The computer shop owner had possession of the laptop when he made copies.
Btw, wasn’t a copy of the laptop entered into the Congressional record recently?
a copy is only an image of what the drive head sees...
the drive will contain “deleted” files that only had their pointers deleted and those can be recovered
but with possession of the drive, you can recover files that have been overwritten, not just their pointers removed...
at least the pros can