After reading your story, the image at the bottom stands out. I never thought about the fact that you can’t really trust that what is returned to you is the same as what they took. No telling if they added any malware to those drives intentionally or not.
I vaguely recall this case. I sure hope police have become more cyber literate in the past 10 years, but yeah this is the virtual equivalent of leaving fingerprints on the crime scene.