Forensic Services

Definition of ‘FORENSIC’- the application of a science to the law.

Definition of ‘SCIENCE’- (a) the systematic study of humans and of the human environment based on the deductions and inferences which can be made, and the general laws which can be formulated, from the reproducible observations and measurements of events and parameters within the universe . (b) the knowledge so obtained (c) systematised knowledge in general (d) a particular branch of knowledge (e) skill; proficiency.

The word Forensic is generally misunderstood by the majority of people. This is again largely because of the proliferation of television shows and movies that are produced these days that relate to the forensic gathering of evidence. You need not necessarily be a scientist to be able to gather evidence forensically, however in most cases, evidence that is to be presented in court is generally more readily accepted by the court if the person who has gathered the evidence has a qualification or a reputation accepted by the court that relates to that gathering, and has gathered that evidence utilising accepted protocols to protect the integrity of that evidence.

There are many case histories in Australia where evidence has been collected in a manner that has been deemed to be less than acceptable and most notably in the Azaria Chamberlain case and that of the Michelby brothers. Most recently, the Allan Mallard case in Western Australia demonstrated again how in all three of these cases, the persons charged and gaoled were incorrectly dealt with and all because the evidence gathered was not gathered appropriately or by accepted legal forensic means.

Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group realises the importance of gathering evidence in a form that reduces if not totally negates the possibility of that evidence being corrupted or challenged. Evidence must be gathered in a way that leaves little or no doubt about the absolute integrity of that evidence to ensure it is accepted by the court and is unable to be questioned or have doubt about it’s integrity sustained by parties to the court proceedings. This is why Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group has over the past 24 years surrounded itself with persons skilled in all kinds of forensic evidence gathering.

FORENSIC INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES (FITS)

INTERNET (CYBER) FRAUD - PHISHING/THREATS/MALICIOUS ACTS

A recently published survey conducted by Security Vendor AVG has found that a study of 9000 internet users in Australia has shown that 39% of these participants had been the victims of cyber crime compared to 28% in America.

The internet is a wonderful tool for making friends, doing business, locating services and generally broadening your general knowledge. However, the internet is fast becoming the major source of funding for fraudsters and organised criminal gangs.

There seems to be a blind faith by many internet users that “if its on the internet it must be the truth”.  If it sounds too good to be true then it generally isn’t true. The truth and the internet are sometime far removed from one another. People/businesses who advertise or promote themselves or their services/products on the internet do not have to pass the scrutiny that other media forms insist upon. At this point in time, the internet is open to anyone who wants to use it and publish upon it and mostly with total anonymity.

Anyone can open an e-mail account without declaring their true identity. Anyone can cut and paste details of another or a product and take that  identity/product and cleverly convince others that its the truth. Today to drive a car, to travel overseas,  to open a bank account or to gain employment, the applicant must prove their identity. The most powerful vehicle in the  world today is the internet and anyone can use it and remain totally secretive about who they are or for that matter, where they are. No proof is required to establish an e-mail address.

Lyonswood has seen a rapid increase in the amount of inquiries it receives from victims of internet crime. Generally,  law enforcement agencies are not interested or just don’t have the resources to assist. Most of these victims have been cleverly and very deviously cheated and convinced that the person they are dealing with or the product/service they wish to buy is genuine. Not all victims are stupid or naïve, many are prominent members of the community and highly intelligent. Internet fraudsters are very organised and plan their scams to hide behind a complicated network of bogus identities.

Much of internet fraud goes unreported as the victims, when fully alerted to the consequences of what they have done feel embarrassed and just put it down to a bad experience. Lyonswood believes the percentage of victims is far greater than the statistics would indicate.

It is this increase in reported  internet crimes that prompted Lyonswood to surround itself with skilled technicians to assist in the detection of and the location of those responsible.  Our technicians are constantly improving their skills and qualifications to keep abreast of developments in detection and deception. It is a never ending endeavour to keep pace. Much of our work is the determining of whether a person/entity is in fact who or what they purport to be. Many of our clients are on the cusp of either doing business or providing important details to another and smell a rat. Many are relieved when their intuitiveness is rewarded by what our investigations reveal.

Most common types of Internet fraud/deception

PHISHING

Definition:
Is the act of tricking someone into giving them confidential information or tricking them into doing something that they normally wouldn’t do or …

internet fraud that aims to steal valuable information such as credit cards, social security numbers, user IDs and passwords.

