November 01 2016
In the last few weeks, KBC’s mobile phone experts have been recovering data from mobile phones which the prosecution claimed could not be recovered.
In an alleged rape case, the police did not examine the defendant’s handset and instead stated that it was damaged beyond repair. Indeed the phone arrived in our office with an ominous piece of tape holding it together. Our team, however, was able to undertake the necessary repairs and recover relevant communications between the complainant and the defendant.
In a second case, also a rape allegation, the police failed to recover any sent messages from the complainant’s handset. Their rationale was that due to the mobile phone being a low-end handset it was not capable of storing sent messages! Our team used their experience and knowledge of mobile phones and the forensic software tools used to examine them to advise to the contrary. We identified that the particular mobile phone would be expected to store sent messages but these could be deleted by the user; hence, perhaps, why the police had not found them. We advised that, although deleted received messages were likely to be recovered with standard forensic tools, more specialist techniques would be needed to recover deleted sent messages. Our subsequent examination of the handset found 1,056 deleted sent messages and a further 7 fragments of sent multi-part messages. The content of these resulted in the case being dropped.
If you have a mobile phone enquiry and need to assess what could be done, please call the team on 0191 332 4999.
