Uncover - S37 E5: Unscrambling Eggs | The Expert Witness

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Prosecutors privately begin questioning Adam Mosher’s false peer review claims, while defense attorney Don Malarcik uncovers evidence that Cybercheck reports were manually edited—contradicting claims that the system was fully automated. As the critical Daubert hearing approaches, prosecutors abruptly withdraw Cybercheck as evidence rather than defend it in court, effectively ending its use in Summit County without admitting wrongdoing. National reporting and expert analysis further undermine the technology’s credibility, comparing it to unsupported pseudoscience. But despite Cybercheck being abandoned locally and Mosher facing investigation, Don realizes the tool has silently continued to spread across the country and raises troubling questions about how easily unproven technology can influence the justice system.Binge all 9 episodes of this season on our YouTube page, or get them ad-free on CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts.A listener's guide to Uncover: Where to go next

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This is a CBC podcast. We reached out to the Summit County Prosecutor's Office to get their perspective on the whole Don Malarsik versus Cybercheck story. We also reached out to the Akron Police. Neither wanted to participate in this series, which is fair enough. The Summit County Prosecutor's Office declined to be interviewed, but they sent us a statement giving their side of some of the story. And legally, under a freedom of information request,

they were also required to share with us some of their emails referencing Cybercheck. Shout out to Redacted from the comms department at Summit County Prosecutor's Office. From the selection of emails that we were shown, it's clear that by 2024, the unflappable poker face that the prosecutors were presenting to defense attorneys in Akron, it had its cracks. The first Fisher seemed to appear when Adam Mosher abruptly changed his story on the peer review, that his pioneering AI technology was deemed legitimate by independent experts. Up until this point, we saw nothing in their emails indicating that they had yet fact-checked Moser's other alleged lies, like the events with Eric Zale and the burnt prosecutor Breck Resch in Colorado. Of course, they might have, and I hope they did, but when Don Malarsik told prosecutors that he now had confirmation from the University of Saskatchewan themselves,

that they had, in fact, not peer-reviewed cyber check, that this was another lie and one amounting to petition. potential perjury, it was only then that we saw the prosecutor become more direct and urgent in their emails to Mosier. They emailed, quote, Adam, I need to know specifically who I can talk to at the University of Saskatchewan about the report. Attorney Malarsik has stated that he was in contact with the university and that they have never worked with you and have no knowledge of any such report. I am sure he did not speak with the correct person. I would hope that you can provide me with not only a name, but a contact phone number and email for the appropriate person. Time is critical. Please respond

as soon as possible. Just over an hour later, Mosher does respond with an email that has an attachment. But four minutes after that, the prosecutor emails Adam again. Thank you for that information. However, the snip you attached is very small. And when I copied it to a full document to enlarge it, it's blurred, and you can't make out any name or phone number. We weren't shown any more emails on this thread, so we don't really know how this all shook out. But we do know that it wasn't with Adam Mosier presenting a credible peer review document.

Because the university confirmed to us themselves, This has never existed. In their statement to us, the prosecutors admitted they were never able to find any corroborating evidence of Adam Mosher's peer review claim. And so the prosecutor's office, quote, never presented Cybercheck reports as peer reviewed in any court proceedings after that discovery, end quote. Yet still, the state pressed on into 2024 trying to convict people for murder using Adam Mosher's untested Cybercheck test. tool. Why would they do that? At the beginning, the prosecutors were like, this is our shiny new toy. And we're going to be able to pull it out whenever we want. And look, it's going to get us convictions. I mean, it did in two cases. That's Akron Beacon Journal reporter Stephanie Warsmith.

She reported the first stories that alerted Dawn to cyber tech, the convictions of Salah Madi and then Adiris Black. We've got actually got a picture of Adam Mosier testified and he comes off the stand and they're basically like hugging him. Like, we love you, man. You know, it's like, you're our hero. This shiny new toy belonged to the Akron Police Department. As the Summit County prosecutors pointed out to us in their statement, it was the police who had signed the contract for cyber check.

