FORMER Imperial Pacific International LLC chairwoman Lijie Cui has filed a declaration in federal court regarding her cell phone data.
She said she purchased her iPhone XS in Hong Kong.
“To the best of my recollection,” she told the court “I visited Mansund Technology cell phone store in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong to repair my phone sometime in 2018 and or 2019. I have been on Saipan since February of 2020.”
Cui filed the declaration in response to the federal court’s order.
On Jan. 10, 2022, Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the District Court for the NMI said the daily sanction of $1,000 will continue related to Cui’s failure to comply with a previous order regarding electronically stored information or ESI.
Cui is a third-party witness in the lawsuit of seven construction workers against IPI and its former contractor and subcontractor, MCC International and Gold Mantis Construction Decoration, both of which have already settled with the plaintiffs: Tianming Wang, Dong Han, Yongjun Meng, Liangcai Sun, Youli Wang, Qingchun Xu, and Duxin Yan. Their lawsuit alleged labor violations and human trafficking.
According to the court, because the $5.4 million default judgment in favor of the plaintiffs against IPI remained unsatisfied, all ESI data held by the former IPI chair remain relevant to the proceeding.
Cui has been found in contempt of court for non-compliance with previous orders.
The investigator retained by Cui, Jeremiah Wolfe, stated that he conducted an interview with Fely Forbes, an employee of IT&E.
According to Wolfe, Forbes told him that on May 10, 2021 at approximately 10 a.m. Mr. Howyo Chi (Cui’s interpreter) and Ms. Lijie Cui came to her place of employment to do a file transfer of Ms. Cui’s iPhone XS Max to Ms. Cui’s iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Forbes said Chi purchased 50GB of iCloud storage on May 9, 2021. She said the date could not be the May 10, 2021 purchase Mr. Chi made in IT&E, and that the discrepancy in dates could not be due to the settings on the phone because the iPhone XS Max was set to the correct time and date when she saw it. She said this meant “he had purchased this before, a day before.” She said she thinks Mr. Chi purchased the iCloud under the jie133211@gmail account on May 9, 2021.
Forbes also stated that the discrepancy in dates could be because the play store country and region was set to China.
She said if the play store is set to a different zone, the phone purchases will follow that setting. She said it’s possible the play store country and region was set to China, but the time zone region was set to Guam or Saipan. In that case, she said, the May 9, 2021 receipt could be the same purchase as that made by Mr. Chi at IT&E on May 10, 2021, but in a China time zone.
“Chi did a backup on May 9, 2021 to that iCloud account and then logged it out and then logged in a new account, and then backed up, so that the backup that’s synced on that new…account is from a previous backup which is 32 gigs internal storage, and that’s the one I was supposed to back up on the iTunes.”
Forbes believes Chi “backed up whatever’s on that unit on that day, and then logged in a different iCloud, came to the store and asked for help to backup. To backup whatever’s on the old iPhone again to that iCloud.”
Forbes said in order to reset a backup encrypted password, you have to call Apple and give them your information and that’s when Apple will reset it for you.
Wolfe stated that the he also conducted a telephone interview of an employee of Mansund Technology Company in Hong Kong, Mr. Wing Wu. Wu was shown a photograph of Ms. Cui by an associate of Wolfe based in Hong Kong. Wu said he recognized the person in the photo, and he recalled that the person had visited Mansund Technology Company, but that it was several years ago.
Wu stated that he could not recall the purpose of Cui’s visit and if a backup of a customer’s phone was made during a visit, their company policy is to delete the backup after the customer leaves.
“As part of my investigation,” Wolfe added, “I reviewed the passport of Lijie Cui. The most recent stamp in the passport was a stamp by the United States Department of Homeland Security with date February 2, 2020.”
Michele Bush, a digital forensics expert at Loehrs Forensics LLC based in Phoenix, Arizona, noted in her declaration that even if the forensic evidence supported the opinion that the phone had been factory reset on or about March 21, 2021, iTunes does not allow a user to be selective with the data included in a backup.
This means a user cannot limit the backup to only photos and call logs and exclude notes, text messages, and emails, Bush said.
Rather, iTunes automates the backup process and will include all data available on that device. Likewise, a user cannot select limited data to restore to a phone from a backup. iTunes will restore all the data within a backup to the phone beyond a user’s control, she added.
Judge Manglona scheduled an evidentiary hearing for Feb. 8, 2022 at 8:30 a.m.
