

Ask HN: tracking a criminal down electronically - YuriNiyazov

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to the authorities; however, they are having issues tracking the guy down physically because they are using fairly outdated methods (Visiting everyone in the neighborhood to ask if they've seen him lately?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?
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tsally
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
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.

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chris11
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...](http://consumerist.com/consumer/small-claims-
court/how-to-take-your-case-to-small-claims-court-246502.php)

------
vaksel
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

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

~~~
vaksel
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.

------
dkokelley
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.

~~~
tsally
> 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.

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

~~~
tsally
If it was sarcasm, then I also apologize. :)

------
silencio
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
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.

------
tptacek
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?

~~~
YuriNiyazov
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.

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

~~~
YuriNiyazov
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.