It was the police who used it to investigate murders, not them. But it was the prosecutors who were using this unproven AI technology evidence in court. In a state with the death penalty, it was the prosecutors who were putting Adam Mosier in front of juries. Cybercheck, along with some other evidence,

was very important to their decision to convict. Prosecutors are not in the business of unscrambling eggs, and with two tricky cold case murders already in the bag, and more suspects in cells awaiting trial,

it was clear that it was going to take something monumental to pry cybercheck away from Akron's Guardians of Justice. I'm Sam Mullins, and from CBC's Uncover, this is the expert witness. Episode 5. Unscambling Eggs By the spring of 2024, while prosecutors were off chasing their tails with their star witness over email, Dawn was back into the grunt work of preparing for all these upcoming murder trials, doing the unsexy work of making a big pot of coffee and then sifting through every document in discovery. With the fast approaching Dobert Showdown impending, Don's head was in the

case of the accused child killer Philip Mendoza. So the Mendoza case, I get a printout of thousands and thousands of pages. Marie saw her boss walk past the door as the copier roared to life. Don had all of them printed out, and he was in his office, and when he gets in cyber check mode, it's like he's a madman. He has his, like, readers on, his shoes are off, his hair is disheveled. When prosecutors send these big document dumps over, they usually begin with a sort of table of contents. And Don read that the Cybercheck report,

the only one for this case, would appear in this packet four separate times. And that's not uncommon. There are different prosecutors, different police officers, that are collecting the data, compiling it. So when I see four entries for the Cybercheck report, nothing really registers. So with his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose

and his highlighter hovering ready for action, Don begins slowly sliding his ruler down the page as he scrutinizes every sentence of the Cybercheck reports. And I'm looking at the reports. It starts off the same way. The ending is the same. They put Mendoza at the scene of the crime. Same coordinates, exactly.

Same exact coordinates. 98% accurate, all the same indicators of the cyber profile. But when Don says he's going line by line, that means he's going line by line of all four copies of the one submitted Cybercheck report. And why would anyone do that? Why would anyone be that meticulous? I'll tell you why. Just in case. And I see for the first time that the dates are wrong.

The dates don't match up. So I'm like, hmm. Don holds up the first report and looks at the date of the crime. The report is August 2nd, 2020. So that Cybercheck report was run for the day of the murder. Then he looks at the second one. The second report is August 20th, 2020. A seemingly unrelated date, 18 days after the killing.

One murder, two reports, two different dates. And then I start to review and compare these two reports side by side, and every word is exactly the same. It's identical except for the dates. Well, this is weird. And then he yelled from his office, Marie. What does this mean? And I went in there, and he's all disheveled,

and he's like, look at this, look at this. And he's looking at the dates. Everybody said the same thing, typo. I'm like, no, it can't be a typo. This says 820, 2020, and this says 802, 2020. At a glance, it seemed that there were two possibilities here. Number one, it was true. Mendoza was there twice.

When you boil that down, they're saying that Philip Mendoza was at that exact location, the exact coordinates on two separate dates. at the same time on those dates. Which is possible, but one of those dates was for after the killing, which means that Philip Mendoza, who didn't live at or even near the crime scene, would have had to come back for some unknown reason exactly 18 days after he had killed a toddler and shot two others and fled the scene as a fugitive. That's possibility number one.

Possibility number two is someone, made a mistake with the dates and then fixed it. And immediately it's like sirens going off, alert, alert, we found a mistake. And it's super important that there is a mistake in a report like this because Adam Mosier has testified repeatedly that it is totally an automated system. There is no human intervention. No human is ever typing anything into the report. This is his software. This is what his software does.

