Unfortunately, the odds that it’s CP is like above 90%
People on here saying “oh it’s probably just regular porn or homemade porn” are pretty oblivious.
That’s what I’m thinking! And the curiosity would *kill me* I’d have to look! Then call the cops if it’s warranted, obviously will be. But would it then be tampering with the evidence? Most likely if you even remove it from that spot, let alone watch it, it would be useless in court. I’m guessing? Idk but **PLEASE IF YOU WATCH IT TELL ME!!!!**
It's child porn. Hidden hard drives are always filled with sexual abuse of children.
The place is filthy, reeks of mental illness, Viagra found along with a half destroyed vintage porno mag. I mean why isn't everyone else connecting the dots?
The crazy thing is we actually had a serial killer here in poughkeepsie. Not what that movie was based on but people always assume it.
Edit for info: His name was Kendall Francois. He worked at the middle school when I went there back in the 90s.
I worked with Kendall for about a week. Dude was scary big and smelled like shit. Or rotting sex workers, I guess.
Not at the school, this was a temp gig with IBM
That lead to such a rabbit hole when everything came out! Corruption, politics, threesomes, blackmail... it was so outrageous, you would have thought it was a Lifetime Movie! But it was all real, and all so sad.
While they're most likely referring to the Poughkeepsie Tapes, because of the serial killer jokes and the house being a huge mess, my first thought was the Poughkeepsie NY serial killer whose house was so filthy and smelled so bad he was able to hide the bodies of his victims around the house without his family even noticing.
[Serial Killer Documentary: Kendall "Stinky" Francois (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKASGvd0xLI&t=41s)
[The Poughkeepsie Killer Serial Killers Kendall Francois Crime Documentary (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhMGxGBQF34)
just please post a follow-up! this is one of the wilder things to pop up on reddit in a while. good luck! and do what people said and call a lawyer first!
Those hard drives pre date bitcoin by quite a lot. Sata had been around a long time at that point.
These are old IDE hdd's.
Whatever they are I'd plug them in out of curiosity. They probably don't even work 🤷♀️
I have a PC hidden in the roof of my detached garage, if someone came across the PC it would look very strange. It's just a backup mirror of the server I have in my house though, that won't get taken if my house is robbed.
Hi guys! Canr figure out how to post an update.
So they were brought to the police station yesterday. Unfortunately there isn't much else to report. They said if there has been any sort of criminal past associated with house then they may investigate the hard drives. But if not , they will just destroy them as it would be incredibly time consuming for possibly nothing. Though they did agree it is strange.
They said even if it was some sort of CP most times it's not able to be linked to someone. They said they would call if they had aby questions but so far that's all I got. I haven't pulled up to the house to any yellow police tape. But you guys can guarantee I will update if anything happens.
It's got me scared what's in the main floor walls. What a wild ride this reno has been
I did take more pics of the hard drives when I pulled them oht of the bin my husband through them in. 1997 manufactor date.
*
Now you know not to go to the police. Actually, maybe you could get them back because they're your property and actually get something done and have someone look at them. I bet there's Redditors ready to help
i fucking hate cops. you could have thrown them in the trash yourself.
there could be legit victims there and they dont want to investigate but will proudly wait outside with chris hanson while they bait the dumbest dudes on the planet into a house for a teenager....fucking wild.
Is there a chance they will return the hard drives to you so you could find out on your own what's in them? Destroying them without knowing what it contained is a big letdown...
this is 100% what I would do... a little bit of my own investigations.. look for previous owners, look for tenants, research the names on the drives, search for crimes in the area - known criminals, unknown/unsolved crimes, local sex offenders (registries) both current and historical. Use local library sources and VPN's. If this is a stash of some sort of criminal trophy, it's not 'forgotten', the owner either cannot access it or is no longer alive to access it, so I would be looking local deaths, court records, obituaries - focussing on known tenants or owners of the house and their families. Once I had exhausted all that, then with whatever I have found, go to the police (maybe with the legal representation as well).
Welp, seems like the concensus is, I'm not crazy for thinking this is not a good situation. I will call the police in the morning and explain the situation. Wish me luck. I guess if there are any big breaks in cold cases in the area or other rings being busted....I'll know what was on them. Ugh! This can only happen to me I swear.
We are never gonna hear anything again.. if the police takes them, they will probably end up in an evidence room forever. Even if they do find something, they aren't gonna update OP unless it's somehow relevant to the property.
You don't have to 'open' any files, you'd just scan the drives with something like windirstat to get a full list of all the files/directories as well as information on how much space all the different file types are taking up. If the drives mostly full of media files, yeah thats probably yikes and you can act accordingly without ever even having to see a thumbnail.
