Arson suspect arrested after video footage found

This article is a summary of a case study by Magnet Forensics.

In early February of 2018, a suspected arson fire destroyed a 40-year-old family business in a small community. The family, employees, and neighbours were devastated. A DVR security camera system was operating in the business at the time of the fire and quickly became the only reliable form of evidence. There was an attempt to retrieve the footage from the DVR system using traditional methods, but this unfortunately failed. It was feared that the data would be completely unrecoverable.

When East Lansdowne Police learnt of the unsuccessful attempts to recover the data and that the system in question had been damaged by fire, they came to the rescue.

With Magnet DVR Examiner, the police did manage to access the hard drive of the damaged system. Using the software, they were able to extract the camera footage, including metadata. By reviewing the recovered video footage, a two-minute clip was found, which helped the Police not only to determine how the fire had started, but also to identify the suspects. The metadata ultimately provided sufficient evidence to proceed with the prosecution of the suspects.

Magnet DVR Examiner
Magnet DVR Examiner's user-friendly and intuitive interface allows you to examine video and metadata from video systems, bypass passwords, and recover deleted data. This solution provides direct access to the hard drive of a Digital Video System, allowing you to obtain information about locations, devices and sources in a short period of time as part of your investigation. DVR Examiner supports a wide range of sources, including hard drives and E01 Image Files, providing the ability to play, scan, sort and search them simultaneously.

Would you like to try DVR Examiner yourself with a trial licence or would you like more information about this solution? Please contact us.