How would they explain this? Now we have something that we can really dig in on, and we're freaking out. Because at some point, someone noticed that there was a mix-up. Something happened. Something happened just off stage, just out of view. And Donna Marie figured that if it was the prosecutors who had, caught the mistake, then there's reason to believe that there would have been an email exchange about it. And we got the emails, which are here. I got re-angry today this morning as I was reading

this. What they learned from the emails was this. It wasn't the cops who had first noticed the mistake, and it wasn't the prosecutors. It was Adam Mosier. In a casual 6 a.m. email back in 2022, checking in on a number of different cases. Moser mentions, System flagged your entry. Is it supposed to be 0802 2020? Possibly homicide of an 8-year-old? It seemed that Moser was originally given

either the wrong date or the wrong victim. There was an 8-year-old who also died from a bullet that month in Akron. But that happened on neither of the dates Moser was given. So does that mean he's just... guessing, Googling? At 7.15 a.m., an administrative assistant quickly replies to his email. Oh, thanks for bringing that to my attention. She then gives Moser the correct date, and then within a month they were in possession of two identical reports, one with the wrong date, and one that was an exact copy with the date changed. And that didn't raise a red flag in their

office? So what does this mean? If a date can be changed on a Cybercheck report, what else can be edited after the fact? Even for the firm's forensic expert Greg, who had consistently held an open mind toward Cybercheck's efficacy, this discovery was a bridge too far. When I saw that, I'm like, okay, yeah, there's definitely some funny monkey business going on here. I don't think this software really does what says it does. For Marie, it was all clear now. They're just feeding.

This is what we want you to do. Put a person, any person, any cyber profile who happened to be there, just let us know. But specifically what we're really looking for is Philip Mendoza. There it is. Bon up. In the days and weeks that passed after their discovery, Don and Marie waited. Wondering how the cops and prosecutors would explain this one. And wondering if cyber checks watch in Akron was a lot.

finally over. The next case to come before the court is state of Ohio, the Demetrius car and the Monte car. Each party will have up to... In early June, 24, when they were just days away from the final Daubert hearing showdown on Cybercheck, Marie and Noah were back in court for another Cybercheck case. The arguments are being recorded, so please stay behind the podium. Two brothers were charged with the murder of a man who'd killed their third brother.

and now they're being accused of this murder that they did not do. I mean, come on. Their brother got killed by this man. And now they're going to lose their lives because Adam Moser's, it's just bullshit. Noah was understandably agitated when he learned that despite everything that was playing out in these other cases, despite everything that his own firm had brought to light, Summit County was pressing on with their prosecution. But now at least, the judges were asking questions about Cybercheck. One of the panel judges asked,

isn't your office interested in validating Mr. Mosier in Cybercheck? And this is the actual voice of the prosecutor in response to this question. So the state currently doesn't have any reason not to disbelief its reliability. And I was like, oh shit. Noah, like, nearly fell out of the chair. I'm a histrionic individual, and I have a hard time maintaining my poker face when bullshit is being served to me on a platter. I just couldn't believe the nerve and the audacity to say that on the record. It seemed like there was nothing they could do to stop prosecutors from stubbornly pushing ahead,

filing objections to any attempt to get cyber checks code and continuing to prosecute suspects using the reports. But this was the power. of the Daubert Showdown Hearing. In a Daubert, the final decision does not lie with the prosecutors or the police or anyone else. It's entirely up to the judge. Picture Don in the lawyer version of the Rocky Ford training montage. Instead of doing sit-ups in a barn or sprinting through the waist deep snow, he's at the photocopier,

wild behind the eyes as he thrusts the whole punch down with intention. or he's in the car, mouthing the winning words to the hearing on the drive home. Yes. We were ready for the dober. We had him. At the time it was the week of the dauberts, he couldn't wait to glide his Cadillac of legal carts

into that courthouse and settle this once and for all. And basically, we're like, all right, you've got to put up or shut up. Now, let's have the hearing. But then, a surprise. At the 11th hour, the prosecutor's office finally blinked. The prosecutor's office filed this ludicrous, ridiculous, frivolous motion to continue.

