It will expand depending on the experience of the offender that you're investigating, or even the age [of the account]. If someone has had their account for 5 or 10 years, we're gonna be able to collect a lot more digital evidence compared to if someone has only had an account for one year. They may or may not have a lot of digital footprints out there, which makes it much more challenging.

So I keep saying, it's so important that we preserve the data, hang on to it, and just keep building and expanding the case out based on that data.

Kyla: That makes sense. We talked a little bit about AI before, but I wanna come back to it, because I feel like you can't talk about the internet and not talk about AI.

Melissa Maranville: Not today.

Kyla: Not today, no. So I'm very curious how AI-generated content is creating challenges from an evidence standpoint. Like proving something is real, because it's very easy now to create evidence that looks very real.

Melissa Maranville: That is so true. AI makes verification and provenance much more important.

We can no longer automatically assume that a photograph, a voice recording, a video, a document, or even messages were created in the way they appear to have been created. We can no longer take it at face value. I think investigators need to ask where something originated, when it first appeared, whether an original of this content that we're looking at actually exists, and what metadata is available, if any.

That's another Pandora's box we're opening, because now a lot of these platforms are stripping data before it's actually uploaded, and that's also challenging. We also need to be able to identify whether earlier copies actually existed somewhere down that pipeline.

In saying this, I would also caution investigators against thinking an AI detector alone solves that problem, because AI can make mistakes. I believe that's coming in the future. Proprietary software is being created and developed.

So I think the answer to synthetic evidence is a stronger investigative methodology of some sort.

Kyla: When I was researching you for this, I saw that you did some training for law enforcement on intellectual property and digital crimes in 2019, which in my mind is not that long ago, but I guess it's a while ago. But it was pre the big AI boom, so I'm really curious: if you were to teach that course again, how are you training people for this AI world?

Melissa Maranville: So that's still out there, huh? That was before AI actually boomed, on IP theft investigations. I think for that, I was actually focusing on crypto and dark web investigations at that time. I would still teach the fundamentals. I would still teach the domains, infrastructure, identities, accounts, financial flows, and metadata. But now I would add an entire layer involving synthetic media. AI can generate convincing product images, even advertisements.

I've seen videos, and of course in the field where I train a lot of ICAC, they're actually seeing a lot of synthetic CSAM. So I think today's investigator has to question authenticity much earlier in the process.

We just can't take anything at face value. Even in my area of expertise, when it comes to training ICAC, sex offenders, and unfortunately CSAM, when they come across the content — yes, of course, if someone is holding that content, that's gonna be based on state laws and how the state wants to prosecute that individual, whether that content is synthetic or real.

I can think about certain state laws where I've trained, and some states, most states, are actually treating even synthetic CSAM as illegal content, as it should be. We can never justify any type of synthetic, AI-generated CSAM content as not damaging, because it is.

It's absolutely damaging. But I can absolutely foresee that eventually, down the road, there are gonna be attorneys that begin to challenge that in defending some of these offenders and trying to change laws.

So I think it's really important that we are 10 steps ahead, able to think down the pipeline, look at the future, and see where it is that we need to tighten up today. So I would definitely now train investigators to question authenticity much earlier in the process, and to gain access to some of the proprietary software that's being developed now, where they can upload synthetic content, or content in general, to determine if it's synthetic or legitimate, and see if they can even pull any metadata from that.

Kyla: On that note, I wanna talk a little bit about mental health and resilience, because obviously CSAM, child exploitation: horrible, nasty stuff nobody wants to think about. You've also taught about mass fatality events and even terrorism. I don't wanna go too deep into those topics specifically. I don't wanna depress anybody too much.

But I do wanna talk about the reception to those courses, because nobody wants to think about this stuff. Nobody wants to actually try on what it would be like to investigate these things. And I think that in itself is a hurdle to doing important work that needs to be done. That's why I admire you so much, and I'm so grateful that you're doing the work that you do, because it's nasty stuff and nobody wants to do it, but it has to get done if we're gonna protect people.

So I'm really curious about the people who are taking these courses and the people that you're training on this stuff. What is their reaction? What surprises them? What surprises you about them? And how do you keep yourself healthy in that environment?

Melissa Maranville: Those are great questions, and I'm so glad you brought up mental health and resilience, because it's so important. Even before I present at conferences, I have a warning that says, of course, I would never show content or anything like that. But we do come across dark web marketplaces — an entire marketplace of images of particularly horrible circumstances.

Of course, the proprietary software I use blurs those images so I can just focus on the data alone. But I will share a screenshot of that in a lot of my conferences, because even though it's blurred, I want people to understand what it is that we're dealing with. I think a lot of folks imagine serious crimes occurring in some mysterious underground world that we only see on television, and that it's not really real. And it really is real.

