Richard commenced general policing with the London Metropolitan Police in 1968 and joined the Royal Hong Kong Police in 1971, later serving as a chief inspector in the Special Branch. In 1980, he moved to Australia and worked as a desk officer and case officer with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. He later worked in several federal and state government agencies, including the Western Australia Department of Treasury and Finance, as a senior intelligence officer.

Between 1991 and 2015, he was an investigator, security analyst and digital forensic practitioner, providing independent consultancy services for legal practitioners and organisations requiring independent digital forensic examinations and reports. This included analysing case evidence in criminal and civil cases heard at Magistrate, District and Commonwealth Courts. His case work included the compilation of digital forensic reports and testifying as an expert witness on complex technical matters to assist the jury in understanding digital evidence presented during trial.

Recent forensic examinations included analysing digital evidence recovered from computers, mobile phones, and other digital devices and then preparing expert testimony relating to a broad range of criminal and civil cases. Richard has provided expert testimony during District and Federal Court trials and assisted defence counsels on digital evidence relating to trials including homicide, fraud, bomb threats as well as family law and civil matters.

He is the principal officer of my own business, Forensics Australia and has completed over 300 digital forensic examinations on behalf of private clients involving criminal defence and some prosecution cases, family law matters and other civil actions. More recently he assisted Criminal Defence teams during trial as a technical paralegal in a) developing case strategies and b) the identification of inadequacies in forensic practice and case investigation that failed to address exculpatory evidence and analyse anomalous digital evidence to meet the Court’s expectations.

Between 2005 and 2015 he was Unit Coordinator – lecturer and researcher at Murdoch University (and the University of Western Australia in 2015) teaching information security and digital forensics. In 2008, he commenced developing and coordinating information security and digital forensics undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Murdoch University, where he was responsible for the creation of a digital forensic and information security degree offering. This involved the design and coordination of undergraduate and post-graduate units providing students virtual analyses of simulated computer crimes.

This practical training and theoretical education better prepared students to become IT security professionals in government and corporations. It also readied them to deal more effectively with computer-related crime incidents and preserve fragile evidence for legal proceedings. He provided a unique online virtual digital forensics unit for postgraduate students at the University of Western Australia in 2014.

Richard also undertook the supervision of honours and post-graduate researchers, receiving commendations for teaching excellence and undertook PhD research into validating digital evidence.

He is the principal officer of his own business, Forensics Australia and has published a range of academic articles and two books:

Practical Digital Forensics

and

Hidden Evidence in Plain Sight - Identifying and Managing Bias in Digital Evidence Evaluation