Yaqub Prowell entered on duty as an FBI Special Agent (SA) in 2010 and was assigned to the Portland Division where he investigated Eurasian organized crime, Mexican drug trafficking cartels, and violent gangs. SA Prowell specialized in the use of electronic surveillance and sophisticated investigative techniques to disrupt and dismantle criminal enterprises. He was the FBI coordinator for one of Oregon’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Task Forces, as well as one of Oregon’s Safe Streets Gang Task Forces during this time.
In 2016, SA Prowell’s investigative experience was called upon when armed militants seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, and he played a direct role in helping to resolve this six-week-long Domestic Terrorist induced crisis. That same year he also spent months traveling through remote, terrorist-controlled areas of the Philippines to bring an international child sex tourist to justice, resulting in his receipt of a 2017 FBI Director’s Award. SA Prowell then shifted to investigating both national-security and criminal Cyber computer intrusions as the FBI coordinator for the Oregon Cyber Task Force. He mitigated threats posed by hostile foreign intelligence services and traveled to Nigeria to identify, locate and indict members of an international cyber-crime organization, resulting in his receipt of the 2017 Northwest Hero Award from the City of Portland’s Citizens Crime Commission.
In 2019, he went to serve as an FBI detailee to the Congressional House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation in Washington, D.C. Then in 2020 he returned to Portland Division, where he received a promotion to Supervisory Special Agent of the Cyber Squad in 2022.