Long story and a bit complicated, but at a high level, I had emails that might be used as evidence against a police department for negligence. They are being investigated in a wider investigation by the DOJ, I am just one of many victim testimonials.
I recently checked and somehow every email I had with that department is completely gone from my email. I’ve checked everywhere. Even emails when I forwarded the thread to someone are gone.
Few questions from a tech perspective -
Is it possible to locate these emails?
Is it possible that something nefarious happened - either my email was hacked or google worked with a law enforcement agency to grant access? Or am I being paranoid? I keep telling myself I probably deleted them by accident but it’s still freaking me out.
Could these emails be recovered if the DOJ was involved or are they just gone forever?
You can check the trash bin.
If they aren’t in there than they are gone.
If you have a device with pop3 you could check if they are still there.
You can check the last devices that where logged in if they aren’t deleted.
Didn’t your lawyer suggested to safe them?
You can ask your lawyer to contact Google support. So they know that it’s for a case. But the chances feo recovery are small.