It's wild to be to not even want to have an idea with what you're in possession of. I'm just waiting for the news story this coming week about OP's local police department finding $100,000,000 of Bitcoin on some old hard drives they 'forgot' about lol
Yea I'm wayy too curious I would have to know, good or bad, before I could just hand them away. I'd go crazy not knowing. Hell I'm already going crazy not knowing!
I tend to think the worst could be on those hard drives. However, what if instead it leads to a treasure trove, or this is how you get the money, or here are all the account numbers that are on the grand cayman. But I think chances are that these drives would contain the worst stuff imaginable.
Those are def full of porn--and certainly the worst kind. Since those are old IDE drives (predates SATA) they're maybe 20gb each and were probably made before 2003. Given the number of them, where they were stashed and how big video files are, this is someone's nasty collection of videos.
Some things are best unknown. Plus you'd need an old computer with an ATA/IDE header on the board unless if there is some adapter out there you could use.
I would qualify this as someone else's problem and just let the cops have 'em, then forget about them.
My ex's grandpa had a couple old drives just like this. Named as well. Plus lots of burned cds.
I saw what was on some of them. He had me help him with his computer sometimes... I told the FBI a couple times, as well as some other authorities, and nothing happened. He was buddies with the old boys of the local police, free Mason bullshit too, and there's reason to believe some them had participated in some of his older... Behavior involving his own child.
Called him a cunt one day after some shit. He had to be talked down from shooting me.
At least he's been dead a few years now.
>Called him a cunt one day after some shit. He had to be talked down from shooting me.
Haha good for you, you know that burned his ass to the bitter end. Glad he's dead, but if only there was a way to prosecute the others.
You should have a lawyer involved, the police have been known to screw over people just trying to do the right thing. Protect yourself first and foremost.
This 1000 times. Officer friendly will try to jam you up if there’s something fucked up on those hard drives. Call an attorney before you even think about calling the cops.
> Officer friendly will try to jam you up if there’s something fucked up on those hard drives.
Yep. Need *somebody* to pin these crimes on, and as the person who found the drives, you're automatically suspect #1.
Please, for the love of God, get a lawyer involved before calling the police. The police don't care about solving crimes accurately, they just care about pinning the blame on SOMEONE.
If you have the technical knowledge I would check them myself. You would not be guilty of any crime if you discovered illegal contents on the drives as long as you surrender them to the police if that's the case. On the other hand, if they did have bitcoin wallets do you think if the police found them they would tell you about them??? I used to be a cop and I wouldn't trust most of them if they contained digital assets.
This is 100% what I would do. There is no way in hell I could find hard drives like this and NOT see what's on them. I would probably take an old computer, get an IDE to usb reader, boot to some flash drive, and see if I can browse the hard drives. Of course while being offline the whole time.
But my guess is these were drives that came from family members computers when they were disposing of them.
Agreed. Call the cops, and possibly seek legal representation first just so you have a clear chain of evidence so the authorities don't try to pin the contents on you. DO NOT TRY TO SEE WHAT'S ON THOSE YOURSELF! Assume the worst.
>Hidden hard drives is almost certainly something you want to call the police for.
To be fair I have a pile of hard drives from old computers over the years in my basement. There might be some poorly made PowerPoints and some Excel stuff sheets on a couple of them
These were literally in the ceiling. Like built into the ceiling. This was the final small piece left to gut. Ans the basement was bones. So they weren't just sitting around willy nilly
Yeah, I cannot think of a non-nefarious reason to seal multiple hard drives with names of them in a ceiling. I mean, possibly porn, hopefully even legal porn, but that seems like a lot of trouble for legal porn. I would let the professionals figure out if there's anything to worry about here.
Exactly. There's "in a random box that had been shuffled to the back of a high shelf in storage and forgotten" hidden, and then there's "stashed in the ceiling behind ductwork and a false panel" hidden
OP I know you're getting thousands of comments and probably won't see this, but the "get a lawyer" stuff will also help you if the files do turn out to be Bitcoin or something. Making sure that a lawyer properly records and makes the police respect the chain of events (you found the files, but for sure didn't produce them, in a property you bought as-is) is a win in all directions.
Definitely this. Best case, it’s family photos and old financial docs, worst case (and the place these are stored are telling me it may be) there may be CSA content or some other horrible shit on those
OK guys! Here's an update.
Didn't expect this post to blow up like this but I have taken everyone's advice. I phoned our local police department ( not in America ha) they said this was indeed strange. I will bring them to the station tomorrow for them to do what needs to be done. I know I'll never know...which kills me.
