‘Living the dream’: Slain FBI agent remembered by family, colleagues
For someone whose daily work was to shed light on some of the darkest corners of the Internet, Special Agent Daniel I. Alfin always managed to have a smile on his face, much to the bewilderment of his own colleagues.
He was witty and tagged a heavy dose of sarcasm to the end of his sentences. He was smart and really good with computers, a skill he would pass on to many of his older colleagues throughout his postings in Albany, Quantico and Miami. By the time he was 36, he had become an FBI Special Agent in Miami investigating crimes against children, a milestone many law enforcement officials in his field can only dream of achieving in a lifetime.
And he hated the cold. In Florida, he was (as he told at least one colleague) “living the dream.”
These were some of the snippets that offered a window into Alfin’s life and were shared during a memorial ceremony on Sunday at the Hard Rock Stadium, as his relatives and hundreds in the law enforcement community gathered to remember his life.
Alfin was one of two officers killed on Feb. 2, along with Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger, 43, while serving a warrant at a suspect’s Sunrise apartment to search for child pornography on his computer. Three other FBI agents were injured at the scene and have since recovered, in what has become one of the bloodiest incidents in the federal agency’s history.
He is survived by his wife Jessie and his young son Eli, who attended Sunday’s memorial service and sat in folding chairs on the stadium’s field, in front of Alfin’s casket.
A memorial service for Shwartzenberger’s was held a day before, at the same time and place.
“If Laura was here today, she would agree that she and Dan were cut from the same patriotic cloth,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Sunday. “Two best friends who shared the same passion, the same determination, and in spite of all they witnessed in their extraordinary careers, they shared the same optimism and hope.”
Alfin was born in New York and joined the FBI in 2009 with his initial assignment to the FBI’s Albany, New York, office. In Miami, he also served as a member of the Underwater Search and Evidence Recovery Team since May 2019 as a Public
Safety Diver. He was a certified PADI rescue diver who completed seven underwater forensic searches.
As a member of the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force in Miami, Alfin worked on several high profile cases, including last March, when he helped bring charges against former Miami mayoral aide Rene Pedrosa. According to his affidavit in the Pedrosa case, Alfin had testified in federal court more than 20 times in more than 10 federal districts.
“It’s the same with any criminal violation: As they get smarter, we adapt, we find them,” Alfin said at the time in a story about
the case published on the FBI website. “It’s a catand-mouse game, except it’s not a game. Kids are being abused, and it’s our job to stop that.”
He was assigned to the FBI Miami Field Office in 2017 and worked on crimes against children violations for over six years. Notably, he was one of the lead agents in one of the largest international child pornography hacking schemes at the FBI, Operation Pacifier, to identify and prosecute users of a dark web platform called Playpen.
“Dan’s expertise helped identify them and stop the victimization of so many innocent children,” Wray said. He added the Playpen operation, which was “the stuff of nightmares” and resulted in rescuing hundreds of sexually abused children in the U.S. and around the world, “still stands as the FBI’s most successful operation against deep web investigations.”
Wray said that Alfin’s life’s purpose and legacy lives in “all the children who are safe today and have a chance for a better life because of the work that Dan did.” He worked every day “to slay the monsters most of us never want to meet,” Wray added.
Denis Alfin shared some of his cherished memories with his brother, like rounding up loose nickels and dimes to buy their first Nintendo 64 console, listening to Disney soundtracks on the way to school, and going to Disneyworld with his son Eli for the first time.
“Daniel was immensely proud of his work,” said Denis Alfin, one of Daniel Alfin’s siblings. “We will all remember our parts of Daniel, and in doing so he will live forever.”