The Summit County prosecutors were asking the judge to postpone the showdown hearing. Saying for the first time, you know what, maybe we should have somebody validate this system. And we need more time, Judge. In Dawn's eyes, this was nothing more than the state refusing to face the music. I was more angry than I've ever been as a defense attorney in 31 years. And it wasn't just what the motion said. said. It was who was saying it. It's not just the courtroom prosecutor asking. It is the chief of the criminal division of the

Summa County Prosecutor's Office, and they put their fucking name on this motion. And that's when I realized it's never going to be enough. They're never going to say we made a mistake. We had shown them the peer review study was a lie. We had shown them Moser lied about testifying under oath as an expert. We had shown them the two reports, but it still wasn't enough. When you work in the justice system for as long as Don has, you become very comfortable with the rules, the processes. But something about this, this cybercheck thing,

it was as if a veil had fallen. And that's when it, for me, distilled my anger into one fine point, which is, the system is fucked. The system is fucked. it took hundreds and hundreds of hours to expose this lie, and we did it conclusively, and look what they're doing. Look what they're doing. And I just went ballistic. First in my office, yelling and screaming, swearing, running around, screaming, I told you so. And I said, fuck that and fuck these prosecutors. We're having the hearing.

Don and Marie furiously composed a plea to the judge, where they laid, it all out and urged her to force this hearing through. And then I waited, right? And we were debating, what's the judge going to do? Is she going to grant the continuance? Is she going to give him more time? Oh, my God, this is a murder case. And God bless Chris Crocey, man.

She said, we've waited long enough. We're having the hearing. The judge was making them show up. And she chose June 28th to be the moment of truth. Two days before the Daubert hearing, Marie's preparation had fulfilled. finally spilled into the office speakeasy. The Cybercheck boxes practically took up half the office by this point.

There's a dartboard, arcade machines, a massage chair, and obviously a bar brimming with whiskey. Marie was on the floor, combing through the mess, with the bottles of scotch calling her name, when Dawn suddenly burst in. He came barreling in. It's like, you will not believe what they just filed. Marie ran down the hall.

Hall to read the email on Dawn's screen. They dismissed Cybercheck and folded up their tent and said, Adam's not going to testify. We would draw the evidence. Yeah. Yeah. This was the victory they've been working toward. But something about it didn't feel like a victory. They just quietly laid everything down and said, we're just not going to use it.

They didn't say why they were not going to use it. They didn't say why they were not going to use it. They just said, we're withdrawing Cybercheck. In their statement to our team, the Summit County Prosecutor's Office said, quote, The Summit County Prosecutor's Office is committed to the administration of justice and to fostering transparency and trust with the community. Our decision to follow up on defendants' claims about Cybercheck's validity and to end the use of Cybercheck reports at trial reflects that commitment.

The thorough review and resolution of all cases without further use of cyber check is explicit proof that our office responded appropriately to concerns raised about the validity of Mr. Moser's reports. Let's see if Toronto advisors know their life insurance providers, who offers whole life insurance with a whole lot of cash value. Beneva. Beneva. Beneva. Looks like people are starting to know Beneva pretty well.

You're stronger with the right partner, Beneva. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking long ship, with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining, and cultural enrichment, on board, and on shore. With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways. Learn more at viking.com. Around the time the prosecutors started dropping Cybercheck in Summit County, it was just as the conversation was about to really get going.

Because it turned out that the Akron Beacon Journal reporters weren't the only journalists who'd caught wind of Cybercheck. I was sitting at my desk in the morning, and I came across a story. The headline was something like police department uses AI to solve crimes. Todd Feathers is a journalist at Wired, a tech, politics, and culture website slash magazine. I started reading the company's marketing materials, found a couple court cases,

and then I got really curious because the more that I read, the less I understood about what this thing was and what I was supposed to be doing. As Todd started sinking his teeth into the story, he tried reaching out to Cybercheck and to Adam Mosher. Didn't hear back, and I followed up and didn't hear back, and got a kind of a weird email from Atomotion saying, like, you need to reach out to our special PR email. And I reached out to that and then just started getting like unsigned emails back from them that would skip some questions,

