A day in the life of the... E-Crime Group
When convicted murderer Dr Colin Bouwer from Dunedin hatched a cunning plan to fatally poison his wife several years ago, in the hope of avoiding the social stigma attached with leaving her for a lover, little did he know that sending a succession of Emails would be part of the incriminating evidence the prosecution would draw on to secure a guilty verdict.
The National E-Crime Group were assigned to the case and poured all efforts into painstakingly combing through a number of computers, to track the doctor’s movements, once he became the prime suspect.
Head of the National E-Crime Group, Maarten Kleintjes, remembers working for months on the case. He felt a great sense of satisfaction when they recovered a deleted Email, which Dr Bouwer had sent to his wife Annette’s family in South Africa informing them that she had died.
Caught out
Unfortunately for Dr Bouwer, he jumped the gun slightly. He sent the Email off a considerable time before the actual time of his wife’s death.
Other Emails recovered by the E-Crime Group included a message Dr Bouwer sent to an Associate Professor he knew in Melbourne, asking whether the same drugs Dr Bouwer had used to poison his wife could be detected in a post-mortem.
Other messages found included Email conversations between himself and his mistress.
“It was so good to secure the evidence,because it substantially assisted in proving the murder,” Mr Kleintjes said.
Taking advantage
Another memorable case involved securing a guilty plea from an offender who lured a disabled woman into believing he could fix her “sexual aura” by having sex with her.
Luckily for the women, the alleged clairvoyant had given her a tape, which The E-Crime Group used to match with other tapes seized from the offender’s property.
“Once he was confronted with the evidence, he plead guilty,” Mr Kleintjes said.
Humble beginnings
When the National E-Crime Group opened its doors in 1984, it existed as a one-man audiorecovery unit fronted by Mr Kleintjes.
The job then involved cleaning up audio intercepts made by Police and testing the authenticity of audiotapes.
During the first year, Mr Kleintjes processed around 40 jobs. Twenty years on the E-Crime Group was dealing with 16,000 a year.
Since then Mr Kleintjes said the Police had used different accounting techniques to measure the volume of work that came into the lab.
Naturally, with the technological developments of the past 25 years, other aspects of the Group have significantly changed. There are now 31 staff employed within the group, which is split up into three sections.
These include the Research and Development Policy and Strategy section, the Electronic Crime Lab (ECL) and the National Cyber CrimeCentre (NC3).
Doing the hard yards
The main aim of Research and Development is to research and develop new technology that will assist investigators in getting access to electronic evidence and information as fast as possible.
“It’s great to have the latest technology at our fingertips, so we can ensure we are doing our job to the best of our ability,” Mr Kleintjes told Police News.
He said that development of these new technologies was one of the most satisfying aspects of the job.
“We have made some invaluable tools over the years and although the whole Group has their own part to play, it is absolutely very much a team effort,” he said.
Contributing towards a world first
One of the Group’s latest and greatest developments is an intuitive tool, which is known as the Environment for Virtualised Evidence (EVE). EVE was rolled out nationwide in August.
Through EVE, Police investigators can now carry out their own research on cases, which involve electronic evidence components.
What’s great about EVE is that all information gathered from it is forensically sound. So all evidence remains in its original form.
Mr Kleintjes said EVE was devised to tackle the ever-increasing number of jobs logged with the Group.
“When we first looked at developing it, we had an eighteen month to two year backlog. Now that EVE has been introduced, the backlog has virtually disappeared,” MrKleintjes said.
Fighting crime in cyberspace
The National Cyber Crime Centre (NC3) is a relatively new development.
Its main priorities are to scour the Internet for crime, encourage the public to report cyber crime and provide technical support for Police as well as liaise with similar groups abroad.
Detective Sergeant John van den Heuvel, who heads the NC3 said it was all about protecting New Zealanders from the increasingly sophisticated online scams invading the lives of unsuspecting victims.
Mr Kleintjes said nearly all crimes these days had some electronic component to them. He said it was merely a reflection of the society we live in.
“Everyone needs to be aware it is out there and keep themselves as safe as possible. It is only going to increase with time,” he said.