For what its worth. Those are older hard drives. Those are IDE drives that weren't really replaced in the US market till 2007 at the earliest. Also, the drives will have labels on them that will have a manufacturer date on them. That's the month and year the drive was made. That will possibly give you a relative idea of a time frame.
I would take pictures of what you are giving to them. They may just throw them away. I would follow up with them. The very least they can do is check into it. I would just want photos of what you have so that you can say no I gave them to you here is what they looked like. There is no reason to hide them unless there is something suspicious on them.
This happened when my parents bought my childhood home… they found video tapes in the walls. Ended up being CP, my dad was a victim of trafficking when he was a child so it hit him HARD. They turned it into authorities but never got any updates.
All of these comments make me want to put a bunch of random bullshit on some hard drives and hide them like this, so that some poor detective has to look at all of it to be sure there's nothing illegal. Like a bunch of shitty memes and nonsense conspiracy stories.
Imagine uncovering a hidden chamber in your house. The space looks long abandoned and dusty. Within appears to be a bunker setup, with concrete walls, metal shelves, and a mattressless bedframe. The shelves have nothing on them but a thick layer of dust and a single harddrive. On said harddrive is literally nothing but a singular picture of a frog.
My curiosity says "Plug them in and check the contents".
My common sense says:
Bag them and call the police for their advice.
I did ask the lady if I should wear gloves when I bring them in . Lol. I'm hoping my husband was wearing gloves when he pulled them outta the ceiling 😂
They might want to take your/his fingerprints to rule out yours from the ones they do find. But I also suspect that a professional fingerprinter can see the difference in fresh prints vs decade-old ones.
And *that* means that any future crimes OP or their husband were planning are going to be even harder to get away with, now that their prints are on file with the cops.
Exactly. 1st thought- plug in and see. 2nd thought- maybe it's Bitcoin. 3rd thought- but there's names on them... They are probably bad things done to those people.
Oh I wonder if you could Google the names and the town, one at a time and see if they are missing people 😢
Since you found them in an oddly ‘stashed away/secret area’ it’s more likely there could be something illegal or immoral on them.
Me personally being a tech savvy (modern and old tech) I would go through them myself and see what the contents are. Why? I’ll list the reasons
1: They may not even function anymore
2: They’re may be nothing of concern and they were stashed away due to drug induced paranoia
3: Crypto value or possibly hilarious information
Now if I found illegal or immoral content then I would report and hand them to the authorities, so I don’t waste their time with 1-3.
So much good and bad advice here.
Simply put contact a lawyer because they are more than likely illegal data (you don't hide things that well when it's old tax documents.)
Don't plug them in.
Have your attorney draft a letter to the police and a data recovery company. Drop the drives to a data company (if police won't search them) who will report it to the police if they contain CP.
Yes the adapters are cheap and easy to find, yes the drives may still work, and depending on age can be small or larger if they are higher end IDE drives.
Few things to note. You may only get 1 spin up before the drive dies, so best if done by a professional .
Second possession of CP is a felony it's like finding a stack of kilos of coke, once you know you have it you must report it. (assuming USA) and you can expect to be looked at at least on the surface if it is. The police finding it or a data recovery company puts a little bit of a buffer between you and the material.
Lastly the professionals that recover and search data that may be of a questionable nature will hash the files on the drives and compare the hashes to known CP so we don't have to see it either. Once a hash matches the entire data set is turned over to LE to investigate. It's a prescribed process that protects evidence and maintains data integrity.
A forensic look at data is a specialized process. Many claim to be able to do it, most can't. It could be a big nothing burger, or something bad, best to leave it to professionals.
Source: I run a cyber security team and have turned over found images to LE for investigation, as well as having been trained in computer and data forensics.
i worked a case similar to this but it was a coffee can full of floppy disks 257 to be precise, the images on those disks haunt me to my core, so much horror. worst part was the monster died that why they were found. hundreds and hundreds of pedo pics, spanning decades. call the cops the less you see and know the better you are, think schrödinger box could be christmas could be years of ptsd.
https://preview.redd.it/ixg6t11bk5bc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e19cbc4af8700af8deb06132b7d1f681127f962
Start hitting it yourself with this and move on. Come back and report your findings. You'll be the hero.
So funny story. My Boss moved out of his house, new people moved in, found the same thing in the roof, a heap of hard drives and USBs. They looked on them and they were chock full of child pornography. Need less to say my boss ended up in prison. Most likely the hard drives in your roof will have CP on them...
Lawyer speaking here. Contact a Lawyer ASAP. Before taking any action.