would not answer questions. And I just wanted them to explain to me, like, how do you find out when a device has pinged a wireless network? And their response was like, well, there is no single. source of information for that. And I think that is a pretty accurate representation of how they responded to us across the board. Unable to get anywhere with Cybercheck, Todd tried reaching out to some of the attorneys he'd seen mentioned in the Akron Beacon Journal's reporting, like Don Malarsik and Eric Zale. There's just no way for cases and technology like this to come to broad national attention

without a local reporter in the courtroom to hear about it and write about it. He also wanted to talk to experts in this kind of tech. And what better expert could there be than one of the men Moser claimed taught him how to build it? I'm Rob T. Lee. I'm the chief of research at the Sands Institute. The Sands Institute is basically Hogwarts for cybersecurity wizards. But for Mosier, it occupies a very important place on the CV. The place where Adam Mosher claims on his resume that he took a lot of classes and certifications in open source intelligence. According to his resume, Mosier completed 12 courses at

Sands with snappy titles like intrusion detection in depth, advanced incident response, threat hunting and digital forensics, network penetration testing and ethical hacking. Todd wanted to know what the man who oversaw all of these courses made of Cybercheck. We took a bunch of Cybercheck reports, along with Mosher's testimony in those cases, and Rob and his colleagues were kind enough to look over the reports and the testimony and prepare an analysis for us. Rob was happy to help. One of the reasons why I feel I can speak authoritatively on this is, and this is not a classified thing,

but I'm a technical amicke to the FISA court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In English, that means that Rob helps a court that deals with high-stakes tech issues, like the Snowden revelations and Trump-Russia investigations, tells them things like what the capabilities of the latest surveillance technology actually are. So a similar task to the one Todd was asking him to do here with Cybercheck. One of the things I do is advise the judges just on these issues. So Rob, the suspense is killing us. What did you think of Cybercheck?

It immediately jumps into the fantastical by basically not even getting access to a phone or the device, which is actually necessary to do some of their claims. In addition to being fantastical and non-realistic, Rob was struck by the black boxiness of it. It requires an individual to understand the underlying data, add up all those equations, and say, here's how we made that determination. Those equations don't exist here. If you're expecting a courtroom to use, hey, you've got to trust. me, you know, DNA evidence. It was like, hey, we have DNA evidence. What's DNA? I can't tell you.

I have fingerprints. Well, what's a fingerprint? No, I can't tell you. Yeah, I could tell you that the person was there because of the fingerprint on a glass. Well, what the heck does that mean? Well, I can't tell you. Everyone needs to tip their hand of how they're coming to these conclusions. You have to articulate the science. Without seeing inside it, Rob wasn't able to categorically say that Cybercheck wasn't doing something, but he was able to definitively say that it shouldn't be used in the justice system. It's astrology. And, you know, you can't do astrology in a courtroom.

It's like, well, Saturn's and Jupiter's left equatorial. That is not a good testimonial as to why the person turned into a parent werewolf and killed the victim. After months of reporting, Wired published Todd's long-form piece about Cybercheck in October of 2024. And he had some keen readers inside the walls of the Ohio defense firm.

That was a big moment for us because we really wanted to get more national exposure. It really helped, I think, raised the level of concern and consciousness and awareness in our community. Don hoped that now, any other defense lawyer who had to Google

the word cyber check would be given a huge leg up, not just for learning what Cybercheck was, but he hoped that they would also be given a blueprint for how to beat it. And within a few weeks, there was another new story about Cybercheck. After our story was published, the Akron Beacon Journal reported that Adam Mosher was under investigation. I got a contact from the Summit County Sheriff's Department saying they were doing a criminal investigation into Adam Mosier and him lying to the judge under oath about this peer review study. It was never easy, and it was never a straight line.

