The messages are the case. The foundation is the fight.
In family-law, employment, harassment, and fraud matters, the text thread is often the single most important exhibit — and the most contested. This page is the attorney’s workflow surface: how texts get authenticated, when a screenshot survives and when it does not, what an FRE 902(14) certification contains, and how fabricated messages get caught. If your problem is recovering deleted texts rather than producing ones you have, that is a different engagement: start at deleted text message recovery.
Engagements are confidential and structured to begin within 48 hours of the consultation. Quinn (Founder and CEO) oversees every engagement and reviews every case before findings leave the practice.
- A direct line to Quinn, the founder — not a sales pipeline.
- Worked in-house by the examiner who scoped it.
- Explainable findings you can verify, with the methodology shown.
What this means for you
- Written scope before any work. You see a written scope — deliverables, timeline, and price — and approve it before we begin. You are never billed for work you did not authorize.
- We commit to findings, not outcomes. We tell you up front what the evidence can and cannot establish. Recovery, attribution, and prosecution are decided by banks, platforms, insurers, and courts — we produce the record they act on, and we put that distinction in writing.
- Every case is investigated, not just scanned. A credentialed examiner reviews every case before findings leave the practice. You get a documented investigation to court-admissible standards — not a single automated scan and a one-line answer.
- We will tell you if you do not need us. If a free or simpler step — a police report, an IC3 filing, a platform's own recovery flow — would resolve your situation, we point you there first.
Screenshots vs. forensic extraction — what the case law actually says
The record is more pragmatic than the folklore. New York’s high court, in People v. Rodriguez, 38 N.Y.3d 151 (2022), took a commonsense line: a participant to the conversation, with personal knowledge, can authenticate screenshots of it. Screenshots are not categorically out.
But the exclusion cases show where the floor gives way. In United States v. Vayner, 769 F.3d 125 (2d Cir. 2014), the Second Circuit excluded a printout of a VK.com social-media profile offered without a sufficient FRE 901 foundation. In Moroccanoil, Inc. v. Marc Anthony Cosmetics, Inc., 57 F. Supp. 3d 1203 (C.D. Cal. 2014), Facebook screenshots were excluded where offered without authenticating foundation. And Commonwealth v. Koch, 39 A.3d 996 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2011), makes the authorship point: ownership of the phone number alone did not establish who wrote the messages.
The pattern across all of them: screenshots can get in with the right foundation, and forensic extraction makes the foundation far harder to attack — the extraction preserves the message database with its metadata, supports the 902(14) certification path, and answers the “is this the whole conversation?” cross before it is asked. The full foundations walkthrough is public: authenticating text messages under FRE 901/902, and the screenshot problem in family court specifically: screenshots aren’t enough.
Anatomy of an FRE 902(14) certification
FRE 902(14)lets data copied from a device, storage medium, or file self-authenticate through a certification of a qualified person describing a digital-identification process — the committee note names hash-value comparison: a match makes it highly improbable that the original and copy are not identical. In practice the certification carries the examiner’s identity and qualifications, the acquisition method, and the hash record. Our workflow captures the acquisition and verification hashes a Rule 902(14) certification requires, and our examiner prepares those certifications for counsel — with the advance-notice procedure planned against your disclosure calendar.
The honest boundary: 902(14) settles authenticity of the copy— that what you are producing is what came off the device. It does not resolve hearsay, relevance, or authorship (Koch’s point). Whether an examiner is a “qualified person” is the court’s determination on the record. A certification well-built narrows the fight; it does not end it.
Fabricated and spoofed messages
Text-message fabrication is no longer a fringe risk — screenshot generators are free and convincing. The examinable questions are artifact-level: does the message exist in the device’s message database, or only in an image? Is the database record’s internal structure consistent with how the platform actually writes messages? Do timestamps reconcile against server-side and carrier records? Fabrication artifacts, where present, are identifiable— and when we are retained to examine the other side’s proffered messages, that is the checklist the report walks. The related trap — a hearsay objection you did not see coming — is covered in the hearsay trap in text-message evidence.
How an engagement begins
- Confidential consultation. NDA-protected. 30-60 minutes. Direct conversation, no sales process.
- Scoped engagement. Written proposal with defined deliverables and pricing — fixed fee where it applies, hourly with milestone caps for open-ended investigations.
- Investigation and findings. Court-ready standards. Written report you can act on.
Why this work matters
The thread that wins the case is the thread that survives the challenge — foundation first. Quinn holds 9 active certifications across GIAC — methodology aligned to NIST SP 800-86 and SWGDE practice, trusted by the attorneys who refer to us.
