The founding father of the UK’s computer forensic industry was today sentenced at Leicester Crown Court for making false witness statements and committing perjury.Jim Bates, 67, was found guilty on the 6 March of four counts of making a false written witness statement claiming he had a degree in electronic engineering, and one count of perjury. The top expert IT witness was sentenced today to six months in jail for each of the five offences. All the jail sentences were suspended for two years. Bates was also ordered to pay £1,000 towards court costs.

Bates had acted as an expert witness, for both prosecution and defence, in dozens of serious investigations including child pornography and rape. In the 1990s the police employed him as a lecturer at the Bramshill Training College in Hampshire, and he also sold his proprietary forensic imaging software to several forces.