I've trained local, state, and federal law enforcement. I've trained forensic professionals. I've trained DAs' offices, their investigators, detectives. I'm now training criminal legal teams that go after a lot of these really bad guys and bad actors, and lots of other professionals working in these crimes.

I'm so grateful that people are wanting to learn more and help combat this heinous crime that's occurring, and it is not going away anytime soon. It is getting worse every week, every day. With that being said, I think what really surprises students, learners, and people that I have helped train and educate is how much information people voluntarily expose online.

And the shock and awe. I've had so many individuals tell me that red rooms aren't really real. I'm like, "No, they really are real." I always encourage everyone, with that warning: what you're about to see is real. It really does exist, so take care of yourself mentally.

If you have any triggers, if you have any past child abuse or exploitation, take care of yourself. Feel free to get up and walk out of the room. Take deep breaths, take care of yourself, meditate. Whatever it is that you need to do to take care of yourself mentally, you have to in this field.

Most of the people that I work with will self-disclose that they see a therapist every week. I see a therapist every week. I go to therapy every week to help me deal with just the topics alone and the extremes.

So it's a very heavy field to be in. But we can take care of ourselves through meditation and deep breathing. I do a lot of that, and I actually work with moderators on deep breathing techniques, mental wellbeing, and how to deal with this content and not be triggered based on our senses.

If it's visual, then we'll shut down the auditory. If it's not visual, we'll only do the auditory. I've learned in my doctoral work that the more senses that are involved in this type of work, the more trauma is going to occur. Even the angles of how we're seeing things — all of those things matter.

I think the more we learn about it, the more we learn how to protect ourselves from this type of trauma, the better off we are. Law enforcement should not be too proud to go to counseling or therapy, no matter who they are. I want to stress that experience does not make anyone immune to traumatic exposure. It can be complex, and it builds over time. Then we'll see individuals picking up bad habits: alcohol abuse, drug abuse, anger management, et cetera.

“Experience does not make anyone immune to traumatic exposure.”

Organizations, regardless of who they are, have to stop treating exposure as simply part of the job that people should learn to tolerate. There have to be boundaries. There has to be peer support. There have to be appropriate breaks, good supervision, and access to professionals who understand secondary and complex trauma.

Any of us that are working in these fields can begin to see changes, and we need to learn how to recognize those changes: sleep problems, irritability, isolation, numbness, or just having intrusive thoughts. All of these are red flags, so we have to learn how to set boundaries and seek professional help when needed.

Kyla: I mean, regular life is hard and scary enough, you know what I mean? And then just put that on top of it.

Again, I think that's why you are so important and admirable, and I'm so grateful for you and the work that you're doing, because nobody wants to think about this. Nobody wants to deal with this. The toll of doing this work is not nothing. There are real impacts.

But somebody's gotta do it, and more people have to do it. So I just wanna say thank you so much for the work that you do. It's very, very admirable.

And I hope more people see you and look up to you and are inspired and want to pursue this line of work as well. No matter how hard it might be, it needs to get done. It absolutely needs to get done.

Melissa Maranville: Yeah. You're right. It's not going away. It's only going to continue to grow and become much more challenging the more borderless these crimes become. These are borderless crimes. It could be happening in any country, and it's global.

The internet, it’s not the internet’s fault, but it’s a tool. And people abuse that tool for their own selfish purposes, and people suffer for it. More than just the victims, there are secondary victims: law enforcement investigating these cases, digital analysts, forensic analysts, all of them that have to work in this field.

The families of those children. They all suffer. There are so many more victims than just the victim alone. The whole reason I do this work is because I'm a survivor of child sexual abuse and exploitation for many years of my very young childhood.

I know what that's like, and it's not about me. It's about them, and it's about preventing children from having to go through this. That's what drives me: to protect the children, to protect future victims, to help investigate predators, learn their behaviors, learn the way they think, learn their moves, and help law enforcement put them away for as long as absolutely possible.

Kyla: I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful you're here and doing the work that you're doing. So thank you so much.

Melissa Maranville: You're very welcome. I know. It gets heavy.

Kyla: It gets heavy.

Melissa Maranville: I'm sorry.

Kyla: No, no, no. Don't apologize.

We've talked about this before: part of the reason why it's so difficult to root this stuff out and to stop it from growing is that nobody wants to talk about it, because it's horrible. It sucks to talk about. Nobody wants to talk about it. It's yucky.

I really love how open you are and how willing you are to go there and have that conversation, because if you can't have that conversation, nothing's gonna happen. Nothing's gonna change. We have to be able to have challenging conversations, and the more comfortable we get with having those kinds of discussions and the reality of the situation, the better work we can do, and the more we can prevent this stuff from happening.

