Aaron W. King CCO CCPA
(Founder of Southern California Digital Forensics)
Aaron W. King recently transitioned from the public sector to private sector employment after serving 30+ years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and honorably retiring in January 2020. He founded Southern California Digital Forensics in the fall of 2020.
Aaron W. King served with distinction and integrity during his tenure with the LASD, working a variety of assignments throughout his career. After graduating from the academy in 1990, he went on to work as a custody deputy at Men’s Central Jail. He worked his first patrol assignment in 1995 at Century Sheriff’s Station, which covers the city of Lynwood, and county areas such as Willowbrook, Florence, and Firestone districts. After having worked there for three years, he returned to custody division where he worked in an administrative capacity at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. He returned to patrol in the year 2000 and worked in the city of Cerritos.
He spent a total of 14 years at the Cerritos Sheriff’s Station, where he worked in a patrol capacity from 2000-2007. While working patrol in Cerritos, he worked as a field training officer, and briefly as a directed patrol deputy. He then promoted to station level detective.
While working as a detective from 2007-2014 at the Cerritos Sheriff’s Station, Aaron W. King investigated a variety of crimes including:
- Residential burglary
- Robbery
- Grand and petty larceny
- Identity theft
- Assault with a deadly weapon
- Rape
- Embezzlement
- Domestic violence
In 2014, Aaron W. King received a promotion, and transferred to Detective Division, Fraud and Cyber Crimes Bureau, where he worked as a High Tech Crimes Investigator Deputy. While at FCCB, he investigated crimes such as grand theft embezzlement, theft of intellectual property, and copyright infringement.
The bulk of his tenure at FCCB was spent conducting forensic examinations of electronic devices such as computers, tablets, and cell phones. Aaron W. King received extensive training in the field of computer/digital forensics from:
- California Department of Justice; Computer Criminalistics Institute (200+ hours)
- National White Collar Crime Center (80+ hours)
- US Department of Homeland Security; ICE – BCERT (240 hours)
- OpenText/Encase (200+ hours)
- Cellebrite (40 hours)
Aaron W. King was certified in 2015 as a Cellebrite Logical Operator, and Physical Analyst.
In September 2019, Aaron W. King became an Encase Certified Examiner after completing OpenText/Encase’s extensive computer forensics training program.
Aaron W. King worked a total of 6 years in his capacity as a computer forensics examiner while assigned to the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Fraud and Cyber Crimes Bureau. During his tenure there he examined hundreds of digital devices including computers, tablets, and cell phones.
During his combined 13 years as an investigator while employed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, he authored numerous search warrants while investigating the crimes listed above.
He has testified as an expert witness in the field of computer/cell phone forensics on multiple occasions in Los Angeles County Superior Court in cases involving homicide, human trafficking, and possession/distribution of child pornography.
The combination of Aaron W. King’s experience as a patrol deputy, station level detective, and computer forensics examiner brings a significant amount of value to his clients and is what sets him apart from other experts/consultants.
In August of 2017, while still employed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and assigned to the Southern California High Tech Task Force, Aaron W. King responded to the South Los Angeles Sheriff’s Station at the request of Homicide Investigators for the purpose of extracting the data from Victim Gemel Moore’s cell phone. After extracting the device’s data using CELLEBRITE UFED4PC software, Aaron W. King provided Homicide detectives working the case with a text message thread between Ed Buck and Gemel Moore which he believed to be directly related to the case.
Aaron W. King testified as an expert in the field of cell phone forensics in Federal Court during the Ed Buck trial in July 2021. The text message thread located on Gemel Moore’s cell phone was a key piece of evidence used by the US Attorney during the trial, and was an important factor that led to the conviction of Ed Buck on all charges.
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