By John O’Connor
For Variety
HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The U.S. government has completed agency review processes for three hard drive extractions in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance fraud case at the District Court of Guam, according to a status report filed Jan. 30.
Counsel for three defendants in the case provided storage devices to receive the extractions, and the FBI is assisting with their production, the status report added.
The FBI completed two transfers as of the report, which were delivered to counsels for Charissa Tenorio and Winnie Jo Santos, two of the defendants. The third transfer is destined for defendant Tina Sanchez and was expected to be delivered Monday.
Seven individuals in total have been accused of defrauding the PUA program, including government of Guam employees and relatives of Lt. Gov. Josh Tenorio.
In addition to Charissa Tenorio, Sanchez, and Santos, Frankie Rosalin, Kathleen Peredo, Marlene Pinaula, and Matthew Topasna are awaiting trial for charges related to conspiracy to defraud the PUA program out of $1.9 million between July 2020 and September 2021.
The case hasn’t just made local headlines but has garnered some attention from national outlets as well, not so much about the fraud charges but about how the FBI obtained information from hard drives related to the case.
Forbes reported in late January that the FBI served Microsoft a search warrant last year asking it to provide recovery keys to unlock encrypted data stored on three laptops.
According to the Forbes report, the data was protected with BitLocker, a Windows security feature used for encryption. A recovery key is used to regain access to a drive when it can’t be automatically unlocked, according to Microsoft’s website.
Microsoft handed over encryption keys to federal investigators, Forbes reported. The report stated that Microsoft confirmed it does provide BitLocker keys if it receives a valid legal order.
The Forbes report said Guam’s case is the first known instance where Microsoft has provided an encryption key to law enforcement. It went on to discuss privacy issues and concerns.
According to Post files, the trial for the PUA case defendants is more likely to occur in September due to a lengthy discovery process.
