The first time Trent Struttmann took the witness stand as a digital forensics expert, he wasn't anywhere near Kentucky. The hearing was at Camp Zama, Japan, and the file in front of him could have been any case back home — chain of custody questions, timestamps, the same arguments he'd go on to make dozens more times over the next two decades. The setting was new. The work wasn't.
Trent grew up in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, a small town in the middle of bourbon country, and he knew early — like, age 13 early — that computers were going to be his thing. Not in the vague "I like video games" sense that covers most 13-year-olds. He could diagnose a bad hard drive or a corrupted install before most of his classmates had figured out how to change the desktop wallpaper. Computer repair was his first job, and it stuck.
He graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Engineering in 2008 with a degree in Computer Science and went straight to work as a forensic examiner for Cyber Agents, Inc. Six years later, in 2014, he took over the company. At the time, "the company" was him — one examiner, one desk, whatever cases happened to come through the door. Cyber Agents today runs four examiners and an office manager, which doesn't sound like a lot until you remember where it started.
The expert witness work has taken him places — literally. He's testified more than 40 times: federal courts, state courts in Kentucky and Virginia, and military courts on installations scattered across multiple continents. He's been a guest instructor at the Naval Justice School's Computer Crimes course, spoken at the Trial Defense Service Expert Witness Symposium, presented at professional conferences, and been published in computer forensics magazines. None of that happens by accident, and none of it happens if the work underneath isn't right. Trent built a career on getting that part right first and worrying about everything else second.
Some of the travel was strictly business — Kuwait and Iraq, Yokosuka, Camp Zama (where the expert-witness résumé started), Sasebo, Seoul, Wiesbaden, Kaiserslautern, Rose Barracks, and a long list of installations across the United States. Some of it was just for the fun of it: Italy, Greece, Dubrovnik, Prague, Vienna, Oktoberfest in Munich, skiing in Geneva and Morzine, southern Spain, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Cologne, Tokyo, Seoul again (better food, no court date), New Zealand, Bangkok. One trip through Germany put him near the Nürburgring, which for a guy who spends weekends chasing a faster lap time is a little like a chef walking past the kitchen of a restaurant he's always wanted to try.
That's the part of Trent's life that doesn't show up on a CV. He drives a 2013 Scion FR-S day to day and has tracked a 2013 Porsche 911 at Mid-Ohio, Pittsburgh International Race Complex, Gingerman, Autobahn Country Club, the NCM Motorsports Park, and Ozarks International Raceway. He grew up sailing small boats — a Pram, a Laser, a Highlander, a Flying Scot — and as an adult he's crewed a J/105 in the Big Boat Series on San Francisco Bay. He doesn't own a boat these days, which he'll call either a money-saving decision or a lapse in judgment, depending on who's asking and how the week went.
When he's not in court, on a track, or reading up on the latest in digital forensics and security research — yes, he does that for fun too — Trent cooks, brews beer, and tinkers with other fermentation projects most people have never heard of. Brewing and forensic examination share more than people might guess: both reward patience, and both punish skipping a step because it's tedious. Skip a step in fermentation and the batch is off. Skip a step in an exam and the result is wrong — and somebody, eventually, will ask about it under oath. Trent treats both the same way. Carefully. He also hikes and camps, which, for someone who spends his working life staring at hash values and timestamps, probably counts as balance.
Bourbon country, computer repair, courtrooms on three continents — it's a strange enough combination that people sometimes ask how it all fits together. The honest answer is that it mostly just happened, one step at a time, starting with a 13-year-old who liked taking things apart to see how they worked. What's carried through is less about the specific path and more about how he approaches it: good forensic work isn't about being right, it's about being accurate — which sometimes means telling a client or an attorney that the evidence doesn't support what they hoped it would. That's not always the answer people are looking for. It's the only version of the job worth doing.
