A Minnesota cybersecurity and pc forensics knowledgeable whose testimony has featured in hundreds of courtroom trials over the previous 30 years is dealing with questions on his credentials and an inquiry from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Authorized specialists say the inquiry could possibly be grounds to reopen plenty of adjudicated instances by which the knowledgeable’s testimony could have been pivotal.
One would possibly conclude from studying Mr. Lanterman’s LinkedIn profile that has a level from Harvard College.
Mark Lanterman is a former investigator for the U.S. Secret Service Electronics Crimes Job Drive who based the Minneapolis consulting agency Laptop Forensic Companies (CFS). The CFS web site says Lanterman’s 30-year profession has seen him testify as an knowledgeable in additional than 2,000 instances, with expertise in instances involving sexual harassment and office claims, theft of mental property and commerce secrets and techniques, white-collar crime, and sophistication motion lawsuits.
Or not less than it did till final month, when Lanterman’s profile and work historical past have been quietly faraway from the CFS web site. The removing got here after Hennepin County Lawyer’s Workplace mentioned it was notifying events to 10 pending instances that they have been unable to confirm Lanterman’s instructional and employment background. The county legal professional additionally mentioned the FBI is now investigating the allegations.
These allegations have been raised by Sean Harrington, an legal professional and forensics examiner based mostly in Prescott, Wisconsin. Harrington alleged that Lanterman lied beneath oath in court docket on a number of events when he testified that he has a Bachelor of Science and a Grasp’s diploma in pc science from the now-defunct Upsala Faculty, and that he accomplished his postgraduate work in cybersecurity at Harvard College.
Harrington’s claims gained steam because of digging by the regulation agency Perkins Coie LLP, which is defending a case whereby a consumer’s laptop computer was forensically reviewed by Lanterman. On March 14, Perkins Coie attorneys requested the choose (PDF) to strike Lanterman’s testimony as a result of neither he nor they may substantiate claims about his instructional background.
Upsala Faculty, positioned in East Orange, N.J., operated for 102 years till it closed in 1995 after a interval of declining enrollment and monetary difficulties. Perkins Coie informed the court docket that they’d visited Felician College, which holds the transcripts for Upsala Faculty through the years Lanterman claimed to have earned undergraduate and graduate levels. The regulation agency mentioned Felician had no file of transcripts for Lanterman (PDF), and that his title was absent from all the Upsala Faculty pupil yearbooks and graduation applications throughout that interval.
Reached for remark, Lanterman acknowledged he had no strategy to show he attended Upsala Faculty, and that his “postgraduate work” at Harvard was the truth is an eight-week on-line cybersecurity class referred to as HarvardX, which cautions that its certificates shouldn’t be thought of equal to a Harvard diploma or a certificates earned by means of conventional, in-person applications at Harvard College.
Lanterman has testified that his first job after faculty was serving as a police officer in Springfield Township, Pennsylvania, though the Perkins Coie attorneys famous that this position was omitted from his resume. The attorneys mentioned once they tried to confirm Lanterman’s work historical past, “the police division responded with a narrative that may be nearly unattainable to consider if it was not corroborated by Lanterman’s personal e mail communications.”
As recounted within the March 14 submitting, Lanterman was deposed on Feb. 11, and the next day he emailed the Springfield Township Police Division to see if he might have a peek at his outdated personnel file. On Feb. 14, Lanterman visited the Springfield Township PD and requested to borrow his employment file. He informed the officer he spoke with on the cellphone that he’d lately been instructed to “get his affairs so as” after being recognized with a grave coronary heart situation, and that he needed his outdated file to indicate his household about his early profession.
In keeping with Perkins Coie, Lanterman left the Springfield Township PD along with his personnel file, and has not returned it as promised.
“It’s stunning that an knowledgeable from Minnesota would journey to suburban Philadelphia and abscond along with his decades-old personnel file to obscure his background,” the regulation agency wrote. “That seems to be the worst and most egregious type of spoliation, and the deception alone is cause sufficient to exclude Lanterman and think about sanctions.”
Harrington initially contacted KrebsOnSecurity about his issues in late 2023, fuming after sitting by means of a convention speech by which Lanterman shared paperwork from a ransomware sufferer and informed attendees it was as a result of they’d refused to rent his firm to carry out a forensic investigation on a latest breach.
“He claims he was concerned within the Martha Stewart investigation, the Bernie Madoff trial, Paul McCartney’s divorce, the Tom Petters investigation, the Denny Hecker investigation, and lots of others,” Harrington mentioned. “He claims to have been invited to talk to the Supreme Court docket, claims to coach the ‘total federal judiciary’ on cybersecurity yearly, and is a school member of the US Judicial Convention and the Judicial Faculty — positions which he obtained, partly, on a home of fraudulent playing cards.”