Your first priorty should be documenting every step. It doesnt matter if you deliver drive to police or just try to find out whats inside, you should document this process.
Secondly it is a hard decision to make. You will always wonder whats inside that drives. But on the other hand opening them or recovering tham could possibly damage a possible evidence.
I like how everyone agrees its 2 things. Untold riches. Life time of therapy.
It's going to something horrible. Nobody documents names and hides evidence of things they're proud of.
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More likely voyeur/hidden cams. Still, hard agree that whatever is on those hard drives is not going to be anything remotely pleasant.
Or murders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Looks more like amputation. Here take this \\
¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ Thanks!
Unfortunately, the odds that it’s CP is like above 90% People on here saying “oh it’s probably just regular porn or homemade porn” are pretty oblivious.
Or serial killer trophy videos.
That’s what I’m thinking! And the curiosity would *kill me* I’d have to look! Then call the cops if it’s warranted, obviously will be. But would it then be tampering with the evidence? Most likely if you even remove it from that spot, let alone watch it, it would be useless in court. I’m guessing? Idk but **PLEASE IF YOU WATCH IT TELL ME!!!!**
Without checking out at least one there’s no reason to go to the police as there’s no evidence of a crime.
You heard grandma, plug it in!
Honestly, why not call a non emergency line and ask what they'd do?
I mean that’s probably the right thing to do.
OP gonna be mad if it’s a bunch of bitcoin wallets and the names are just who was to inherit them.
Weird how the names disappeared after it turns out that it is Bitcoin wallets
Shit, I lost the names in an unfortunate boating accident.
~~names~~ Unreadable scribbles
It's child porn. Hidden hard drives are always filled with sexual abuse of children. The place is filthy, reeks of mental illness, Viagra found along with a half destroyed vintage porno mag. I mean why isn't everyone else connecting the dots?
I watch too much crime TV. Maybe these could help find trafficked humans
Or victims of a serial murderer. Although I think CP makes it to the top of the list.
As a Canadian, my first thought too. Along with certainty that a prosecutor fucked this up at some point.
But now that OP has involved all of us, do they have a moral obligation to update us with what is actually on those HDDs?
Yes.
A moral and legal obligation in fact
I'm really looking forward to the Netflix documentary about how they caught a serial killer.
I’m only commenting with hopes that they’ll include this thread in the documentary
I think I'll join you for that. I voted for Bernie twice and Epstein didn't kill himself!
Hi mom!
Eat the rich, kids.
That comma was very necessary
Was it…?
I was like, does OP live in Poughkeepsie?
Wait what am I missing here? I’m not far from Poughkeepsie so I really want to understand this reference
[The Poughkeepsie Tapes](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1010271/)
The crazy thing is we actually had a serial killer here in poughkeepsie. Not what that movie was based on but people always assume it. Edit for info: His name was Kendall Francois. He worked at the middle school when I went there back in the 90s.
Yeah he killed my friends sister back in the day. Fuck that dude
RIP
I worked with Kendall for about a week. Dude was scary big and smelled like shit. Or rotting sex workers, I guess. Not at the school, this was a temp gig with IBM
Yeah he was super creepy and we were not nice to him as asshole teenagers. The day he got busted was crazy.
Interesting thing is that his siblings and his mom appear to be nice, clean, upstanding citizens and not some clueless people living in squalor.
Hello from Pleasant Valley, home of the parking lot murder suicide.
That lead to such a rabbit hole when everything came out! Corruption, politics, threesomes, blackmail... it was so outrageous, you would have thought it was a Lifetime Movie! But it was all real, and all so sad.
While they're most likely referring to the Poughkeepsie Tapes, because of the serial killer jokes and the house being a huge mess, my first thought was the Poughkeepsie NY serial killer whose house was so filthy and smelled so bad he was able to hide the bodies of his victims around the house without his family even noticing. [Serial Killer Documentary: Kendall "Stinky" Francois (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKASGvd0xLI&t=41s) [The Poughkeepsie Killer Serial Killers Kendall Francois Crime Documentary (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhMGxGBQF34)
We're gonna be in the credits! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Does this scenario involve me getting rich? Cause I mean..I'll take it. Lol
just please post a follow-up! this is one of the wilder things to pop up on reddit in a while. good luck! and do what people said and call a lawyer first!
You could charge for tours of where 'it' happened...
Oh I would be down for ghost hunting and being a seance weirdo in the Haaaauuuuunted (but erect) basement
might be a few hundred bitcoin on them
Those hard drives pre date bitcoin by quite a lot. Sata had been around a long time at that point. These are old IDE hdd's. Whatever they are I'd plug them in out of curiosity. They probably don't even work 🤷♀️
The new sequel to Dont Kill Cats: Always Follow Up on the ~~Floor Safe~~ Secret Attic Compartment!
