What happens if an employee deletes company e-mails after termination?

Assuming an employee is terminated by his or her employer and before the employee leaves permanently his or her former place of employment the employee purposefully deletes e mails, the deletion of such e mails (depending upon their significance) could be viewed as a further example of insubordination or wrongful conduct of the employee justifying the termination in the first place and a violation of any office rules or policy manual of the employer.

Depending upon the laws of Illinois, the intentional deletion of such e mails if done to thwart a police investigation could be a crime in and of itself.

From a practical standpoint, a good computer person would be able to retrieve the deleted e mails from the former employee's hard drive with a bit of effort and have such transposed onto paper.

Depending on the circumstances, this could--

1) Give rise to a civil claim or lawsuit against the employee, since the emails are company property; if their deletion causes the company some economic injury, damage, or cost in some fashion, the company may sue for compensation.

2) Could potentially give rise to criminal liability, if the deletion were done willfully or intentionally, since that could constitute the intentional destruction of another's property; since destroying physical files or books could give rise to criminal liability, it's possible that destroying electronic files could also.

3) In some other case (e.g. if  the employer is suing the employee for some other reason), the deletion could possibly be taken as evidence of wrongdoing (i.e. "why'd you destroy them if you had nothing to hide?")

4) Depending on the existence and terms of any confidentiality, employment, or severance agreements, the destruction could be violations of them, which could also give rise to a claim for damages and/or absolve the company of its obligations under those agreements.