An owner of a Top-tier Computer Forensics firm in the Sacramento area named Digital Evidence Ventures, Don Vilfer is one of the nation’s foremost experts on Digital Forensics and has provided sworn testimony in over 100 cases in State and Federal Courts.  He also served in the FBI as a Special Agent, last assigned as the Supervisory Special Agent in charge of the White-Collar Crime and Computer Crime in Sacramento.

Threats to businesses are internal and external.  His firm gathers digital evidence from cell phones, computers and other devices mostly for litigation purposes such as violations of trade secrets.  For example, his firm’s forensic evaluation can show if and when a disgruntled employee has downloaded client records and trade secrets to a thumb drive or hard drive. 

Don reports they are seeing an increasing trend of business email compromises with more people working at home with less security and firewall protection than at the office.  He cited examples such as mortgage fraud where hackers use the email address of a mortgage broker to communicate directly and get an unsuspecting party to wire to money early to a fraudulent account.  

His firm is also hired to assist companies in investigations such as sexual harassment complaints where the involved parties have deleted inappropriate content from their cell phone and computers.  Even if the parties’ use “data removing or scrubbing” software to hide their conduct, his firm is usually able to retrieve the deleted information or evidence of the deletion in a forensics evaluation.  As the saying goes, “It’s never really deleted, not really gone.”