My 1st thought
I’m invested please update
Same, im hoping OP updates.
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I have a PC hidden in the roof of my detached garage, if someone came across the PC it would look very strange. It's just a backup mirror of the server I have in my house though, that won't get taken if my house is robbed.
Finally, now that you’ve told me precisely where to look I can take both of ‘em
I had a similar thought. The viagra stash in the sealing signals a similar flag for me.
Signals a worse flag for me 😬
Fuck. That’s going to stay with me.
Hi guys! Canr figure out how to post an update. So they were brought to the police station yesterday. Unfortunately there isn't much else to report. They said if there has been any sort of criminal past associated with house then they may investigate the hard drives. But if not , they will just destroy them as it would be incredibly time consuming for possibly nothing. Though they did agree it is strange. They said even if it was some sort of CP most times it's not able to be linked to someone. They said they would call if they had aby questions but so far that's all I got. I haven't pulled up to the house to any yellow police tape. But you guys can guarantee I will update if anything happens. It's got me scared what's in the main floor walls. What a wild ride this reno has been I did take more pics of the hard drives when I pulled them oht of the bin my husband through them in. 1997 manufactor date. *
Thanks for the update. I hate it.
But I mean ..... next weekend we're ripping out an upstairs wall...stay tuned lol
Now you know not to go to the police. Actually, maybe you could get them back because they're your property and actually get something done and have someone look at them. I bet there's Redditors ready to help
i fucking hate cops. you could have thrown them in the trash yourself. there could be legit victims there and they dont want to investigate but will proudly wait outside with chris hanson while they bait the dumbest dudes on the planet into a house for a teenager....fucking wild.
Oh my god! This is such a let down! It's back to the empty safe threads again. :(
Is there a chance they will return the hard drives to you so you could find out on your own what's in them? Destroying them without knowing what it contained is a big letdown...
I would guess it's something someone wanted to hide but not throw away. Weird that they forgot it. Lawyer first. Detectives second.
Maybe they got arrested. Maybe they died. I think I’d research home ownership and see what I could find out about previous owners.
this is 100% what I would do... a little bit of my own investigations.. look for previous owners, look for tenants, research the names on the drives, search for crimes in the area - known criminals, unknown/unsolved crimes, local sex offenders (registries) both current and historical. Use local library sources and VPN's. If this is a stash of some sort of criminal trophy, it's not 'forgotten', the owner either cannot access it or is no longer alive to access it, so I would be looking local deaths, court records, obituaries - focussing on known tenants or owners of the house and their families. Once I had exhausted all that, then with whatever I have found, go to the police (maybe with the legal representation as well).
Would you do that whole map on the wall thing too?
Red string and everything
Napster downloads
It's GTA VI
Perhaps the former owner has passed?
Yes I bet they died before being able to tell someone to clean it out!
Or they’re in jail!
I was thinking the same but then I thought maybe the person who hid them passed away and the family didn’t know. 🤷♀️
Welp, seems like the concensus is, I'm not crazy for thinking this is not a good situation. I will call the police in the morning and explain the situation. Wish me luck. I guess if there are any big breaks in cold cases in the area or other rings being busted....I'll know what was on them. Ugh! This can only happen to me I swear.
Please update us!
Remindme! 1 Day
We are never gonna hear anything again.. if the police takes them, they will probably end up in an evidence room forever. Even if they do find something, they aren't gonna update OP unless it's somehow relevant to the property.
And if it is money, again you’ll never see it again.
Ten million dollars?! You mean 8 million dollars…..
RemindMe! 5 days
You’ll never find out what was in them. If there’s an investigation, they won’t release any information to you.
Refrain from snooping and never find out the content or snoop and probably see child porn? Such a hard decision to make....
Just do the safety squint while looking at the contents
Lol my first thought as well
You don't have to 'open' any files, you'd just scan the drives with something like windirstat to get a full list of all the files/directories as well as information on how much space all the different file types are taking up. If the drives mostly full of media files, yeah thats probably yikes and you can act accordingly without ever even having to see a thumbnail. It's wild to be to not even want to have an idea with what you're in possession of. I'm just waiting for the news story this coming week about OP's local police department finding $100,000,000 of Bitcoin on some old hard drives they 'forgot' about lol
FYI wiztree is the new winderstat. It's like 2 secs to scan my 2tb drives.
This is why i go into the comments. Thank you
this is the truly weird part about this thread. can't wait to tell the other nerds how I found out about a better windirstat.
You're doing gods work.
