Ask HN: tracking a criminal down electronically

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571367

by YuriNiyazov • 17 years ago

16 17 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Recently a rogue real estate broker defrauded me of $2000, which to me is a decent sum of money. I reported the matter to the authorities; however, they are having issues tracking the guy down physically because they are using fairly outdated methods (Visiting everyone in the neighborhood to ask if they've seen him lately? Come on, what is this, 1980?) Anyway - I know the e-mail address that the guy uses. I know the phone number that he uses. All of that stuff leaves an electronic trail that is, in the end, traceable to a physical location. Anyone have experience with how to do this, correctly and legally?

vaksel2• 17 years ago

How did you find the broker? A website or some service?

Anyways post up the info and I'll see if I can find him. There is pretty much 10 or so steps to go through to see if there is info about the guy online

YuriNiyazov4• 17 years ago

I am not going to post up the info publically for the very good reason that other people outlined over here: I don't want to start a public witchhunt, and get HN involved in something of the sort. Having said that: my HN handle = my real name, and you can find my e-mail address in my profile.

YuriNiyazov4• 17 years ago

A detailed explanation of those 10 steps would be greatly appreciated. Teach a man to fish, and all that.

vaksel2• 17 years ago

Alright.

Basically your goal is to use the small pieces of information that you have and piecing that together to find additional info. Finding a person's blog, or a forum username is a goldmine.

It varies with what information you already have. If all you have is a phone #, there is basically just 3 steps:

1. Check Google looking for (###) ###-####, ###-###-####

2. Do a reverse lookup on whitepages.org

3. Use one of the people search websites like pipl.com

Although phone # is usually something you don't have. In fact you are pretty much at the point where its time to trick the guy into revealing more info. Simply have a friend call him up, saying that he is looking for a real estate broker, and setup a meeting at the guy's offices. For a new client, the guy will give up all the information that you'll need.

pierrefar• 17 years ago

Not sure of the legalities, but hire a private investigator? It's kinda their thing...

YuriNiyazov4• 17 years ago

I've looked into it, and PIs are quite expensive; they charge on the same order as lawyers. PIs don't need special training to carry out their work; they are just resourceful, and I think I can invoke the same amount of resourcefulness.

tsally3• 17 years ago

I helped a friend out with an issue like this recently. If you know his name, get a background check done on him. That should give you plenty to go off of. If you don't know his name, try figuring out which service provider his phone number is from. I assume the email has stripped out the IP address in the headers? If not, just plug that into one of the many databases available online.

If all of that fails, try this. Set up a webserver for which you have complete logging. Then, send the guy an email from a different account with a link. If somehow you can get him to visit your webserver, you can log his IP address. This is completely legal and there's not even anything that underhanded about it. You just need to get him to visit a webpage on your server. The IP address will give you an ISP and a general location. Armed with this data, you should have no trouble.

EDIT: For those that are suggesting he post the info, I strongly advise against it. Also, why would you track down someone when you don't even know the truthfulness of the original poster's story? I don't believe he's lying, but that doesn't mean I would get personally involved. There is a big difference between giving general advice and actually carrying out the action yourself. Further, HN doesn't need to follow the type of witchhunt behaviour that often happens on other sites like Reddit.

skolor• 17 years ago

I would start with the email. Headers store quite a bit of information, and can usually tell you where the email started from. Start by contacting whoever the email originated from.

Unfortunately, its rather easy to get beyond the range any realistic, legal tracking can be done. Your best bet of finally tracking the person down is to go by the phone number, but that will likely (if he knows what he's doing) be a pre-paid phone with fake information that has no way to be traced back to him (other than rough estimates of location, and the phone companies are unlikely to release that kind of information).

Its really unfortunate that most of cyber-forensics relies on analysis of computer systems to prove that a person did something, rather than finding and tracking down who did it.

With all that said, the good news is that a few Google searches may turn up some useful information. Google the phone number, email and name, maybe you'll get lucky and either find the person bragging about it, or someone else in the same situation.

dkokelley2• 17 years ago

What you would need to do is see who provided phone service to him and then get the information on address and billing through the provider (requires warrant). Also, did he use a public email (yahoo, gmail) or was it through a private site? You could try the whois to see who the host is and contact them too. I agree with pierrefar that the best course seems to be hiring a PI.

Or...

You could post what you know up here and round up an HN posse.

Edit: That last line is sarcasm. Don't really do that.

tsally3• 17 years ago

> You could post what you know up here and round up an HN posse.

No, there are so many things wrong with that idea. Leave that stuff to Reddit and 4Chan. There's nothing wrong with giving general advice, but there's no reason to drag the HN name into an issue like this.

dkokelley2• 17 years ago

I apologize. I guess I should have included <sarcasm> tags. I thought it would have been self-evident.

tptacek• 17 years ago

I've been involved in criminal cases that had less to go on than a phone number (try IRC /whois and finger) and seen that lead to an indictment within weeks. Why aren't the cops working with the phone number you gave them? Which "authorities" did you contact?

YuriNiyazov4• 17 years ago

The police department of the city in which these matter occurred. I guess I was too strong to dismiss their effors in my original post: I gave them the phone number, I think they are working on a subpoena for the billing address from the phone company. However, the general feeling that I get from them is that the enthusiasm to do as much as possible is pretty much only on my end.

silencio• 17 years ago

I'm not quite sure which part or to what extent "rogue" applies to, but if the guy is a licensed broker/agent, you can go after him via the state or local licensing people - i.e. in California, you could file complaints with the Department of Consumer Affairs and the Department of Real Estate and the National Association of Realtors (if applicable), et cetera.

mojonixon• 17 years ago

1. real estate brokers are typically state licensed. State licensing boards often have online databases with good contact info. 2. he probably owns real estate. if you can narrow it down to a county, check that county's property records (also often on the net). Nexis/Lexis or Westlaw also has decent nationwide searches. 3. some counties also keep records on personal property, i.e. cars. he's probably run to a relative, is his car in their driveway? 4. +1 to the previous recommendation to send him an email containing a link, to get his IP. 5. zabasearch for established addresses (does he have a second home? relatives?)

Frankly, this type of thing is a lot harder than it seems. Although, law enforcement should be able to run his social security and credit card numbers to find him. Once he settles somewhere and his new info has time to get into the "system" it will be easier for you to find him.

chris11• 17 years ago

You seem to have gotten a lot of good suggestions. It sounds like the easiest is to get the police to subpoena the phone company or the email provider. It seems like the police are working on that.

If they won't do that, do it yourself. The easy way is to just do a reverse phone number look up. I found a site that will do single lookup for around $15. It may not be accurate, but that is relatively inexpensive. But I don't see why the police would not have already done this if possible.

Address lookup: http://www.numberinvestigator.com/

Otherwise, you will probably need a court order, but I don't believe that should be too hard to get.It sounds like the amount might be small enough to be handled by small claims court. So just file a case yourself. I don't think he actually needs to get served, you just have to make a reasonable effort. Since you can't get his address, I'd hire a process server, or just try to contact him through all means possible.. If the judge won't accept your efforts to serve him, I think you could reasonably subpoena the phone company for his address. If he doesn't show up, you will easily win, and I am sure you can obtain his address through a court order for collection purposes.

Of course I am not a lawyer, so I might be totally wrong in what I suggest.

How to file a case in small claims:http://consumerist.com/consumer/small-claims-court/how-to-ta...

Ask HN: tracking a criminal down electronically

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