Cell Phone Forensics
Situation
The Subject of this Cell Phone Forensics Investigation is the Husband (Subject) of the Client. The Client became increasingly suspicious of the Subject’s activities. The Subject was spending more time at work, steadily increasing his usage of his cell phone, and started doing things like losing weight and working out. When the Client originally called, we recommended a Surveillance Investigation to document the Subject’s activities when he leaves work. The client felt that this wasn’t going to work and decided she wanted to think about it. A week later the Client called and had in her possession, the Subject’s cell phone. She asked if we could recover deleted text messages, emails, and What’s App messages. We recommended a Cell Phone Forensics Investigation.
Initial Investigation
Upon receipt of the Subject’s phone, we began to conduct Cell Phone Forensics with Cellebrite, one of the top tools in Cell Phone Forensics. Cellebrite is used by Law Enforcement Professionals, Special Forces and Intelligence Military Units, various Government agencies around the globe as well as private sector organizations. Utilizing Cellebrite, we obtained a report of all the details on the phone. We obtained the current data on the phone, as well as deleted information.
Findings
When reviewing the information initially, we discovered the phone had a large number of deleted text messages from a person with a male name. We continued to review and noticed there were deleted messages from the same individual in an instant message application. This became suspicious so we began reading all the text messages thoroughly. We discovered that it appeared the subject had saved the number of a female companion in his phone, under a male name to avoid detection. We discovered there were deleted messages of the Subject and this unknown woman communicating about the fun they had together, how they felt about each other and messages where the Subject was explaining that his wife was becoming suspicious.
We continued to review the deleted messages and discovered the subject and the Known female were seeing each other for over 1 year.
We drafted a report of our findings and sent it to the Client. In the interim, we conducted searches in an attempt to locate the name of the Unknown woman registered to the phone number. We discovered it to be a woman who worked in the same corporate center as the Subject.
Conclusion
The major points for both Clients and Private Investigators is the fact that Cell Phone Forensics Investigations are becoming increasingly popular because of all the different means of communications available on these devices. The use of specialized equipment such as Cellebrite listed in this case study and other systems such as Oxygen Forensics are a great way to discover hidden text messages in order to get the answers and peace of mind you are looking for.
Other Uses for Cell Phone Forensics
- Discover cell phone tracking software. This software can track and monitor everything that is done on the cellular device. These systems can record phone calls, monitor text messages, emails, login information and other things on the phone as well.
- Recover deleted documents or other important items that were deleted. Not all cell Phone forensic scenarios are situations of infidelity or things of this nature. From time to time we have Clients who accidentally deleted a picture or something they need back. When this happens, we make efforts to recover these items for them.
- Disgruntled employee Investigations. Businesses who provide cell phones to employees can often find themselves in situations where they need to locate deleted messages, emails customer contact details and activities on a phone.
