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Insider-Trading Suspects Smash Hard Drive Evidence
An anonymous reader writes "We all know Slashdotters love debating the best way to wipe a hard drive clean. Looks like tech-savvy Wall Street Hedge Fund managers also know the best way to do it. From the WSJ article: 'Mr. Longueuil's version of that night's events was recorded later, during a December meeting with former colleague Mr. Freeman, who by then was cooperating with the government and recording conversations, according to the U.S. complaint. "F—in' pulled the external drives apart," Mr. Longueuil told Mr. Freeman during their meeting, according to the criminal complaint. "Put 'em into four separate little baggies, and then at 2 a.m. 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket, and leave the apartment and I go on like a twenty block walk around the city and try to find a, a garbage truck and threw the s—t in the back of like random garbage trucks, different garbage trucks four different garbage trucks."'"
Perhaps we shouldn't be whining about tech-clueless management after all... This seems like a much worse alternative. On the plus side, he probably didn't even think about the mailserver backups...
I have heard of people getting hit with destruction of evidence charges for engaging in this sort of behavior...
Palm trees and 8
Encryption seems a bit more foolproof. It's also a bit more believable that one might "forget" a lengthy passphrase, while physical destruction looks a bit suspicious.
That said, encryption and physical destruction is also useful, as it means that even if someone gets some of the physical components of the disk, it will be even more difficult to get any data off of them.
So they should continue to receive the lighter sentences. Right? It shouldn't matter that the impact of their crime was the ruination of thousands of lives. Putting these guys in with common thugs is just cruel.
Red sleeves.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
So what do we learn kids? Don't talk about the skeezy shit you do to anyone: friend, family, coworker, or other. If you do bad shit, keep it to yourself.
At the small town bars I used to hang out in we had a saying, "Loose lips get hit."
It would appear that the hammer of justice follows a similar rule of thumb.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
IANAL; but my understanding is that it doesn't constitute an admission of guilt per se(particularly in these days of high-capacity hard drives, there would be no reasonable way to bound the number of things you could have been guilty of with just one HDD...); but, destruction of evidence and/or "obstruction of justice" are typically crimes in themselves.
If they have a recording of you describing how you ripped apart and surreptitiously disposed of your HDD after you heard that the feds were on your trail, those charges are going to be very hard to dodge...
Merely destroying your hard drive, out of caution or paranoia, and then learning later that the feds would really have liked to have a look through it, is one thing; but if you are caught on tape describing why you destroyed it, game over, man.
After thoroughly eradicating all trace of evidence, he then told someone else what he had done. Brilliant.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Does anyone else think that the quote sounds like one of those fake quotes you see in mail hoaxes? For instance, why would he say "I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket", which adds nothing to the story but is something a hoaxer would put in if he saw photos of Longueuil wearing North Face products. Besides, maybe the guy wasn't a Rhodes Scholar, but I have a hard time believing the managing director of a capital management firm speaks like a valley girl.
I'm not saying he's innocent, just that this news item doesn't look right.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
if they prove deliberate destruction of evidence, doesn't that constitute admission of guilt? or some other loss-by-default?
No, but it does allow the prosecutor to give the jury instructions that they may make a adverse inference[1] as to the contents of the destroyed relevant evidence from the fact that the defendant knowingly (sometimes even negligently) destroyed it. Essentially, they are telling the jury that they can infer that the evidence would weaken the defendant's case from the fact that he willfully destroyed it.[2] The jury is not required to make such an inference but it may -- as contrasted from the fact that prosecutors are forbidden from trying to make adverse inferences from a refusal to testify based on 5A grounds, such jury instructions would be illegal and the whole conviction overturned.
This is a very onerous instruction and so is reserved for cases in which it was shown that the destruction was knowing or negligent but it's necessary in order for the discovery system to work. In the absence of a adverse inference rule, litigants would have a very strong incentive to preemptively destroy any incriminating evidence as soon as they became aware of an investigation or a lawsuit. In cases against corporations in which internal emails/documents play a pivotal role in proving that the behavior was part of a pattern/policy of the company (and not merely a rogue employee) this would be fatal to the plaintiff/State. The same logic applies in cases against the State[3] where they refuse to disclose evidence that might be favorable to the defendant.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
[2] http://vegaslitigator.com/blog/?cat=50 (discussing the Nevada statute, not the Federal one, but many parallels and the same basic concepts exist).
[3] http://legalholds.typepad.com/legalholds/2009/04/negligent-destruction-of-evidence-is-sufficient-to-support-an-adverse-inference-instruction-although.html An interesting case in which police destruction of evidence helps to get defendants off the hook because they allege that the destroyed evidence would undermine the State's case. IOW, the adverse-inference doctrine cuts both for and against the State. The defendants did eventually convince the court that the radio communications were relevant.
I tried to stuff a horse's head into my computer case. Sure enough, now the computer won't turn on. That'll teach those drives to offer up incriminating evidence!
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.