How we came
Choi was a young lawyer who, several years after graduating from law school, worked in the Denver District Attorney’s Office in various positions from 2019 to 2022. As of 2021, she accused her colleague Dan Hines of sexual harassment. Hines, she initially stated, made an inappropriate comment to her. Hines denied this and nothing might be proven, but he was transferred to one other unit nonetheless.
In 2022, Choi filed a criticism again. This time, she offered phone records that showed inappropriate text messages she allegedly received from Hines. However, Hines, who denied all the things, offered investigators his own phone records, which didn’t show that Choi had sent text messages.
Investigators then went directly to Verizon to obtain documentation that showed that “Ms. Choi had sent inappropriate text messages to herself,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “She further changed the name on her phone to make it appear that Mr. Hines sent it.”
At this point, investigators began taking a more in-depth take a look at Choi and asked for her devices, which led to the incident described above.
Ultimately, Choi was fired from the district attorney’s office and the Office of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge ultimately issued a disbarment order, which she will still appeal. For his part, Hines is upset with the best way he was treated in the entire situation and has filed his own lawsuit against the district attorney’s office, believing that he was initially perceived as guilty even in the absence of evidence.
The case is a reminder that despite legitimate concerns about tracking, data collection and privacy, sometimes there might be advantages to mass data collection in the trendy world. Hines managed to avoid the second charge against him precisely due to the concrete (and particularly debunkable) digital evidence that was presented against him – as opposed to the murkier world of “he said/she said.”
Choi could do whatever she wanted along with her devices, but her “evidence” wasn’t the one data available. Using data from Hines’ own phone and Verizon data, investigators determined that he was not texting Choi on the time.
