Computer Forensic Case Study - Forensic Data Recovery

NOTE: PROTEGGA LLC respects the privacy of all parties involved in each of its cases and; therefore, will not disclose cause numbers, company or individual credentials, or other items that may lead to identification.

Scenario

Type of Case: Civil Litigation
County: Dallas
Plaintiff: Mr. Investor
Defendant: Construction Company – “ABC”

Description: ABC is a Construction Company formed in 2003 with investments from Mr. Investor.

Complication: All financial records for ABC Company were offsite being analyzed when the Accountant’s facilities burned down. All paper records were lost. Further complicating matters, due to an internal relationship gone bad, an employee removed all of the 2003 and 2004 QuickBooks databases and left the organization leaving no knowledge of the passwords required for access.

Summary

Claims of Plaintiff
Mr. Investor believes profits were substantially higher than that claimed by ABC Company and; therefore, is owed additional payments based upon a written agreement for a specific percentage of profits.

Defendants’ Response
ABC Company claims its records were accurate as reported to Mr. Investor.

Computer Forensic Evidence Recovered
The 2003 and 2004 financial data was reconstructed through forensic Data Recovery efforts. Hundreds of financial spreadsheets were located including expenses, job costing, balance sheets, income statements, check ledgers, and petty cash ledgers.

Additionally, all QuickBooks databases were recovered. Once the databases were recovered, password cracking tools were utilized to breach the system. All passwords were removed from the databases and each was converted to the same format to ease the translation of the financial numbers.

Conclusion

Once all the files were provided to the accountants, accurate data could be used to determine actual profits for the years in question. This assisted both parties in determining an appropriate settlement for everyone involved.

For more information about PROTEGGA LLC or this case, feel free to contact us:
AskThePman@protegga.com
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