In an interview this week, Harrington mentioned court docket paperwork reveal that not less than two of Lanterman’s earlier purchasers complained CFS had held their information for ransom over billing disputes. In a declaration (PDF) dated August 2022, the co-founder of the regulation agency MoreLaw Minneapolis LLC mentioned she employed Lanterman in 2014 to look at a number of digital gadgets after studying that one in all their paralegals had a legal fraud historical past.
However the regulation agency mentioned when it pushed again on a consulting invoice that was far increased than anticipated, Lanterman informed them CFS would “escalate” its assortment efforts in the event that they didn’t pay, together with “a declare and lien towards the info which can lead to a public public sale of your information.”
“All of us have been flabbergasted by Mr. Lanterman’s e mail,” wrote MoreLaw co-founder Kimberly Hanlon. “I had by no means heard of any professional forensic firm threatening to ‘public sale’ off an legal professional’s information, significantly realizing that the info is comprised of confidential consumer information, a lot of which is delicate in nature.”
In 2009, a Wisconsin-based manufacturing firm that had employed Lanterman for pc forensics balked at paying an $86,000 bill from CFS, calling it “extreme and unsubstantiated.” The corporate informed a Hennepin County court docket that on April 15, 2009, CFS performed an public sale of its commerce secret data in violation of their confidentiality settlement.
“CFS seen and performed a Public Sale of digital data that was entrusted to them pursuant to the phrases of the engagement settlement,” the corporate wrote. “CFS submitted the best bid on the Public Sale within the quantity of $10,000.”
Lanterman briefly responded to an inventory of questions on his background (and up to date coronary heart prognosis) on March 24, saying he would ship detailed replies the next day. These replies by no means materialized. As an alternative, Lanterman forwarded a latest memo he wrote to the court docket that attacked Harrington and mentioned his accuser was solely making an attempt to take out a competitor. He has not responded to additional requests for remark.
“After I attended Upsala, I used to be a commuter pupil who lived with my grandparents in Morristown, New Jersey roughly half-hour away from Upsala Faculty,” Lanterman defined to the choose (PDF) overseeing a separate ongoing case (PDF) by which he has testified. “With restricted sources, I didn’t take part in campus social occasions, nor did I attend commencement ceremonies. In 2023, I confirmed with Felician College — which maintains Upsala Faculty’s information — that they may not find my transcripts or diploma, a state of affairs that they indicated was probably attributable to unresolved money-related points.”
Lanterman was ordered to seem in court docket on April 3 within the case defended by Perkins Coie, however he didn’t present up. As an alternative, he despatched a message to the choose withdrawing from the case.
“I’m 60 years outdated,” Lanterman informed the choose. “I created my enterprise from nothing. I’m carried out coping with the likes of people like Sean Harrington. And fairly frankly, I’ve been planning at turning over my enterprise to my youngsters for years. That point has arrived.”
Lanterman’s letter leaves the impression that it was his resolution to retire. However in keeping with an affidavit (PDF) filed in a Florida case on March 28, Mark Lanterman’s son Sean mentioned he’d made the troublesome resolution to ask his dad to step down given all of the destructive media consideration.
Mark Rasch, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor who now serves as counsel to the New York cybersecurity intelligence agency Unit 221B, mentioned that if an knowledgeable witness is discredited, any defendants who misplaced instances that have been strongly influenced by that knowledgeable’s conclusions at trial might have grounds for attraction.
Rasch mentioned regulation corporations who suggest an knowledgeable witness have an obligation in good religion to vet that knowledgeable’s {qualifications}, realizing that these credentials might be topic to cross-examination.
“Federal guidelines of civil process and proof each require specialists to record each case they’ve testified in as an knowledgeable for the previous few years,” Rasch mentioned. “A part of that due diligence is pulling up the outcomes of these instances and seeing what the character of their testimony has been.”
Maybe essentially the most well-publicized case involving vital forensic findings from Lanterman was the 2018 conviction of Stephen Allwine, who was discovered responsible of killing his spouse two years earlier after makes an attempt at hiring a hitman on the darkish web fell by means of. Allwine is serving a sentence of life in jail, and continues to take care of that he was framed, casting doubt on pc forensic proof discovered on 64 digital gadgets taken from his house.
On March 24, Allwine petitioned a Minnesota court docket (PDF) to revisit his case, citing the accusations towards Lanterman and his position as a key witness for the prosecution.