So it is heavy, but I'm okay with it. I'm okay holding it for this. And I think it's worth the conversation, 100%. 100 million percent.

Melissa Maranville: It is heavy. You know what? You are so spot on. It is heavy. I have a term I often use when I'm talking to folks. I just did a training or presentation a couple days ago, and coming out of the gate, I'm like, "It's not dinner conversation." No one wants to talk about these topics. And if we don't talk about it, we won't become aware of it. We won't have any awareness of it, and people suffer for that. As an adult, I would rather be uncomfortable if I knew that it was actually protecting and preventing the abuse of a child.

“I’ll be as uncomfortable as I need to be.” 

I'll be as uncomfortable as I need to be. I was at a training a few years ago out in Vegas. It was after the law enforcement trainings, and I was sitting at dinner and picked up a conversation. Someone was asking me what I do, and I told them, and the man said, "Why do you do that? Because when law enforcement arrests one offender, another one's gonna pop back up. So what's the point?" And I'm like, "The point is, if it were you as a child, or if it was your child, wouldn't you want to know that someone's coming? Wouldn't you want to know that?"

And he's like, "Yeah." I said, "That's what it's about. It's about that child. That's all it's about." We have to take on that mentality. We have to be able to stand up and say, "This is what's happening. This is how we prevent it. This is what we have to do." As adults, we have to carry that weight to be able to do that.

Kyla: Absolutely. It's our job. That's a baffling response from that person.

Melissa Maranville: Well, I don't judge him. A lot of people think that way because they see how out of control it is, particularly with the internet. And that individual was right. You take one down, five more pop up, and that's very true. But we have to keep moving, and I think the key is to find a way to prevent this from happening.

I wish I could say that I'm gonna see it eradicated during my lifetime, and I know I won't. But it's not gonna stop me.

Kyla: We've talked a lot in this interview about your training and different training styles. When you're training investigators and law enforcement, what is the most common mistake you're seeing them make?

Melissa Maranville: The most common mistake I see is that a lot of times investigators will get tunnel vision and confirmation bias.

I think confirmation bias is so easy in these cases. They find one account or one name and immediately decide they've identified the person. I teach investigators to try to prove themselves wrong. Names repeat, photographs get stolen, usernames get reused over time.

People lie online about age, their location — look at VPNs now — employment, relationships, identity. They lie about who they are just to gain access to victims. So don't just collect information supporting your theory; try to disprove your theory. Look for other information and try to strengthen that theory.

“Don’t just collect information supporting your theory. Try to disprove your theory.”

That's how you strengthen your investigation: you are always questioning yourself. And it's easy to do when you are dealing with online data, but just don't take it at face value. 

Kyla: That makes perfect sense. If you were training a brand new investigator tomorrow, what would you have them focus on first?

Melissa Maranville: First, I would have them focus on their methodology before tools. Look at the victimology, look at the data you already have, the evidence you already have, and expand that outwards. Everybody wants the cool tools. I get it. But the cool tools are just not always the answer.

Methodology is very important in these cases. When I'm training law enforcement one-on-one, I share my methodology with them. The methodology I've created over the many years does tend to help. I'm not gonna say it's 100%. Absolutely, it is not.

But the process that I use definitely has a really good outcome. If I was to give someone 25 OSINT tools and they don't understand investigative methodology, I've created someone who knows how to click buttons. I've not created an investigator. So I start with identifiers.

“If I give someone 25 OSINT tools and they don’t understand investigative methodology, I’ve created someone who knows how to click buttons. I’ve not created an investigator.”

I start with emails, if I can get my hands on that. Usernames, telephone numbers — even with VoIPs today, that can be very challenging. Domains, and being able to pull that domain data. Many of these marketplaces that actually sell individuals think they've hidden a lot of their data, but a lot of times they have not, and you can actually get your hands on even their subscriber list. Don't think that one tool's gonna solve everything. You're gonna need your toolkit that you're gonna work from. But being able to understand all of the data that you are collecting takes a process, and that comes with time. You're gonna develop those over time, but all of that's going to end up and resolve into a methodology. 

Kyla: Looking into the horizon — who knows what happens next with the internet and AI and all of this stuff — what do you think investigators should be preparing for?

Melissa Maranville: Oh, gosh, I wish I had a crystal ball. I really do. I would so share it with all of them. Convergence. I think investigators can no longer think of social media, cryptocurrency, AI, encrypted communication, cloud sources, cloud environments, domains, and physical world activity (that matters as well) as completely separate disciplines.

