A police officer with the RCMP’s E-Division digital forensics services took the stand at the start of the sixth week of the cyberbullying trial involving Port Coquitlam student Amanda Todd.
On Monday (July 11), Sgt. Keith Hack, a Crown witness, told Justice Martha Devlin and the jury at BC Supreme Court in New Westminster that he was contacted by Coquitlam RCMP after Todd’s death to look at the electronic devices she used — including those at her parents’ homes — including her social media activities.
Hack also spoke with investigators in The Netherlands about digital evidence they collected as part of the case, in which Aydin Coban is charged.
Coban, of The Netherlands, has pleaded not guilty to:
- extortion
- importing and distributing child pornography
- possession of child pornography
- communicating with the intent to lure a child
- criminal harassment
None of the allegations is proven in court.
Hack told the court he prepared a 147-page report — over the course of several years — that examined user names and IP addresses registered in Todd’s name, and forensic images.
Hack said he started his search on four devices using words, names or other data of interest to the investigation through Todd’s Skype, YouTube, Facebook and Gmail accounts.
Intimate image report
Earlier in the morning at court, Const. John Hilder, a former general duty member with the Coquitlam RCMP and now with the provincial gang enforcement unit, testified he was on duty on the night of Dec. 23, 2010, when he visited Carol Todd’s home in Port Coquitlam after police received a report of an intimate image online of Amanda Todd.
Hilder also went to Norm Todd’s home in Maple Ridge, where Amanda was living at the time, to discuss the online image of his daughter.
The image of Amanda was allegedly posted from a Facebook user named Alice McAllister, he told the court, adding he referred the matter to the Coquitlam RCMP’s sex crimes unit.
In her opening address, lead Crown Counsel Louise Kenworthy claimed Coban was behind 22 fake accounts in a “persistent campaign of online sextortion” of Amanda Todd.
Meanwhile, in an admission of facts presented on Monday and agreed by defence counsel, prosecutor Heather Guinn outlined how RCMP worked with Dutch police and the FBI in the United States to retrieve records from Facebook after a search warrant was issued.
The trial continues.
