Forensic Control help insolvency practitioners find the emails, documents and spreadsheets that allow for assets to be restored, transactions questioned and directors to be held to account.
We provide a cost effective and court admissible solution for searching through tens of thousands of emails, spreadsheets, databases and documents, helping liquidators shed light on what was happening at a company during the lead up to liquidation. Carefully extracted information can provide compelling evidence and is an effective way to maximise recoveries for creditors.
Case study – insolvency investigation
Forensic Control was appointed by a large firm of insolvency practitioners based in central London to examine twelve servers and three PCs from a recently liquidated company. The computer equipment we were required to examine had been removed from the company premises and had been piled into a corner of a room. The equipment was old, had been switched off for months and several had been marked ‘faulty’ by their previous owners. No passwords had been provided and the liquidated company’s former IT administrator was unwilling to help; additionally it was understood that attempts had been made to wipe data from the disks. Despite these circumstances our computer forensic investigators managed to recover 100% of the available data.
Working closely with the insolvency practice, we used search criteria over the mass of data we had recovered to extract relevant emails, spreadsheets, document and internet history. The evidence we extracted helped prove the misconduct of the directors of the liquidators which the insolvency firm had long suspected.
Our services for insolvency practitioners
We’re able to work at your offices, at ours or at the premises of the liquidated company, dependent on what is most appropriate for the particular case. Using specialist hardware and software, we will create forensically sound images (exact copies) of the disks under investigation. To do this we don’t need computers’ passwords or other credentials to access the data – if we are working on site then all we’ll need is access to plug sockets in order to power our computers.
Once we have collected exact copies of the data, the liquidator would usually provide us with their search criteria, typically this would be a list of keywords (which we can help advise you on) or perhaps there would be a requirement to extract all email traffic between two parties. The insolvency practice may also wish to provide a time frame of when they believe the relevant activity would have taken place.
After we have extracted the data matching the given criteria, we’ll provide the results, either on a CD or via a download link on one of our secure servers. Emails will usually be provided in a file which can be opened (and searched) in Outlook, while document and spreadsheets will be provided as is, ready to be opened in Word or Excel. We’ll also provide full provenance of the data which includes which computer the data was found on, where on the computer it was found, who created it and when.
Finally, we will provide a report and/or witness statement written in plain English covering what we were asked to do, how we produced our results, and what we produced, as well as any other discoveries that we feel are relevant to the case.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of our services for insolvency practices please call on 020 7193 3324.
