Child pornography was discovered on a laptop seized as part of investigation into blackmail charges, a jury heard yesterday.

In agreed facts read in the Supreme Court, it was confirmed that images of a sexual nature were found on the laptop of two witnesses, both individually and together, taken before they were 16 years old.

The witnesses had both told the court that they had sent images and videos to a self-proclaimed hacker who threatened to release sexual materials of them.

In both cases, they said materials were released in 2015 when they stopped responding to the blackmailer.

The defendant, a 30-year-old from St George’s, has denied a string of offences including extortion, making child pornography, accessing child pornography and distributing child pornography.

Neither he nor the claimants in the case can be identified for legal reasons.

As the trial continued yesterday, the jury heard evidence from Nigel Richardson, a digital forensics officer with the Bermuda Police Service.

Mr Richardson said that as part of his work, he received the seized Dell laptop and after analysing the physical device itself, created a copy of the laptop’s hard drive.

“It would be like having a piece of paper with writing or notes on it and making an exact copy of it without touching the original,” he said.

“In the forensic world, we don’t want to do anything with the original drive.”

Under cross-examination by Elizabeth Christopher, for the defence, Mr Richardson said that he had recently looked at the laptop again and that it was able to power on, but there were issues with its display.

Asked if the process of copying the hard drive could change or remove the metadata of the files, such as the creation date, he said it was “highly unlikely”.

“Metadata in its totality, it can be added to but the original metadata cannot be altered or changed,” he said. “That’s why you have a creation date and a modification date.”

The trial continues.

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