For days after the deadly shooting near Brown University, federal authorities struggled to piece together the movements of a suspect who appeared to have deliberately covered his tracks.
The break, officials say, came not from traditional police work alone but from an unlikely source: IRS criminal investigators poring over financial records, according to the New York Post.
Sources said that agents from the IRS Criminal Investigation Division ultimately played a decisive role in locating Claudio Neves-Valente, the man accused of carrying out the attack.
After numerous leads fizzled out, the financial trail proved to be the key that brought multiple agencies to the same conclusion — and to the suspect’s final location.
Investigators first zeroed in on Neves-Valente after a homeless Reddit user, widely described as a hero tipster known only as John, flagged suspicious behavior he witnessed near Brown’s campus. That tip helped authorities identify Neves-Valente following several false starts.
From there, IRS-CI agents were brought in to assist. According to a senior official, their focus quickly turned to Neves-Valente’s financial activity.
“At that point, the criminal investigations team became involved and determined where he had obtained the [storage] facility in which he was ultimately located,” the official told The Post. “Once the location was identified, they issued an alert to the FBI with information on where he could be found.”
Neves-Valente had been especially difficult to trace, authorities said, because he relied on European SIM cards and technology designed to obscure phone tracking. That complexity made the financial analysis even more critical.
“Secretary Scott Bessent and, with the help of IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, directed all possible resources to assist the FBI in their pursuit of justice for this unspeakable tragedy,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said. “IRS Criminal Investigations agents worked tirelessly on this effort.”
IRS-CI agents have broad authority to analyze banking activity, sales records, and other financial transactions tied to criminal investigations. As one official put it, “They do a lot more work than that. But that’s the short version.”
Once agents pinpointed a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, the FBI moved swiftly. On Dec. 18, agents executed a search warrant and found Neves-Valente dead inside, along with a satchel and two firearms.
Authorities believe Neves-Valente took his own life after allegedly killing MIT physics professor Nuno Loureiro in his $1.4 million townhouse.
The two men had crossed paths years earlier while studying in the same academic program in Portugal between 1995 and 2000. Neves-Valente later attended Brown University from 2000 to 2001.
IRS-CI dispatched a small team to Rhode Island shortly after the Dec. 13 shooting, which left two students dead and nine others injured. At least a dozen investigators worked the case.
Momentum shifted after John’s Reddit post described seeing a man in a gray Nissan with Florida plates near campus. He recalled the suspect wearing clothing “inappropriate and inadequate for the weather” and repeatedly changing direction when their paths crossed.
That account led investigators to surveillance footage and helped connect the Brown shooting to Loureiro’s killing. Officials said the tipster is being compensated by federal authorities.
