Andrew McDermott

Andrew McDermott is a digital evidence consultant and expert witness with 24 years of law enforcement experience in complex criminal investigations. He is retained by prosecution and defense counsel in criminal and civil matters involving cellular call detail records, historical cell site and location data, forensic device extractions, social media, vehicle telematics, and digital media evidence.

Law enforcement career

At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, he served as a Detective Sergeant supervising counterterrorism investigations and, later, the Organized Crime Bureau's deep undercover squad. He was deputized as an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Officer, held a Top Secret/SCI security clearance, and worked with the U.S. Secret Service on dignitary and presidential protection operations. As a federally deputized ATF Task Force Officer, he served as case agent on large-scale, multi-jurisdictional organized crime investigations conducted under federal jurisdiction.

In Aurora, Colorado, he served with the Gang Intervention Unit and then as a Task Force Detective with the Regional Anti-Violence Enforcement Network (RAVEN), again as an ATF Task Force Officer, investigating serial shootings, homicides, violent robberies, and sexual assaults. He used pen registers, precision location and geolocation orders, device extractions, CDRs, social media warrants, and vehicle tracking to build cases, and served as the designated technical reviewer for all digital data cases within the task force and across partner jurisdictions.

Digital evidence leadership & training

As Director of Global Training and Customer Education at LeadsOnline, he led training operations across the company's Intelligence and Ballistic product lines, served as its internal and external subject matter expert on digital data, built advanced curricula covering CDRs, timing advance, vehicle telematics, forensic device extractions, social media, and digital media evidence, and directed exigent analytical support for active, high-stakes investigations.

Before that, as Lead of Training and Analytical Support at Nighthawk Ascend, he delivered advanced digital data exploitation training to thousands of investigators, analysts, and prosecutors nationwide and designed a Digital Data Exploitation Subject Matter Expert certification program. He also contributed practitioner input to the development of the Nighthawk digital data visualization platform at Radix Metasystems.

Areas of expertise

• Call detail record (CDR) analysis
• Historical cell site & location analysis
• Timing advance interpretation
• Data session interpretation
• Cellular network fundamentals (RF behavior)
• Device extraction interpretation & analysis
• GPS, app & platform location data
• Vehicle telematics & movement reconstruction
• Digital media (image & video) analysis
• Media authentication & comparison
• Social media & open-source investigations
• Multi-source timeline integration
• Peer review of digital evidence reports