As the Copper State moves boldly into the Information Age, putting wrongdoers on notice with the development of strong legal support like mobile forensics, Arizona becomes a harder and harder place to do the wrong thing and get away with it. It doesn't matter if you're a white collar criminal using your cellphone to take pictures of sensitive company documents and send them to a competitor, or just an everyday spouse who happens to have a secret lover you're trying to keep secret -- cell phone forensics can and will find evidence of your wrongdoing. It's devastating to learn that an employee is stealing proprietary...
ReadThose of you who have worked on alter ego cases are aware of the strong burden of proof establishing alter ego and piercing the corporate veil. If successful however, it can open doors of available assets and income that a person is trying to shield from creditors, or their spouse. I was involved with a recent decision in Arizona where the court permitted the corporate veil to be pierced and allowed the assets to be entered into the community estate for division between the parties. This case involved a person who set up a company, back in 1999, to shield and protect his assets from creditors. He funneled his personal income and...
ReadIf you happen to be a computer forensic specialist, Nevada and Arizona aren't bad places to land. In today's digital age, computers are the building blocks of almost every aspect of our lives. Nearly every transaction -- and many interactions -- we engage in are recorded electronically. But with the new digital age has come new digital crime, and with new digital crime has come the new digital investigators. Computer forensics consists of preservation, data collection, analysis, reporting and testimony. Make sure you engage an expert that knows how to help you in each of these stages; one who is proactive rather than reactive. A...
ReadToday, we're going to do something a little different: we're going to 'follow along' as a forensic accountant in Phoenix goes through an example investigation. The routine activities of an investigator often start with something akin to the report of a whistleblower who points out a coworker's fraud. Such an event needs to be investigated rapidly in order to prevent further loss as well as to find out how far back the fraud extends -- the key to recovering any losses that have already been incurred. One of the forensic accounting firms Phoenix features will spring to the case, sending out a forensic accountant --...
ReadBoston Marathon Acquaintance Sentenced to 2 ½ years for Deleting Computer Records
Aug 5, 2015 at 09:33amShortly after the bombing, a friend of the Boston Marathon bomber deleted his browser history and other electronic evidence when he was being pursued by the feds. Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, he was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for "destroying, altering and falsifying records, documents, and tangible objects in a federal investigation, specifically information on his computer." Accordingly, be careful when advising someone who is, or is helping someone, engaged in felony behavior. They must be warned that destroying of any evidence, including digital, can be extremely detrimental.
Read