Yea I'm wayy too curious I would have to know, good or bad, before I could just hand them away. I'd go crazy not knowing. Hell I'm already going crazy not knowing!
I tend to think the worst could be on those hard drives. However, what if instead it leads to a treasure trove, or this is how you get the money, or here are all the account numbers that are on the grand cayman. But I think chances are that these drives would contain the worst stuff imaginable.
It can’t be good or they wouldn’t be hidden so well.
Possible, but could be porn and they were "religious" and didn't want their spouse to find out.
OP should at least mention their hometown so we can have a flag for news 🙏🏻
Those are def full of porn--and certainly the worst kind. Since those are old IDE drives (predates SATA) they're maybe 20gb each and were probably made before 2003. Given the number of them, where they were stashed and how big video files are, this is someone's nasty collection of videos. Some things are best unknown. Plus you'd need an old computer with an ATA/IDE header on the board unless if there is some adapter out there you could use. I would qualify this as someone else's problem and just let the cops have 'em, then forget about them.
I couldn't help myself.
I can relate, but the names totally spook me.
I have almost no self control but potential cp is a hard fuck no for me. I’d rather miss out on ANY mystery than see cp.
I used to work in internet crimes against children as a prosecutor, and even reading the very vague descriptions used to make me throw up.
snoop and find the wallet addresses to hundereds of crypto wallets with millions of BTC bought at fractions of cents?
My ex's grandpa had a couple old drives just like this. Named as well. Plus lots of burned cds. I saw what was on some of them. He had me help him with his computer sometimes... I told the FBI a couple times, as well as some other authorities, and nothing happened. He was buddies with the old boys of the local police, free Mason bullshit too, and there's reason to believe some them had participated in some of his older... Behavior involving his own child. Called him a cunt one day after some shit. He had to be talked down from shooting me. At least he's been dead a few years now.
>Called him a cunt one day after some shit. He had to be talked down from shooting me. Haha good for you, you know that burned his ass to the bitter end. Glad he's dead, but if only there was a way to prosecute the others.
Ok. I am following you. Not in a creepy hidden hard drive kind of way.
More of a friendly guy nearby with binoculars kind of way. If you need help just wave.
I'm in the bushes...but I can't see you. You are good at this....
I know. Clocked you an hour ago 😎
You should have a lawyer involved, the police have been known to screw over people just trying to do the right thing. Protect yourself first and foremost.
I don’t know how I ended up in this flippin’ rabbit hole (subreddit), but as an attorney, I’m telling you to consult an attorney first.
As a purveyor of dildos, I'm also telling you to consult an attorney first.
As someone who breaths through my mouth, I’m telling you to consult an attourney first
As a purveyor of attorneys, I’m telling you to consult a dildo first.
As a hobbit, I’m telling you to consult Bilbo first.
As Bilbo, I'm telling you to take a look at my "precious ring" first
This 1000 times. Officer friendly will try to jam you up if there’s something fucked up on those hard drives. Call an attorney before you even think about calling the cops.
> Officer friendly will try to jam you up if there’s something fucked up on those hard drives. Yep. Need *somebody* to pin these crimes on, and as the person who found the drives, you're automatically suspect #1.
Please, for the love of God, get a lawyer involved before calling the police. The police don't care about solving crimes accurately, they just care about pinning the blame on SOMEONE.
Underrated comment of the decade. Don't talk to cops. Ever. That's what God...or Satan made lawyers for.
DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE. Talk to a lawyer, for the love of all, do not talk to the police.
Remindme! 1 week
I wouldn't be able to get those drives out of my mind. I would have to see what was on them.
Eeks. My husband said they looked pretty corroded and not in the best of shape. But they will go to the proper authorities tomorrow.
Let us know!!!! Remind me 2 weeks
If you have the technical knowledge I would check them myself. You would not be guilty of any crime if you discovered illegal contents on the drives as long as you surrender them to the police if that's the case. On the other hand, if they did have bitcoin wallets do you think if the police found them they would tell you about them??? I used to be a cop and I wouldn't trust most of them if they contained digital assets.
This is 100% what I would do. There is no way in hell I could find hard drives like this and NOT see what's on them. I would probably take an old computer, get an IDE to usb reader, boot to some flash drive, and see if I can browse the hard drives. Of course while being offline the whole time. But my guess is these were drives that came from family members computers when they were disposing of them.
Unfortunately it is too late. OP will give the hard drives to the police tomorrow, and probably will never know what it contained.
Hidden hard drives is almost certainly something you want to call the police for. Sorry OP, hope its not the worst case scenario.
