Forensic Expert Steven Abrams: [Cami’s Child Porn] ‘Photo Evidence Is Unreliable and Should Have Been Excluded’ at Raniere’s Trial

I want to tell readers exactly what I told Keith Raniere’s supporters: A tsunami is coming at Raniere, a wave of bad publicity the likes of which he has never seen – and they will call that tsunami “Cami,” short for Camila.

Cami, now 30, is expected to make a statement as a victim at Keith’s sentencing declaring she was 15 when Keith started having sex with her and taking nude photos.

As Raniere’s attorney, Marc Agnifilo said, “Cami is going to bring the house down.”

I advised Raniere supporters to hold up on efforts for a new trial based on their evidence of alleged FBI tampering with Cami’s photos until after Cami makes her statement and the press fully reports it.

Otherwise, their efforts will be buried by the palpable reality that, despite technical arguments that child porn pictures of Cami used to convict Raniere should not have been admissible as evidence because the FBI allegedly tampered with them, Cami is going to tell the world they are her pictures and she was 15 years old when Raniere made her pose naked.

Who are you going to believe – a victim coming forward at great personal expense and telling her horrifying story – or forensic experts paid for by Raniere and supporters – who will give technical reports with provisional statements – that the photos were likely tampered with – either before or after the FBI got custody of them?

After Tuesday, no one is going to care about possible tampering of the Cami photos – not after Cami declares they are real.

Of course, this does not mean Raniere and his supporters should not gather tampering evidence and use it on appeal – after sentencing. But Raniere wants to – in his delusional way – get his supporters fired up in an attempt to try to get his sentencing adjourned.

Maybe he is trying one last time to ruin them – getting them to stand in the line of media fire – before Cami comes out and obliterates him – and possibly them – tarnishing their names – painting their names with the same brush as Raniere – as supporters of pedophilia.

I do not think Raniere’s supporters support pedophilia. But they will do almost anything for him and he declared he wants his sentencing postponed.

His attorney, Agnifilo, said that, even if a meteor hit the earth, the judge will sentence Raniere on Tuesday.

When told this, Keith reportedly told supporters, “Pray for a meteor.”

But there will be no meteor. Cami is telling the truth. She is a victim [even though prosecutors said during the trial that she is a co-conspirator with Raniere in the sex trafficking of Nicole].

She is taking the brave path now, coming forward and putting the nail in Raniere’s coffin. That puts her among the forefront, the vanguard if you will, of those who played a role in stopping the monster.

That said, there may be a technicality that may help Raniere in the future. It is possible that the hard drive and media card that contained Cami’s underage pictures were tampered with. It seems the chain of custody was broken – and the evidence appears to have been handled poorly; someone got into the devices while they were in FBI custody.  That might be an issue on appeal and might lead to a new trial.

It won’t stop him from being sentenced though, as Raniere hopes, no matter how hard his followers hit the media. They will get some press on Monday – about tampering and they will be blown away on Tuesday by Cami.

I told this to Raniere’s followers. They understand and probably believe it. But Keith wants them to try and so they will – even at their own personal expense.

In reporting events leading up to sentencing, and because I like Keith’s supporters [even though I think they are sadly misled by Keith], I am going to report their point of view: They think Cami’s pictures were tampered with. I think they honestly believe Keith did not rape Cami when she was 15.

I interviewed one of their experts, cyber expert, attorney Steven Abrams. There is no doubt about his credentials. He is a genuine expert. Check out his Curriculum Vitae

I asked Abrams a few questions on Zoom and here are video clips along with the transcripts:

Video 1

Parlato: Based on the assumption that this information is all true, do you get the impression that if this is true, that there was tampering [of the Camila photos]?

Abrams: It does appear that way. I mean, it appears, first of all, that the evidence was grossly mishandled to start with. And by the time the FBI figured out that somebody had written over the data after they seized it, at that point, they probably knew that they had a problem. I want to be clear: I do believe that the data most likely has been tampered with.

I don’t necessarily think that it was necessarily the FBI that tampered with it. It was tampered with somewhere along the line.

It could have been tampered with before they [the FBI] got it, and then they then could have made matters worse by writing over some of the access tape before they had logged the hard drive and the compact flash card into their evidence.

