Investigators are scrambling to retrieve erased data from more than a dozen smartphones confiscated from the suspected ringleaders of a series of burglaries across Japan. But digital forensics experts say recovering such data, which would be key in building the case, could be an extremely tall order.
Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department is working to recover potential lost data after Philippine immigration authorities handed over about 15 smartphones to Japanese authorities, as well as tablets the suspects in Manila had been using — allegedly to give instructions to rank-and-file collaborators in Japan.
Some of the devices, however, were found to have almost no stored data and are believed to have undergone a factory reset, which would require complex digital forensics to recover.