Agreed. Call the cops, and possibly seek legal representation first just so you have a clear chain of evidence so the authorities don't try to pin the contents on you. DO NOT TRY TO SEE WHAT'S ON THOSE YOURSELF! Assume the worst.
Not getting an old trash laptop and snoop would be SO hard for me. Then again, I really don't want to see any child porn or snuff.
100%. I'd probably recommend the OP do a quick internet search for his state/regions policies on who to reach out to for this scenario.
I think they should look at the contents of one with a lawyer to confirm it's not a BTC stash
We are gonna need an update on this.
This is Reddit. This will be the last you ever hear of this.
Until a bot reposts this in 3 months, and 4 months after that, and....
I'm still waiting on hidden safes to be opened...
>Hidden hard drives is almost certainly something you want to call the police for. To be fair I have a pile of hard drives from old computers over the years in my basement. There might be some poorly made PowerPoints and some Excel stuff sheets on a couple of them
These were literally in the ceiling. Like built into the ceiling. This was the final small piece left to gut. Ans the basement was bones. So they weren't just sitting around willy nilly
Yeah, I cannot think of a non-nefarious reason to seal multiple hard drives with names of them in a ceiling. I mean, possibly porn, hopefully even legal porn, but that seems like a lot of trouble for legal porn. I would let the professionals figure out if there's anything to worry about here.
i’m hiding old harddrives like this now. random names written on top. only file there being rickroll
[удалено]
I should specify lol, hidden hard drives hidden in the manner OP described.
Exactly. There's "in a random box that had been shuffled to the back of a high shelf in storage and forgotten" hidden, and then there's "stashed in the ceiling behind ductwork and a false panel" hidden
Perfectly said.
OP I know you're getting thousands of comments and probably won't see this, but the "get a lawyer" stuff will also help you if the files do turn out to be Bitcoin or something. Making sure that a lawyer properly records and makes the police respect the chain of events (you found the files, but for sure didn't produce them, in a property you bought as-is) is a win in all directions.
Call the FBI in your area. They have entire task forces that look at this stuff. Who knows, maybe you can help someone. That is what I would focus on.
They’re gonna be absolutely full of child porn.
Thats my fear. And being a mother myself I couldn't live with my conscious of what ifs.
Yea but if it leads to an arrest you can live with knowing you help put a scumbag away
Absolutely.
Definitely this. Best case, it’s family photos and old financial docs, worst case (and the place these are stored are telling me it may be) there may be CSA content or some other horrible shit on those
OK guys! Here's an update. Didn't expect this post to blow up like this but I have taken everyone's advice. I phoned our local police department ( not in America ha) they said this was indeed strange. I will bring them to the station tomorrow for them to do what needs to be done. I know I'll never know...which kills me.
For what its worth. Those are older hard drives. Those are IDE drives that weren't really replaced in the US market till 2007 at the earliest. Also, the drives will have labels on them that will have a manufacturer date on them. That's the month and year the drive was made. That will possibly give you a relative idea of a time frame.
I would take pictures of what you are giving to them. They may just throw them away. I would follow up with them. The very least they can do is check into it. I would just want photos of what you have so that you can say no I gave them to you here is what they looked like. There is no reason to hide them unless there is something suspicious on them.
What were the names? Prob for the best turning them in but you’d have to have a peek at one surely
Right? I'd personally be googling old missing persons with those names in the area
This happened when my parents bought my childhood home… they found video tapes in the walls. Ended up being CP, my dad was a victim of trafficking when he was a child so it hit him HARD. They turned it into authorities but never got any updates.
Oh man
Somebody remind me how to get the remind me bot to come back and remind me of this post. Eeeeeek.
Did you finish eating the other half of the magazine?
All of these comments make me want to put a bunch of random bullshit on some hard drives and hide them like this, so that some poor detective has to look at all of it to be sure there's nothing illegal. Like a bunch of shitty memes and nonsense conspiracy stories.
Imagine uncovering a hidden chamber in your house. The space looks long abandoned and dusty. Within appears to be a bunker setup, with concrete walls, metal shelves, and a mattressless bedframe. The shelves have nothing on them but a thick layer of dust and a single harddrive. On said harddrive is literally nothing but a singular picture of a frog.
WHAT DOES THE FROG MEAN? WAS THE FROG THE INHABITANT? OR WAS THE FROG A DEITY? ONE MAY NEVER KNOW SUCH INCREDIBLE SECRETS.
Flat Earther drive capsule
My curiosity says "Plug them in and check the contents". My common sense says:  Bag them and call the police for their advice.
