Warrant Builder Preserver

Create preservation request letters and safeguard your evidence

Patrol Ready, Detective Approved

Create preservation request letters for over 1,000 companies and services in seconds. No matter where your case takes you, Warrant Builder is the partner you can rely on.

Create preservation letters in 30 seconds from your MDT or phone without leaving the scene.
Secure evidence before it can be deleted.
Simple, fast, and ideal for patrol officers to protect critical evidence early.

What Is a Preservation Request?

A preservation request is a time-sensitive letter asking a company or online service to preserve records before they are deleted, overwritten, or lost through normal business practices. It does not usually require the company to disclose records immediately. Instead, it asks the company to hold the records long enough for law enforcement to obtain the proper legal process, such as a search warrant, court order, or subpoena.

Preservation requests are commonly used when investigators identify an account, phone number, email address, IP address, username, device identifier, or online service connected to an investigation, but need additional time to prepare legal process. This can be especially important when records may have short retention periods, such as login history, IP connection records, messages, location records, transaction activity, or subscriber information.

Warrant Builder helps officers create provider-specific preservation requests quickly and accurately. The system helps identify the correct company, formats the request, includes relevant identifiers, and gives officers a structured way to preserve potential evidence before it disappears.

Preservation Letters

Warrant Builder creates your document in the style that your Court expects based on your selected jurisdiction. When your case takes you to a different county, your warrant is crafted to comply with their local requirements.

How the Preservation Request Workflow Works

Writing preservation requests is an easy five step process.

Choose the Preservation Request tool
Select the company or service provider
Enter the target account and enter the date range
Download the formatted word document on your letterhead
Follow the service instructions we provide to get your letter to the company

Operational Use Cases:

Patrol and Field Investigations

A patrol officer may encounter a phone number, email address, social media account, tracking number, or online username during an initial investigation. The officer may not have enough information to write a full warrant yet, but the information may still be important. A preservation request allows the officer or agency to ask the provider to hold the relevant records before they are deleted. This is useful when a case begins after hours, during a weekend, or before a detective has been assigned.

Fraud and Financial Investigations

Fraud investigations often involve email accounts, payment platforms, shipping services, bank accounts, cryptocurrency exchanges, online marketplaces, and communication platforms. Preservation requests can help prevent the loss of records connected to transactions, login activity, account ownership, shipping history, and communication between suspects and victims.

Threats, Harassment, and Social Media Cases

Threats, harassment, stalking, and extortion cases often involve social media accounts, messaging apps, email addresses, phone numbers, or online profiles. A preservation request can help hold account records, login history, message-related records, and other provider data while the investigator prepares a warrant or other legal process.

Missing Persons and Time-Sensitive Cases

In missing person investigations, investigators may need to preserve records from phones, apps, cloud accounts, rideshare services, payment platforms, location services, or communication providers. Preservation requests can help secure potentially relevant records while the agency determines the correct legal process and investigative path.

Why Preservation Requests Matter

Many companies don't keep records forever. Some records are deleted quickly or overwritten as part of normal business operations. Without a timely preservation request, important evidence may be unavailable by the time a search warrant, court order, or subpoena is completed.

Preservation requests help law enforcement ensure that the evidence they need will still be there while they prepare the necessary warrants.