At that point, that evidence should have been excluded. It’s just not valid at that point. And there’s really nothing they can do to resuscitate the validity of it. Part of the problem is that you don’t know when some of their date and timestamps were changed.

But you have the admission by the [FBI] agent in the transcript from the trial that he – that somebody – accessed the devices on the 19th of September of 2018, six months after they had it in their possession. And they know that because some of the access dates were changed to that day.

At that point, you say “Well, this evidence is no longer valid. It’s been written on, and it’s been written on by an unknown person – so your chain of custody now has a break in it.” There’s no way to fix that. There’s no way to say that the evidence goes back to the person you’re alleging it goes back to at that point. Because there have been intervening persons who have had access to that evidence between the person you’re alleging put the things onto it and the time that your examiner got to it.

Video 2:

Parlato: If all of this is true, they mishandled this evidence?

Abrams: They grossly mishandled the evidence.

Parlato: They grossly mishandled the evidence.

Abrams: One thing I don’t understand is how the FBI can take this evidence into their possession in March and not log it into their evidence system for months and months and months after they have it. That makes no sense to me at all. It should go directly from whoever seizes it to evidence and be logged in and have an appropriate chain of custody travel with it throughout the FBI for the entire time it’s there. And that was not the case here.

Parlato: So just the very fact that the agent himself, in testimony in the trial, admitted that somebody got into it. Shouldn’t just that alone have made the evidence unreliable?

Abrams: I believe that. In fact, I think I say that: I think that evidence is unreliable and should not have been relied on for anything, and should have been excluded.

Parlato: Even without any forensic work, just the agent’s testimony in the case itself, right, would be enough to raise a serious red flag, right?

Abrams: Right, exactly. Just the evidence that was testified to by the agent – that somebody had access, he doesn’t know who it was – should be enough to say, “That’s the end of this piece of evidence.”

Video 3:

Parlato: Is it possible that someone did more than just look at pictures or look at the evidence – that they could have actually altered pictures, done real, deliberate evidence tampering? Added a picture, or changed a picture?

Abrams: It’s possible. Once you have no control – once you lose control over the evidence, there’s no limit to the range of types of mischief that could occur to it… Anything could have happened to those pictures at that point because they hadn’t logged it in yet, they hadn’t made a forensic copy of it yet. So, they don’t know what they’re starting from. And then somebody gets access to it. Now they have no way of getting back to where it was before whoever touched it, touched it. At that point it’s irreparable, the harm is irreparable – there’s no way to fix it.

Parlato: So they could have swapped a picture, right? They could have taken an adult woman’s picture and tossed in a girl’s picture if they wanted to – a child’s picture – and still be called the same file, or no?

Abrams: If what is alleged that they’ve changed the metadata on these pictures, then it is possible you could add additional pictures into the collection as long as you change the filename to be consistent with the pictures in that collection. And they would appear that they were part of a collection…Now we also have the situation that the EXIF file that’s on the hard drive shows that the picture was created with Adobe. And so that says to me that somebody has altered some of that metadata along the way and that the image has been altered because it went through Photoshop.

END OF ABRAMS INTERVIEW

This is a reasonable issue to raise on appeal. During the trial, the prosecution did not have Camila as a witness. Were there to be a re-trial, she might agree to be a witness for the prosecution.

If the FBI altered evidence to get a conviction on the Cami child porn, then Raniere is possibly entitled to a new trial, for that evidence was the most damning evidence of the trial.

A fair trial, with Cami testifying, will bury the rascal, the punk who raped a 15-year-old girl.  Yet, even this cowardly rascal deserves to be convicted fairly, if, in fact, his first trial was unfair.

Of course, I am no forensic expert. I have no idea if the FBI or anyone altered photos of Cami after the FBI took possession of them. I am only saying that, if they did tamper with the photos – and it can be proven – then Raniere deserves his due process remedy.

I also believe he is guilty. Indeed, the actions of Raniere and his followers may have prompted prosecutors to bring Camila to the sentencing and get her story finally on the public record in her own words: “That Keith Raniere not only exploited me for child porn, he also raped me repeatedly as a child.”

That’s the tsunami coming at Keith on Tuesday. I only hope it does not wash away his followers as well.

Frank Parlato