After recovering deleted text messages that helped clear a man of rape charges, surveillance expert Gary Coulthart's services have been in high demand - for cases from lovers' quarrels to peeping toms to workplace thieves and perverts.
In one of his best cases yet, Coulthart, a former covert operations police officer and ICAC surveillance expert, fresh unearthed iPhone text messages that led to five serious charges being dropped against a northerly beaches businessman, who was charged of raping a schoolgirl.
calling cards
Coulthart says about people would be amazed at what can be uncovered from appliances including mobile phones and digital cameras. He receives about 15 inquiries a month just by people who suspect their partner of cheating. "It's the common thing wherever they're always on the phone texting late at night or early in the morning and being incommunicative about it," Coulthart said.
But at that place a catch - Coulthart will only investigate a phone if the legal owner gives license, which stops some suspicious spouses in their cartroads.
"There was a case fresh where a fellow came to me and his estranged wife had comprised texting him continuously and he changed his pushline calling cards and mobile number 3 times, but she kept on finding his number," Coulthart said.
The alienated wife had tried to deny she had sent the contents but the man brought his phones to Coulthart, who uncovered a lot of than 1000 threatening and harassing texts in each phone.
"There were 1500 in one call and over 1000 in the other two phones, and they were all another," he said.
"I try not to get deeply asked in these things because it's fairly personal, I just do the report ... it's a clean emotional time with divorces so these people are trying to clogs much evidence as they can to discredit the other company to use it to their advantage."
Coulthart says much of his act upon is around digging up evidence in stalking and molestation cases but he's also hauled in for employee disciplinary matters and to help police in condemnable matters.
"There was one work misconduct matter where a person borrowed a different work colleague's phone ... and during the time that they had the phone the guy took characterisations of his penis and also [of him] in provocative sexual positions," Coulthart said.
The man's boss, who began a workplace misconduct investigating, asked Coulthart to recover any deleted photos and the exact time and date they were taken.
"We also did a computer forensic job wherever a person was employed by an organisation as a impermanent and while she was there she went through the handbags of additional people in the organisation and was able to get the credit card contingents from their bags," he said.
"She then used her work computer to buy a number of items cyberspace using those stolen credit card details and we were able to, using forensic analytic thinking of her computer, get up the pages and the items that she bought, including de facto receipts bearing witness the delivery address."
Police are even customers, with Coulthart being asked in one late case to analyse a phone of a man who was suspected of dealing drugs in a cabaret. He uncovered more than 1000 accusing text messages and even photos of the suspect inside the ball club.
"So you're able to actually get a time and appointment stamp off the photo which identified this person in the actual nightclub ... Because well as all the text messages in relation to the add," he said.
In another case for the police, Coulthart was addressed on to recover messages from the digital camera of a peeping tom who was accused of taking exposures of young women through their windows.
"Before the police were able to apprehend him, the person was able to delete the messages from the memory card, but we were able to call back them and give the time and dates of when they were accepted," he said.
Coulthart is also called on for more everyday data recovery work, for instance by people who prefer to retrieve personal files from USB sticks or obliterable memory cards.
He says his adventures of success vary for each gimmick he looks at but he has been able to convalesce data from phones that was created four to five a long time ago. For texts and images that have been deleted, whether he can convalesce them often depends on how the gimmick has been used since then.
"It's like computer forensics where the operating system will say that the item has been deleted but it's still there until it's in reality overwritten," he said.
"The best way to ensure that data can't be recovered is to smash the device."
In one of his best cases yet, Coulthart, a former covert operations police officer and ICAC surveillance expert, fresh unearthed iPhone text messages that led to five serious charges being dropped against a northerly beaches businessman, who was charged of raping a schoolgirl.
calling cards
Coulthart says about people would be amazed at what can be uncovered from appliances including mobile phones and digital cameras. He receives about 15 inquiries a month just by people who suspect their partner of cheating. "It's the common thing wherever they're always on the phone texting late at night or early in the morning and being incommunicative about it," Coulthart said.
But at that place a catch - Coulthart will only investigate a phone if the legal owner gives license, which stops some suspicious spouses in their cartroads.
"There was a case fresh where a fellow came to me and his estranged wife had comprised texting him continuously and he changed his pushline calling cards and mobile number 3 times, but she kept on finding his number," Coulthart said.
The alienated wife had tried to deny she had sent the contents but the man brought his phones to Coulthart, who uncovered a lot of than 1000 threatening and harassing texts in each phone.
"There were 1500 in one call and over 1000 in the other two phones, and they were all another," he said.
"I try not to get deeply asked in these things because it's fairly personal, I just do the report ... it's a clean emotional time with divorces so these people are trying to clogs much evidence as they can to discredit the other company to use it to their advantage."
Coulthart says much of his act upon is around digging up evidence in stalking and molestation cases but he's also hauled in for employee disciplinary matters and to help police in condemnable matters.
"There was one work misconduct matter where a person borrowed a different work colleague's phone ... and during the time that they had the phone the guy took characterisations of his penis and also [of him] in provocative sexual positions," Coulthart said.
The man's boss, who began a workplace misconduct investigating, asked Coulthart to recover any deleted photos and the exact time and date they were taken.
"We also did a computer forensic job wherever a person was employed by an organisation as a impermanent and while she was there she went through the handbags of additional people in the organisation and was able to get the credit card contingents from their bags," he said.
"She then used her work computer to buy a number of items cyberspace using those stolen credit card details and we were able to, using forensic analytic thinking of her computer, get up the pages and the items that she bought, including de facto receipts bearing witness the delivery address."
Police are even customers, with Coulthart being asked in one late case to analyse a phone of a man who was suspected of dealing drugs in a cabaret. He uncovered more than 1000 accusing text messages and even photos of the suspect inside the ball club.
"So you're able to actually get a time and appointment stamp off the photo which identified this person in the actual nightclub ... Because well as all the text messages in relation to the add," he said.
In another case for the police, Coulthart was addressed on to recover messages from the digital camera of a peeping tom who was accused of taking exposures of young women through their windows.
"Before the police were able to apprehend him, the person was able to delete the messages from the memory card, but we were able to call back them and give the time and dates of when they were accepted," he said.
Coulthart is also called on for more everyday data recovery work, for instance by people who prefer to retrieve personal files from USB sticks or obliterable memory cards.
He says his adventures of success vary for each gimmick he looks at but he has been able to convalesce data from phones that was created four to five a long time ago. For texts and images that have been deleted, whether he can convalesce them often depends on how the gimmick has been used since then.
"It's like computer forensics where the operating system will say that the item has been deleted but it's still there until it's in reality overwritten," he said.
"The best way to ensure that data can't be recovered is to smash the device."
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