We have to think of it as one investigation may involve all of them, and nine times out of 10 in today's world, it does. AI is going to increase speed and scale dramatically. It already is, but it's only going to escalate. As a society, we've been working with AI for a long time. It's been around since the '60s, actually the '40s, and most people don't realize AI's been around for a really long time, and tech has. It's not completely new. At this point, when it becomes public, the goal is just to collect data from the public at this stage and build it more and make it stronger and more powerful.

So AI is going to increase that speed and scale. Fraud, impersonation, synthetic identities, grooming, content creation that we've been talking about — all of this is gonna matter, and it's going to increase dramatically. So I think investigators will spend much more time establishing authenticity and attribution than anything.

The future investigator doesn't simply need more technology. They need better critical thinking and methodology.

Kyla: Yeah, I wish I had the crystal ball too. It's just escalating so quickly.

Melissa Maranville: I think the public is learning more and more, which is great, but now we don't know what's true and what isn't.

I see that also as a problem with media, and how that's manipulating and swaying. I don't wanna get into the elections, but it does. We know that. But it also manipulates and sways so many other things when it comes to investigations. So I think investigators need to be aware of going down the rabbit hole.

I talk a lot about that in my trainings. Going down that rabbit hole, you could end up anywhere. So again, critical thinking skills and methodology, slowing down, and knowing when to stop and pivot is so important.

Kyla: This is pretty loaded given the last two answers that you've given me, because we talked so much about how there's not one tool and all that sort of stuff. But do you think there is an OSINT technique or tool that is underused right now?

Melissa Maranville: Oh boy. How do I answer this?

Kyla: Sounds like maybe critical thinking.

Melissa Maranville: It is. Critical thinking. And not just critical thinking. I think relationship analysis. I think everyone wants another search engine or another tool, and sometimes the most valuable thing an investigator can do is stop searching and examine what they've already collected.

Again, there is such a thing as too much data, because we can end up getting swamped going down that rabbit hole. So I think it's important that investigators look at the usernames, emails — I know I sound like a broken record — domains, locations. All of those things matter, but I think we need to look at linkage.

Where do they intersect? Where do they cross over? In my trainings, I also talk a lot about linkage analysis, and that's a fantastic tool. But it's also a fantastic way of looking at relationships and seeing where all of this data actually crosses over and where it intersects. I think that's frequently where an investigation changes.

I would also add that preservation is another underused discipline. They will collect this data, they will house this data, et cetera, but we know that data is constantly changing. Technology's constantly changing daily. What worked yesterday may or may not work today.

“Preservation is key in these investigations.”

We also don't always know which piece of evidence will become important later on. So I think preservation is also key in these investigations. They need to preserve that, and all the data that comes with it, and hang on to it. Because, like we were talking about at the beginning of this discussion, that data can disappear once they find something, and a screenshot just isn’t going to do it.

They're going to need to preserve that.

Kyla: Melissa, thank you so much for spending time with me and getting into everything with me, sharing all your secrets so I can spread the word. I appreciate you so much.

When your books come out in the spring, I will 100% put them in the post. I'll put them in the YouTube video as well, so everybody can get their hands on them. It's super important work you're doing, obviously, and we wanna help you spread the word.

So again, thank you so much. Lovely to speak with you. Even when it gets heavy, I love your tenacity and your passion and your willingness to go there. It's so important.

Thank you for all the work that you do. You're doing so much training. You're teaching, you're training, you're writing books, you're doing your PhD. It's incredible stuff. You're making the world such a safer and better place. As a citizen of the world, I appreciate you, and I am so glad that you exist and that you're doing the work that you do.

Melissa Maranville, PhD
Founder & CEO, DeVille and Associates, LLC
Forensic Consultant | Criminal Justice & Digital Investigations Expert

Melissa Maranville, PhD, is a psychology professor, forensic consultant, criminal justice professional, and nationally recognized law enforcement trainer with more than 30 years of experience in criminal investigations, higher education, and public safety. Her expertise includes predator psychology, child sexual abuse and exploitation, human trafficking, open-source intelligence (OSINT), dark web investigations, cryptocurrency tracing, digital forensics, and sex offender legislation and policy.

As the founder and CEO of DeVille and Associates, LLC, Melissa Maranville bridges psychological research, investigative intelligence, and real-world law enforcement practices to address emerging threats and strengthen child protection efforts. Her work emphasizes evidence-based prevention, investigative education, offender accountability, and survivor advocacy. She is committed to equipping law enforcement professionals, organizations, and communities with the knowledge and tools necessary to identify threats, protect vulnerable populations, and prevent exploitation.

Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mmaranville

Upcoming book: When Monitoring Fails