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A suspect was being investigated by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Office (CPIB) for allegedly using his position to obtain sexual favors from women.
However, as a police officer, Mahendran Selvarajoo was proving to be a tough nut to crack.
After hours of questioning, the staff sergeant, who handles commercial crimes at the Clementi Police Division, had confessed that he had only obtained sexual favors from a woman he had previously investigated.
But while being interrogated, Chng Tze Wei and his digital forensics team were busy extracting terabytes of data from a computer, three phones, and various storage devices seized from Mahendran.
What they discovered implicated the 32-year-old man even more, such as his conversations with another woman he had investigated who also provided him with sexual favors.
CPIB officers discovered that the policeman had targeted a third victim.
Chng, deputy director of the CPIB’s digital forensics branch, told The New Paper in an exclusive interview last week: “There was no reason for these victims to be reported or followed up, and that triggered the investigating officer’s instincts.” .
Mahendran was jailed for two years last month.
Fong Wai Kit, CPIB’s senior deputy director of investigative operations, said Mahendran, an experienced investigator, would have had a good understanding of investigative techniques and procedures.
“It is never easy to get the admission of a policeman,” he added.
Still, Mahendran cracked after about 24 hours, and the evidence gathered by the digital forensics team helped CPIB uncover more victims and quickly build a case against them.
By perfecting his messages and multimedia files, the investigators were able to confront him with the conversations he had with the second victim, as well as intimate videos of the two victims that he had copied to their devices without authorization.
REFERENCE POINT
This provided a point of reference for the researchers as they examined Mahendran’s research documents and found a third woman he had targeted.
Fong said, “It was fortunate that we moved in early and prevented a third victim from falling prey to him.”
Chng noted that criminals are creating more evidence as digital devices become an integral part of people’s lives.
The CPIB recognized this when it introduced digital forensic capabilities in 2004 and has kept up with evolving technology trends and has found better ways to analyze growing mountains of data.
For example, it developed forensic capabilities in the cloud in 2018, as it recognized the increasing use of online storage services such as Dropbox and iCloud, and the potential to find evidence stored in the cloud.
The CPIB has also introduced a new capability in forensic analysis, which cuts the time required to examine data by half.
Instead of examining individual devices one at a time, researchers can now examine data on multiple devices from different subjects through a single, consolidated interface to find connections and leads.
Other emerging trends include the use of vault applications, parallel workspaces, and invisible applications to hide evidence.
Modes of payment have also evolved, and while many corruption cases still involve cash or other forms of gratification such as entertainment, the CPIB has long had its eyes on cryptocurrencies and other technological innovations.
Chng said: “We are learning in depth to better prepare for what is to come. I don’t want to have a situation where the investigating officers don’t even recognize the potential evidence.”
That is why all CPIB researchers are digitally savvy, follow technology trends, and read the news. This has allowed the CPIB to take advantage of technology to improve its own processes.
Chng, for example, won a Public Sector Transformation Award last week for a project in which it worked with students from Nanyang Polytechnic to use blockchain to improve the CPIB chain of evidence.
When asked about the increasing use of encryption and privacy tools, Mr. Fong acknowledged that the use of such technology by criminals will pose challenges.
But technology is only one piece of the puzzle, he added.
In Mahendran’s case, for example, interviewing skills, tenacity, and good detective work were equally crucial.
Mr. Fong said, “Technology has definitely increased our efficiency.” (But) it is the office and the experience of the officer that really allows us to make progress in our cases. “
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