I recently read about a development in the R. Allen Stanford case that hopefully can be fleshed out a bit by Enforcement Action readers. There were reports last week that some lucky person in the federal prosecutor’s office will now be taking on the responsibility for “re-assembl[ing] the contents of three bags of shredded documents” that are sought as evidence in the case.

Bloomberg reported on July 24 that federal prosecutors told U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer that within the next two months (!!!) they will have completed the task of piecing back together the contents of the bags. The shredded evidence will reportedly “initially be used against Bruce Perraud, a former Stanford Financial Group security specialist who is charged with destroying documents after an investigation began.”

My questions to you all are:

(a) Has anyone ever actually tried to re-assemble shredded documents or seen it successfully performed?

(b) Is there some best practice on shredding documents that renders them completely useless? Double shredding? Criss-cross shredding? Surely there must be a way to shred with confidence.