In 2023, after only three years as a police officer, Anthony Pendell rather audaciously put his name in for a detective vacancy with the Exeter Township Police Department.
The timing worked in his favor.
“When I got hired, it was a very top-heavy department,” Pendell, 33, said in a recent interview. “A lot of guys were close to retirement after a pretty long hiring hiatus. So when they started leaving, there were opportunities.”
Pendell joined the Exeter Township Police Department in January 2020 and spent three years on patrol. While he enjoyed the work, his long-term goal was investigations — a path inspired by his father.
John Pendell spent much of his career as a narcotics agent with the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office and later worked in a narcotics intelligence role with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.
“I figured I had nothing to lose by going for it,” Pendell said.
His initiative paid off. In April 2023, he was promoted to detective — far earlier than he expected.
“I was definitely thrilled, especially that early in my career,” he said. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do eventually, but it happened sooner than I thought.”
Pendell quickly established himself in the unit, working complex investigations that eventually led to an invitation to join the U.S. Secret Service Cyber Task Force.
“There was a cyber fraud case I was working on with a Secret Service agent out of the Philadelphia field office,” Pendell said. “We built a relationship, and he told me about the task force. That’s how I got on it.”
Joining the task force opened the door to specialized training and advanced investigative tools. Through the Secret Service, Pendell attended courses at the National Computer Forensics Institute in Hoover, Ala.
The 40,000-square-foot NCFI facility is the nation’s premier law enforcement training center for cyber and electronic crime forensics, serving officers, prosecutors and judges from across the country. Courses cover topics such as open-source intelligence, cyber investigative techniques, cryptocurrency and call data records analysis.
“They’re all in the cyber realm — working on cellphones, computers, downloading digital data and evidence,” he said. “The two classes I went to were call data records and cryptocurrency.”
Call data record analysis examines metadata generated by telecommunications networks — such as timestamps, phone numbers and cell tower locations — to identify patterns useful in criminal investigations, including fraud cases.
Pendell returned to Exeter Township with new skills and specialized software that allows him to analyze cellular communications data from his office.
His work did not go unnoticed.
In December, the Secret Service Cyber Fraud Task Force presented Pendell with a National Computer Forensics Institute award recognizing excellence in cyber and fraud investigations. The national honor placed him 22nd out of more than 250,000 investigators nationwide based on the volume and complexity of forensic evidence he analyzed over the past year.
He is only the second detective in the Philadelphia Secret Service region to receive the recognition.
“In my case, it was a culmination of call data record work and cryptocurrency cases over the past year,” Pendell said. “The award is based on volume of evidence examined, and that’s what put me at 22 in the country.”
The recognition came as a surprise.
“I’ve only been a police officer since 2020,” he said. “There are guys who have been doing this type of work for years and years.”
Exeter Township Detective Anthony Pendell receives a National Computer Forensic Institute certificate in Hoover, Ala., on Dec. 4. The award presented by the U. S. Secret Service Cyber Task Force recognizes the most prolific investigators in the nation for complex cyber and fraud cases over the previous year. (COURTESY OF EXETER TOWNSHIP POLICE DEPARTMENT)
Pendell said the award carried special meaning because of his family background.
“I come from a law enforcement family,” he said. “My dad had a career in law enforcement, and I’m kind of following in his footsteps. Seeing how proud he is of the work I’m doing means a lot to me.”
Pendell grew up in the Pottstown area and graduated from Pottsgrove High School in 2011. While law enforcement was always at the back of his mind, another passion initially led him elsewhere: music.
After attending community college, Pendell moved to Nashville in 2014 to pursue a music career. He enrolled at Belmont University near Music Row and landed a job as a touring drummer for country artist Ben Gallaher, a fellow Pennsylvania native.
He left Belmont after one semester, finding it difficult to balance school and touring. For the next 4 1/2 years, Pendell worked as a professional drummer, primarily with Gallaher.
“We toured all over the country,” Pendell said. “We opened for a lot of country artists that are on the radio today, from Morgan Wallen to Tyler Farr.”
One of the highlights came when Gallaher’s band landed a support role on a farewell tour with legendary southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd.
“We played quite a few shows with Skynyrd,” Pendell said. “It was wild. They were all good guys.”
One moment, in particular, stood out.
“Most artists generally roll up right before the show and then leave right after,” Pendell explained. “But I remember playing the show, and I look to my right and I see the Skynyrd guys standing there, side stage, watching the set. So that was pretty definitely a cool moment.”
As Pendell approached his late 20s, he began thinking about long-term stability. The turning point came at his father’s retirement party.
“I was surrounded by police officers, talking to them,” he said. “It was always something in the back of my mind — following in my dad’s footsteps. I’d had my fun, played music, done that chapter of my life. I thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to make a career change.’”
Pendell moved back home, put himself through the police academy, and joined the Exeter Township Police Department.
Although his path from Nashville stages to the squad room may be unconventional, Pendell sees a connection. Law enforcement, he said, as with music, is a team game — one that requires support from others to succeed.
While on patrol, Pendell gravitated toward investigative work, often handling as much follow-up as possible on his own cases and seeking out additional training whenever it was approved.
After becoming a detective, his willingness to take on challenging cases led him into an emerging specialty: cryptocurrency investigations.
“When I got into detectives, it was never like, ‘I want to do cryptocurrency cases,’” Pendell said. “It just kind of fell in my lap. There were not many people in the county that were handling them.”
He took one of Exeter Township’s first cryptocurrency-related investigations and taught himself the field to a large extent.
‘I was like, ‘Well, I’ve got to figure this out,’” he said. “So that’s what kind of led me down that road of doing those types of investigations and then I grew an interest.”
Many of the fraud cases he’s investigated are investment scams in which the perpetrator lures the victim into investing money. Scammers gradually gain trust through friendly or romantic conversations, often initiated through text messages, dating apps or social media.
“They’re called pig butchering scams,” Pendell explained, “where they’ll target a select group of people — a lot of the times it’s white elderly males — and the suspect will pose as an attractive young female, and they’ll try to build a relationship, and this will go on for months at a time.“
The name of this type of investment scam refers to the idea of fattening the pig before slaughter.
Once trust is established, the scammer introduces a supposedly lucrative crypto investment. They often set up legitimate exchange accounts to convert cash into cryptocurrency. The victim is then directed to transfer the funds to a fraudulent trading platform or digital wallet that promises high, quick returns.
Other than troopers with the Pennsylvania State Police computer crimes unit, he and a member of the Spring Township Police Department are the only municipal detectives currently handling crypto investigations, Pendell said.
“You open one door and realize how big that world is,” he said “Then you just keep learning more, going to different schools, figuring things out. It’s been a neat experience.”