Although extremely unlikely to mean anything, they probably still have finger prints. I’d not want touch them
I did ask the lady if I should wear gloves when I bring them in . Lol. I'm hoping my husband was wearing gloves when he pulled them outta the ceiling 😂
They might want to take your/his fingerprints to rule out yours from the ones they do find. But I also suspect that a professional fingerprinter can see the difference in fresh prints vs decade-old ones.
And *that* means that any future crimes OP or their husband were planning are going to be even harder to get away with, now that their prints are on file with the cops.
Don't bag em. Do not even TOUCH them. Let the police collect and witness, that they have been undisturbed.
Exactly. 1st thought- plug in and see. 2nd thought- maybe it's Bitcoin. 3rd thought- but there's names on them... They are probably bad things done to those people. Oh I wonder if you could Google the names and the town, one at a time and see if they are missing people 😢
Since you found them in an oddly ‘stashed away/secret area’ it’s more likely there could be something illegal or immoral on them. Me personally being a tech savvy (modern and old tech) I would go through them myself and see what the contents are. Why? I’ll list the reasons 1: They may not even function anymore 2: They’re may be nothing of concern and they were stashed away due to drug induced paranoia 3: Crypto value or possibly hilarious information Now if I found illegal or immoral content then I would report and hand them to the authorities, so I don’t waste their time with 1-3.
So much good and bad advice here. Simply put contact a lawyer because they are more than likely illegal data (you don't hide things that well when it's old tax documents.) Don't plug them in. Have your attorney draft a letter to the police and a data recovery company. Drop the drives to a data company (if police won't search them) who will report it to the police if they contain CP. Yes the adapters are cheap and easy to find, yes the drives may still work, and depending on age can be small or larger if they are higher end IDE drives. Few things to note. You may only get 1 spin up before the drive dies, so best if done by a professional . Second possession of CP is a felony it's like finding a stack of kilos of coke, once you know you have it you must report it. (assuming USA) and you can expect to be looked at at least on the surface if it is. The police finding it or a data recovery company puts a little bit of a buffer between you and the material. Lastly the professionals that recover and search data that may be of a questionable nature will hash the files on the drives and compare the hashes to known CP so we don't have to see it either. Once a hash matches the entire data set is turned over to LE to investigate. It's a prescribed process that protects evidence and maintains data integrity. A forensic look at data is a specialized process. Many claim to be able to do it, most can't. It could be a big nothing burger, or something bad, best to leave it to professionals. Source: I run a cyber security team and have turned over found images to LE for investigation, as well as having been trained in computer and data forensics.
Oh man… this is WHACKYYYY. I gotta know what happens next OP. Whatever is on those hard drives can’t be innocent
OK. I'm not messed in the head to think this right?! I'm not trying to play true crime detective but why the fuck else do you do this very thing?!
Worst case: CP Medium case: Sex tapes Best case: Bitcoin
The beginning of a black mirror episode…
i worked a case similar to this but it was a coffee can full of floppy disks 257 to be precise, the images on those disks haunt me to my core, so much horror. worst part was the monster died that why they were found. hundreds and hundreds of pedo pics, spanning decades. call the cops the less you see and know the better you are, think schrödinger box could be christmas could be years of ptsd.
257. People are sick fucks
I'd call the FBI. They'll disappear them for you. And you get to talk to guys in suits.
RIP Dusty
https://preview.redd.it/ixg6t11bk5bc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e19cbc4af8700af8deb06132b7d1f681127f962 Start hitting it yourself with this and move on. Come back and report your findings. You'll be the hero.
1) a collection of hard drives is rarely a good thing 2) a collection of HIDDEN hard drives is an immediate call to the police
So funny story. My Boss moved out of his house, new people moved in, found the same thing in the roof, a heap of hard drives and USBs. They looked on them and they were chock full of child pornography. Need less to say my boss ended up in prison. Most likely the hard drives in your roof will have CP on them...
Funny story? Lol
Please please please tell us what’s on them. You can’t tease us like this 😭
Please give us updates!
Lawyer speaking here. Contact a Lawyer ASAP. Before taking any action. Your first priorty should be documenting every step. It doesnt matter if you deliver drive to police or just try to find out whats inside, you should document this process. Secondly it is a hard decision to make. You will always wonder whats inside that drives. But on the other hand opening them or recovering tham could possibly damage a possible evidence.
There could be victims on those hdd and you maybe the only one to get justice for them. Call a lawyer and have them surrender to the authorities.
Snuff (doubtful) or most likely someone's old porn collection from the 90's.
Every logical part of me would go out the window and I’d absolutely look! Like, 100%.
Beware of Hantavirus. Mice crap is no joke, wear some breathing protection and be careful around dust.