Los Angeles Computer Forensics and Expert Witnesses

One Evidence Plan for Every Device and Account

Call the Los Angeles office at (310) 694-3094, or the 24/7 hotline at (800) 868-8189 when something is being wiped tonight, and the first questions are practical ones. Who are the people at the center of the matter? Which laptops, phones, mailboxes, shared drives and personal accounts hold their records? Who can authorize access to each one, and what date is the court or the business holding you to? Those answers decide the collection, and getting them right on the first call is what keeps an examination proportionate.

From there we plan one collection across every source, so a studio workstation, a Microsoft 365 tenant and a contractor’s Dropbox arrive with their metadata and chain of custody intact rather than as three separate projects. The same evidence set then carries into Los Angeles discovery coordination and Los Angeles expert witness support without being collected twice.

Departing Employees and the Files They Took

When an employee leaves with client lists, code or project media, a flat rate employee exit Core Analysis covers a defined set of devices and accounts at a fixed price. When the matter calls for a full reconstruction of what moved, when and where, a trade secret forensic examination follows every channel: USB, sync clients, personal email, messaging and cloud sharing.

For an executive departure or a partner separation, bring the business records, the account authority and the decisions the examination has to support. We set the scope around them, and the first call costs nothing.

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Each Los Angeles practice page explains the method, the sources and the deliverable for that kind of work.

• eDiscovery Collections
• Computer Forensics Expert Witness
• Computer and Hard Drive Forensics
• Mobile Device Forensics
• Penetration Testing
• Vulnerability Assessments

Los Angeles matters built on project media, intellectual property or a distributed team usually split the record between organizations. A contractor holds the source project while the client holds only the rendered deliverable; an agency or software team keeps the working files in a system nobody named in the complaint. We preserve both sides of that relationship where access is authorized and document how the copies connect, because the fight in court is rarely whether a file exists and almost always how it got where it was found.

The work goes wherever the matter is heard: the United States District Court for the Central District of California, the Los Angeles County Superior Court, arbitration, and federal district court, multidistrict litigation and ITC 337 proceedings across the country. Veronica Perez, who served with the Los Angeles School Police Department and the West Covina Police Department before joining GDF and later taught mobile forensics at the California Department of Justice Advanced Training Center, has been designated as a digital forensics expert witness in California superior courts.

If the record you need sits with a contractor, a studio or a vendor, describe the relationship to the Los Angeles office and we will tell you whose authorization the collection needs.

Computers, Drives and Mobile Devices

Is the question about a file being present, opened, copied, deleted or sent? Each answer points to different artifacts and a different collection method, so we settle it before imaging. We preserve the device state and the acquisition record, and our report states exactly what the acquisition hash proves: that the data set we examined is the data set we collected. Authorship and completeness are shown separately, from the artifacts. Hold off on recovery utilities and device resets until we have talked through preservation.

Computer forensics methods and deliverables

Project Files and Disputed Media

The native project, the source recordings, the linked dependencies and the revision history are what an examiner needs. A compressed copy forwarded through a messaging app usually arrives without the metadata the original carried. We examine whether a recording is intact separately from who made it, and we read the surrounding communications before an edit or a disclosure is attributed to anyone.

Audio, video and image authentication

Employee Departures and Access Disputes

We line up endpoint artifacts against identity, sharing, mailbox and repository records around the agreed dates, and we corroborate account activity with device evidence before naming the person at the keyboard. Time zones, retention gaps and competing explanations are worked through before a timeline reaches management or the legal team.

Departing employee analysis

Security Testing and Incident Evidence

A live incident and a planned penetration test are different engagements. During an incident we preserve evidence alongside containment and recovery so the record survives the cleanup. For testing we agree written authorization, target ownership, excluded systems, test windows and stop conditions first, and we report scanner findings separately from attack paths we actually demonstrated. When the need is proactive, scope a penetration test or vulnerability assessment with a senior operator.

Penetration testing scope and methods

Los Angeles clients draw on the whole firm: sixteen US offices, an international line and the same court tested examiners on every engagement. These national pages set out the methods behind each practice.

• Computer and hard drive forensics
• Mobile device forensics
• Email and cloud evidence
• Expert witness support
• Penetration testing
• Vulnerability assessments
• Application penetration testing
• Ransomware and data breach analysis
• eDiscovery collections
• Departing employee analysis
• Evidence aware data recovery
• OT and SCADA security
• AI security consulting

Start with a short, nonconfidential summary, the names of the parties so we can clear conflicts, the key dates and any deadline already set. Tell us who controls the devices and accounts and whether anything is scheduled for deletion, reimaging or reissue, because that schedule usually decides how fast we move.

We agree the scope and a protected transfer method before anything changes hands, so hold the passwords and the equipment until then. The consultation is free and handled in confidence.

Reach the Los Angeles office at (310) 694-3094, or an examiner at any hour on (800) 868-8189.

• Digital forensics questions
• The forensic examination process
• Digital evidence preservation mistakes

If the device is still in use, call (800) 868-8189 before it is wiped or reissued.