But in the end, it seemed like the right thing had happened. The legal world in Akron is a very small pond. Dawn knows everyone and has been friendly with folks in the prosecutor's office for his whole career. But this saga had changed him. In the aftermath, it was hard to return to good faith. and water cooler chatter with some of his colleagues from across the street. Things came to a head one day

when one of the prosecutors sort of punched Don on the shoulder and said, not to worry. This was all an example of the system working. Right? Right, buddy? And it made me infuriated. It was incredibly insulting. And I blew up and said,

no, this is an example of how the system has failed. And you failed. You put him on the stand without a Dobert hearing. You let the defense attorney sit on their hands and not raise a fucking objection and put this evidence before a jury. That's not an example of the system working. That's an example of the system failing. And you need to step up and say on the record that Adam Mosier is a fraud. And he said, it's going to work out. It's going to work out, Don. You just have to trust me on that. And I said, here's the problem. You say you want justice. And that's a great bumper sticker. It's a great tagline. But it doesn't cost you anything when you say that. It will cost you something to say in

court, Adam Mosier is a fraud. And that's the truth. But you're unwilling to do it. And that's part of the problem. And as for those perjury charges against Mosier? Dawn isn't holding his breath. The likelihood of Mosier being brought to justice is pretty slim. The Summock County Prosecutor's Office concluded their email to us by writing, quote, After our thorough review and consideration of the evidence and law, the Summit County Prosecutor's office decided that it was done with Adam Mosier and Global Intelligence's product, end quote. Moser may not yet have been held accountable, but it looks. looked like Cybercheck had finally been defeated, courtesy of Don Malarcic.

Don Milarcic, who legitimately cannot turn on his computer or work the printer copier, has become the face of this technology. It was a huge win for the firm. He came to a place with a vigorous defense bar and started peddling snake oil, and then we caught him with his hands in the cookie jar, and then drug him in. into the deep water and drowned it. For my money, no one mixes metaphors to better effect than Noah. But was this really it?

Was Cybercheck truly washed up? Or had something else been going on this whole time? I had a demo from them. I was so kind of blown away by its power. I remember thinking, are you serious? is. Was it spreading further and wider than could be kept up with? And he's like, yeah, basically every time your phone lights up, it can be tracked. The truth was it was being used from California to New York. I was like, that's nuts. From Oregon to Florida and from Louisiana to Illinois, to Pennsylvania, to Georgia, Indiana,

Mississippi, on and on, tentacles were reaching all across America, and new suspects were being arrested, tried, and convicted. Adam Mosher wasn't going anywhere. I'm Sam. I'm here to meet Adam. That's coming up on The Expert Witness. Oh, yeah. Is Adam in the house? You've been listening to The Expert Witness from CBC's Uncover. The series is produced by RAW for CBC.

The show was written and hosted by me, Sam Mullins. Our producer is David Waters. The series was developed and reported by David Waters and Jessica Hatcher. Our editor is Veronica Simmons. Coordinating producer is Emily Canal. Mix by Garrett Tiedman. At RAW, Deborah Dudgeon is the head of podcasts. The production executive is Leticia Kizza-Souza.

Special thanks to Emma Wood and Olivia Bhutan. Additional audio from 19 News, 3 News, News 5 Cleveland, CBC News, WKYC, WSOCTV, and WBRZ. At CBC, the executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager and RIF NURANI, is the director of CBC Podcasts. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of The Expert Witness. Or you can listen ahead to the full series now by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts

or by subscribing to the CBC True Crime channel on YouTube. Links in the description. Hey guys, Sam here. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. But between now and then, consider listening to one of the many excellent uncover seasons that came before the expert witness. My personal favorite is The Village, which is Season 3.

In it, host Justin Ling explores the numerous cases of missing and murdered men in Toronto's gay community dating back to the 1970s. You can find the village wherever you're listening to me now by scrolling back in your uncover feed or by finding the drop-down menu with all the seasons. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.