Cyber vigilantes foil gadget thief

Subject: Cyber vigilantes foil gadget thief Wed Mar 26, 2008 10:27 pm

A group of tech-savvy internet users solved a home robbery and seized back stolen goods as police sat stumped looking for clues.

Jesse McPherson, a 26-year-old engineer from Philadelphia, was robbed of his games console, TV and laptop this month.

After receiving little help from police, he posted all the evidence he had - including images taken from surveillance footage - on his blog.

To McPherson's amazement, the blog post was linked to by a popular news aggregation website and soon after a group had formed, using the initial clues to track down two of the three stolen goods. They also reveal to police the identities of some of those suspected to be involved.

In a phone interview this morning, McPherson said he was "blown away" by what could be achieved by a band of disparate internet users with a common goal.

"The internet can be a scary place [for thieves] because if you're not smart then it only takes one [website] profile to be able to find the rest of you," he said.

On March 12, just as McPherson returned home from an out-of-town conference, his girlfriend broke the news that their house had been burgled and his Xbox 360, big screen TV and Apple G4 Powerbook were missing.

"The reason they didn't get anything else was because one of my roommates was home ... she heard what was happening but she didn't come downstairs because she was too scared," he said.

The police had fingerprinted the house by the time McPherson returned from the airport but that was the extent of their investigation. "They [police] were supposed to come back but never did," he said.

So the next day McPherson took the matter into his own hands by phoning a local pawn shop and providing the serial numbers of the stolen goods. A worker there recalled that someone had stopped by trying to sell a Powerbook.

McPherson went down to the store and obtained a series of still photographs of the alleged Powerbook thief from the surveillance system.

"Once I had them [the photographs] I tried calling the detectives and was told someone would come by; I waited a few hours and no one ever came and I didn't hear anything basically," he said.

"Then a whole week went by and some co-workers of mine presented me with a brand new Xbox - that was really awesome, made my day."

About 5am last Saturday, McPherson hooked up his new Xbox and signed in to his old Xbox Live account. Xbox Live facilitates online communication between Xbox users and allows them to play against each other via the internet.

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Cyber vigilantes foil gadget thief

Cyber vigilantes foil gadget thief

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