Key aspects of many of the Mintz Group’s investigations are inside computer systems and other electronic media, and our computer-forensics services are an integral part of our fact-gathering practice. By building computer forensics into the corporate investigator’s toolbox, and training our technical staff to analyze electronic data with an investigator’s eye, the Mintz Group has become a unique and cost-effective resource for law firms and in-house counsel during litigation and internal investigations.
Some of our computer-forensics work is on behalf of counsel for employers – investigating employee and former-employee misconduct through the electronic trails they leave behind. We arm our clients to surprise their adversaries with evidence that was thought irretrievably deleted. We routinely gather and analyze digital evidence from computers, servers, mobile devices and other electronic media. We can do a small project or a deep look depending on the circumstances. We do this forensic work all over the United States and abroad.
Types of Cases
Our computer-forensics methods have proven effective in a wide variety of matters. In recent cases, for example, we have uncovered evidence bearing on:
- Misappropriation of trade secrets
- Embezzlement
- Kickbacks from vendors
- Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations
- Fabrication of electronic documents and email
- Claims of discrimination and wrongful termination
Specific Services
The Mintz Group has substantial experience in:
- Recovering deleted emails, text messages, documents and photographs
- Accessing forensic information in cell phones, BlackBerries and other mobile devices
- Recreating a timeline of activity on a computer, such as specific webpages visited and documents printed
- Analyzing complex relationships in large quantities of data
- Stripping away online anonymity – including hard-to-trace email addresses, blog postings and website creation
- Preserving data for potential litigation or future investigations
- Decrypting password-protected files
Typical Assignments
- We helped a pharmaceutical company investigate a recently departed employee who was alleged to have taken client information before he started a competing business. A timeline examination of his computer systems and email traffic (after we un-deleted it) demonstrated that he had downloaded client lists and other company information to his personal email account.
- We developed evidence for a private-equity firm that suspected it had been defrauded by the former owners of a company it had acquired. By recovering emails and analyzing inventory data, among other digital trails, we helped prove the former owners had orchestrated an accounting fraud. The facts we gathered were used to bolster a lawsuit and remove the former owners from the board.
- We investigated a client’s suspicion that a competitor had engaged in fraud to win a multi-million-dollar government contract. Our court-sanctioned examination of the government agency’s computers found enough anomalies to have the bids re-examined.
- We buttressed an executive’s suspicions that his former secretary had embezzled from him, and found she had stolen his identity to buy expensive clothing and sold his personal property on the Internet. By reconstructing fragments of files deleted from the secretary’s computer and reviving her hidden Internet history, we proved (and then testified about) many elements of her disloyalty.
- We helped a defense lawyer prove his client’s innocence by gathering evidence that showed the defendant was at home at the time of a murder he was accused of committing. By resurrecting deleted files from the defendant’s laptop, we proved he was logged into his password-protected system and chatting on AOL exactly when the crime occurred.
- We helped a general counsel identify who was leaking confidential information to a website, by determining that only one employee visited the site just before the secret was posted.
- We gathered sufficient evidence to terminate a senior employee of our client for misconduct by recovering and analyzing deleted Internet history from a company-owned laptop. Our investigation revealed multiple violations of the company’s code of conduct.
