What was the value of a lorry-load of hard disks?

How much can a web designer expect to earn?

Background:

A man was allegedly injured seriously when he fell in a well known retail store. He said that he was unable to work and was claiming a total of around £1.5 million for future costs of care and loss of earnings.

It was discovered that the Claimant had undertaken two University courses in new media (which included a considerable element of Web design). The solicitor acting for the Defendant had also discovered that the Claimant had created several Web sites although it was not clear whether there had been any payment involved.

My involvement:

I was asked to write a report detailing the likelihood that the Claimant could earn a living by working from home creating web sites. I looked into what equipment and software he would need to own in order to be able to do this. I also looked into what other work he might be able to undertake from home to mitigate his situation.

I immediately preserved what evidence was still on-line. Unfortunately many of the sites pertinent to the case had been amended to remove content that would have been useful to the Defendant. I did manage to retrieve much of this evidence using the facility available at www.archive.org

In the course of my enquiries I discovered that the Claimant featured prominently on several local pub web sites in their poker championships and I reported this back to the solicitor along with other information gathered from the Claimant's YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook pages. As a result, the solicitor instructed a surveillance specialist and I believe the evidence gathered has led to the Claimant being prosecuted for fraud. It is likely that the Defendant will pay little, if any, of the £1.500,000 being sought.

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