This type of internet fraud is the most commonly reported to Lyonswood.

Case example:

Recently a young woman came to Lyonswood with her father. The young woman was about to divulge her bank account details to  a male she had become involved with on a chat line and her father became suspicious. She was convinced that he was a Russian businessman living in London who was seeking a relationship with  a view to marriage. She had spoken to him on his mobile phone.  To demonstrate his genuineness and to give her confidence in his honesty he sent her his U.K. drivers license and a copy of his Russian Passport. He told her that he would send her $10,000.00 so that she could travel to the U.K. and meet him. He asked her for her passport and drivers license so that he could be certain who she said she was and to give him confidence that when he deposited the money into her account it was going to a real person and not a fraudster. He told her that if she sent her Bank details he would make a direct deposit. He also sent her his address and his business address. Of course both of these addresses were genuine residential and business addresses.

This young lady took a great deal of convincing as she didn’t wish to look stupid and we suspect didn’t want her heart broken. Initially we requested our colleagues in U.K. to send us details of the occupants of these addresses and they did not match up with the names she had been provided. In fact the resident of the house was a Bishop in the Anglican Church. Still not convinced and making excuses for these discrepancies we requested a copy of a U.K. drivers license. The license provided did not match the one she had been given and now she questioned as to whether different counties had different licenses. There was only one format for this type of drivers license throughout the U.K.

There were many other discrepancies in the documents he provided her, the passport photo was placed over the passport stamp and thus it was clear that the photo had been cut and pasted over an existing passport photo, probably one this fraudster had phished from another victim. This type of fraudster gathers and trades identities with other phishing fraudsters on line.

Fortunately our client had not provided her passport or drivers license however she has provided her name and address details. The objective of the fraudster was to gain access to her bank account and clean it out. This fraudster was very patient and had groomed out client over many months. No doubt this person had groomed many others over that same period and we suspect many of those would not have been as lucky as our client.

COMPUTER FRAUD

There are many was for fraudsters to take from you your hard earned cash, clear out your bank accounts and even defraud you your other assets such as motor vehicles and boats. The way this is generally done is through convincing yet fraudulent documentation. You should never e-mail documents that prove your identity such as drivers licenses and passports. Once a clever fraudster has these, they virtually have your identity and can cut and paste photos of themselves or other persons over the existing photos or even use them and pretend they are you to defraud others.

One would hope by now that any e-mails you receive that offer large sums of money just for assisting someone to deposit some alleged fortune that has somehow come their way, are now well and truly ignored and deleted. These are generally referred to as Nigerian Scams and mostly originate out of Africa however there is a recent shift of this type of fraud to Mexico and South America.

Letters that allege they are from a bank, just because you may happen to have deposits with this bank, should also be disregarded. Lets face it, with only 4 major banks in this country, they have a 25% chance of getting lucky when they send an unsolicited e-mail. Banks rarely send e-mails of this type, particularly ones that  ask you to verify your account numbers and passwords.

The fact that someone has details about you doesn’t necessarily mean they obtained those details from you. Clever fraudsters search discarded rubbish from bins at night and steal you mail from your letter box to gain this information and if they obtain a copy of a bank statement then they most likely have your account numbers and balance. All they need then is your password.  It is not uncommon for these fraudsters to scan in your stolen bank statements and send them to you via a fabricated bank e-mail complete with logos that they have cut and pasted form the internet. The really smart ones even provide a telephone number for you to call to verify that the e-mail is genuine. The phone will answer and a voice will cleverly convince you that you have in fact called your bank. Always check the number and see that it corresponds with those of your bank. If it doesn’t then its likely to be a fraud.

THREATS, DEFAMATION/ SLANDER & MALICIOUS ACTS

Today, with great ease, anyone can open an e-mail account or set up a website with total anonymity. The most powerful vehicle in the world today is not a V12 sports car, it’s the internet and you don’t have to prove who you are to get on board and drive it. Devious, nasty and greedy people use it every day to take revenge and manifest themselves in peoples lives in a threatening, slanderous and malicious manner.

Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group receives inquiries every week relating to unknown e-mail senders making threats. There are ways to discover the identity of the person making the threats.

