How we got here
Choi was a young attorney a few years out of law school, working at the Denver District Attorney’s Office in various roles between 2019 and 2022. Beginning in 2021, she accused her colleague, Dan Hines, of sexual misconduct. Hines, she said at first, made an inappropriate remark to her. Hines denied it and nothing could be proven, but he was still transferred to another unit.
In 2022, Choi complained again. This time, she offered phone records showing inappropriate text messages she allegedly received from Hines. But Hines, who denied everything, offered investigators his own phone records, which showed no texts to Choi.
Investigators then went directly to Verizon for records, which showed that “Ms. Choi had texted the inappropriate messages to herself,” according to the Times. “In addition, she changed the name in her phone to make it appear as though Mr. Hines was the one who had sent them.”
At this point, the investigators started looking more closely at Choi and asked for her devices, leading to the incident described above.
In the end, Choi was fired from the DA’s office and eventually given a disbarment order by the Office of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge, which she can still appeal. For his part, Hines is upset about how he was treated during the whole situation and has filed a lawsuit of his own against the DA’s office, believing that he was initially seen as a guilty party even in the absence of evidence.
The case is a reminder that, despite well-founded concerns over tracking, data collection, and privacy, sometimes the modern world’s massive data collection can work to one’s benefit. Hines was able to escape the second allegation against him precisely because of the specific (and specifically refutable) digital evidence that was presented against him—as opposed to the murkier world of “he said/she said.”
Choi might have done as she liked with her devices, but her “evidence” wasn’t the only data out there. Investigators were able to draw on Hines’ own phone data, along with Verizon network data, to see that he had not been texting Choi at the times in question.
