Digital Forensics Dispatch

Four Men Arrested in Monroe County Michigan, for Running Drug Ring Network

August 18, 2022

Drew Saunders, a writer for The Monroe News, recently published an article about 4 individuals trying to reduce their bonds in a drug ring case.

Ditaina Ronnell Addams, Ronald Lee Adams, Paris Orlander Bridgeforth, and Trevor Jesse Foreman were all accused of operating a drug ring in Monroe County and were denied their respective bail reduction requests.

All four men were arrested on April 28, 2022, after the Monroe Area Narcotics Team and Investigative Services (MANTIS) executed several raids. The four men are being charged with felony firearm and drug counts for allegedly running a drug distribution network.

MANTIS found evidence that was allegedly being used for the drug running operation including 16 cell phones and one laptop.

The prosecution reported that they sent the devices to a specialized digital forensics lab to analyze the data on the devices. The forensics lab then produced and shared PDFs of the data they found with the defense.

One of the defense attorneys argued that while the PDF reports they received were okay, they still wanted to be able to review the raw data from the phones so they could provide the complete story of what happened.

Being able to review raw data on top of reviewing the PDF report that the prosecution produced is important for a couple reasons.

First, while forensic tools are very reliable, it is possible that they can miss data or make mistakes at times if they are not completely up to date. The tools could not interpret the raw data correctly or just happen to miss important information in raw data. Second, if the forensic tools don’t support specific applications, they will not pull all the information that may be needed from those applications. As a forensic examiner, it is crucial to review the data that is produced instead of always relying on the forensic tools to do a perfect job.

Judge Vitale of Monroe County denied the defense attorney’s request to review the raw data, and the preliminary hearing will be on September 8, 2022.

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