When it comes to sleuthing these days, knowing your way within a database is as valued a skill as the classic, Sherlock Holmes-styled powers of detection.

Safe Banking Systems Software proved this very point in a demonstration of its algorithm acumen—one that resulted in a disclosure that convicted terrorists actually maintained working licenses with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. Based out of Mineola, N.Y., Safe Banking Systems provides software tools to help corporations and government institutions—most commonly working in the financial industry—uncover fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking and other related crimes.

But, more recently, it turned its attention to databases made publicly available by the FAA. It used its algorithm-detection software to sift out uncommon names such as Abdelbaset Ali Elmegrahi, aka the Lockerbie bomber. It found that a number of licensed airmen all had the same P.O. box as their listed address—one that happened to be in Tripoli, Libya. These men all had working FAA certificates. And while the FAA database information investigated didn’t contain date-of-birth information, Safe Banking was able to use content on the FAA Website to determine these key details as well, to further gain a positive and clear identification of the men in question.

 “The only way to beat these people is to outsmart them,” says David Schiffer, president of Safe Banking. “Our solutions have the capability to apply entity resolution technology to large databases to identify criminals—terrorists, money launderers, drug dealers and fraudsters—and uses pieces of corroborating information to make positive matches. We use IT to outsmart the criminal masterminds.”

Among those identified were:

• Elmegrahi, who had been posted on the FBI Most Wanted list for a decade and was convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103, killing 259 people in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Elmegrahi was an FAA-certified aircraft dispatcher.

• Re Tabib, a California resident who was convicted in 2007 for illegally exporting U.S. military aircraft parts—specifically export maintenance kits for F-14 fighter jets—to Iran. Tabib received three FAA licenses after his conviction, qualifying to be a flight instructor, ground instructor and transport pilot.

• Myron Tereshchuk, who pleaded guilty to possession of a biological weapon after the FBI caught him with a brew of ricin, explosive powder and other essentials in Maryland in 2004. Tereshchuk was a licensed mechanic and student pilot.

Suffice to say, after the FAA was made aware of these criminal histories, all three men have since been decertified.