The FBI has joined the search for a Virginia Tech student missing since she became separated from her friends at a Metallica concert Oct. 17. Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said yesterday that the FBI will be able to investigate tips from around the country in the disappearance of 20-year-old Morgan Dana Harrington of Roanoke.

Richmond businessman Allan Mullian received interest payments every month for about 10 years from his real estate investments. He invested in Richmond-area properties that Donald C. Lacey was to fix up and rent or flip at a profit. The checks stopped coming in November and he was told there was no more money. Mullian, 77, said he and his family had $2 million invested in as many as 100 properties in the Richmond area. “Losing that kind of money at my age is rough.“

About 531,000 people who had records in a state agency’s hacked prescription-monitoring database will receive letters this week advising them to keep close watch on their credit record. The Virginia Department of Health Professions issued similar advice last month after the hacking of the Internet-accessed database surfaced April 30 but now is notifying people individually to take precautions.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States would pose a number of possible risks, even if the they were kept in maximum-security prisons.

The FBI has not discovered the hacker who broke into the Virginia Department of Health Professions’ computer, nor has it discovered what private information was retrieved, Virginia’s Secretary of Health and Human Resources Marilyn B. Tavenner said yesterday. Questioned intensely by members of the House Appropriations Committee, Tavenner said the FBI believes it will take another two weeks to complete its investigation.

The FBI is working with the Powhatan County Sheriff’s Office to investigate the slaying of high school student Tahliek Taliaferro for possible civil-rights violations, law-enforcement officials said yesterday.

A female homicide victim, whose body was discovered a decade ago near an Ashland truck stop, is part of a federal database of about 500 victims. While the case of Carol Taylor, 39, formally remains under investigation by Ashland police, the FBI says details of the case are part of a nationwide program that is attempting to consolidate cases that may be similar.

Before he was a county sheriff or a state senator, Ed Robb was an undercover agent for the FBI, infiltrating the Mafia and bringing down drug lords. Now his efforts have made him a TV star. Robb’s undercover exploits are the topic of a 60-minute television episode of “Undercover,“ a new series airing this week on the Investigation Discovery channel. The show is scheduled to air again at 1 p.m. Saturday.

A drug dealer will not face a longer sentence in connection with the slaying of the FBI informant who helped convict him two years ago. U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled yesterday there wasn’t enough evidence to show that Danny Damon Smith killed Fannie “Patsy” Beard, which would have permitted a stiffer prison term when he is sentenced next month on a drug conspiracy conviction.

Odds are the killer of FBI informant Fannie “Patsy” Beard was in U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson’s Richmond courtroom yesterday. Beard, 48, was wearing her bedclothes and flip-flops when she was shot eight times in the back and once in the abdomen in an alley outside her Whitcomb Street apartment around 1 a.m. Dec. 2, 2006. Earlier that year, she had worn a hidden camera for authorities while purchasing drugs from a Gilpin Court drug gang.

Richmond is dropping further down the list of most dangerous cities. Based on 2007 data, it now ranks as the nation’s 49th most-dangerous city, an improvement from its 29th ranking in 2006, according to annual rankings released yesterday by Washington-based CQ Press. The newest ranking is a significant improvement from 2005, when the city was ranked fifth most-dangerous by Morgan Quitno Press, a research firm purchased last year by CQ Press, a publishing company.