DATA  RECOVERY/MINING

Work stations/notebooks/blackberries/ mobile phones/ i-pods / memory sticks/CF cards

Lost data, data suspected of being copied and transported elsewhere (Stolen data), data that might breach laws, codes of ethics or workplace and privacy guidelines is often sought as a vital piece of evidence required to identify the sender, the person receiving the data or the thief. Today, the act of industrial espionage is mostly carried out via the internet and it’s big business.

Disloyal employees are regularly selling information to your opposition or feathering their own nest by transporting your intellectual property before they jump ship to your competitor.

Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group has a good track record of recovering the evidence even though the persons responsible have attempted to cover their tracks. This is where Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Groups Forensic I.T. specialists have the edge on these fraudsters through skilled professionals with the latest techniques backed up by state of the art software programs. We have many satisfied clients that we have assisted to get their businesses and lives back on track.

Sometimes the issues are simple and others far more complex. Maybe you have lost those very important baby, family or holiday photos through a malfunctioning micro drive or CF card. Lyonswood Investigations and Forensic Group can probably help you retrieve them.

ADOLESCENT DUE DILIGENCE/ AT RISK CHILDREN

Today, children are teethed on computers. Children are using computers before they start schooling and thus become very proficient at using them, quite often even more proficient than their parents. This is where vigilance is required and quite often not able to be provided because the parents are nowhere as savvy as their children.

When most parents were children computers were either at their infancy or not even existent. Very devious and clever criminals including those who might want to hurt your child or sexually abuse that child trawl the internet pretending to be comparative age group piers and deceive these young people into all sorts of  very dangerous behaviour including but not limited to, disclosing their address, school, times when their parents wont be at home or away on leave and even sending photos of themselves  and even naked.

If you have reason to suspect your child might be exposed to one of these practices  or perhaps require software to minimise exposure to these risks, Lyonswood can assist you to have peace of mind.

IDENTIFYING A FRAUDSTER OR ORIGINS OF A THREAT VIA AN EMAIL ADDRESS

Lyonswoods technicians are trained in the latest techniques and the use of state of the art software developed to discover the threads of evidence and imprints that these fraudsters leave behind. One of the tools we use is the software product Endcase.
EnCase Forensic software is the current industry standard in computer forensic investigation technology.

With an intuitive GUI, superior analytics, enhanced email/Internet support and a powerful scripting engine, EnCase provides investigators with a single tool, capable of conducting large-scale and complex investigations from beginning to end. Law enforcement officers, government/corporate investigators and consultants around the world benefit from the power of EnCase Forensic in a way that far exceeds any other forensic solution.

• Acquire data in a forensically sound manner using software with an unparalleled record in courts worldwide.
• Investigate and analyze multiple platforms — Windows, Linux, AIX, OS X, Solaris and more — using a single tool. 
• Save days, if not weeks, of analysis time by automating complex and routine tasks with prebuilt EnScript® modules, such as Initialized Case and Event Log analysis. 
• Find information despite efforts to hide, cloak or delete. 
• Easily manage large volumes of computer evidence, viewing all relevant files, including "deleted" files, file slack and unallocated space. 
• Transfer evidence files directly to law enforcement or legal representatives as necessary. 
• Review options allow non-investigators, such as attorneys, to review evidence with ease. 
• Reporting options enable quick report preparation.
  

Actual Cases

Case 1:
Your forensic document examiner was brilliant. We can now obtain what is rightfully ours, our inheritance. People can be so devious when it comes to matters of money. All along we believed that Dad's signature was a forgery. The evidence that you were able to obtain with respect to Dad's state of mind around the time he allegedly signed the will was also vital. (Names withheld).

Case 2:
The letters that this woman was sending almost destroyed our marriage. The efforts on the part of your investigators are to be commended. The matching up of documentation that you managed to obtain from her proved beyond doubt who it was. I know you won't tell me, but I still can't imagine how you obtained these records. I guess that's a trade secret. I can't thank you enough. (Male name withheld).

Case 3:
I had no idea that DNA could be obtained from a document. Your advice that people up to no good generally sweat rang true. Although there were no finger prints on the documents that were good enough to present to the court, the DNA removed from the paper proved that it was my brother who had falsified my father’s signature.

Case 4:
Thank for from us both. We can now rest easy now that this woman’s accusations have been disproven. People can be so devious when it comes to money: All these years my husband has paid out child support believing that the boy was his. The DNA you gathered from the tissue he used to blow his nose contains the truth. Who could have known it would be this easy, I feel sorry for the boy as I suspect she knows who the father is but I doubt she will ever tell him.