"hkrause" wrote in message
news:1107744171.2cdccfc95906c5085a5f8a41584a73fb@t eranews...
Swizzle wrote:
OK Harry - with all that experience at the helm....lets see some
stories for our webiste!

Regards,
Rob


You apparently didn't know we currently are plagued with a couple of real
losers in this newsgroup who have no lives of their own and try to live
vicariously by pretending they are me by engaging in identity theft.



Good luck. My wife had a "real" case of identity theft (false id, stolen
credit card, false internet auction house accounts, international sales of
stolen goods), and we had to jump through a million and one hoops to even
find a branch of law enforcement that would take the time to fill out a
report. With the help of the site administrator of some obscure mom-and-pop
auction house in California, I was able to trace the thief's email to South
Carolina. With a little more digging around, I discovered that he was
selling a stolen motorcycle (had a local officer run the VIN). I presented
the info to local law enforcement, and they handed me off to the FBI. The
FBI said they weren't the ones to deal with it, and said to contact the FTC.
The FTC has no real police powers. They shuffled me to the Electronic
Crimes division of the Secret Service. I spoke for about 25 minutes with a
Secret Service agent in Miami, who took all of the info. He said that
they'd subpoena AOL, Ebay, and a number of auction houses with which the
thief had registered. The agent also said they'd send an agent from South
Carolina and try to nab the thief selling the motorcycle. I don't know how
it all turned out, because I never heard back from the agent in Miami.

The bottom line...
You don't stand a snowball's chance in hell in prosecuting someone who
logged onto a newsgroup under your name. You *might* get the person's
internet provider to send him a warning, or maybe even cancel his
account...but don't count on that either. Law enforcement is too busy with
*real* crime to give a rat's ass about some guy logging into Usenet under a
false name. I guess you could get an attorney and sue. But then again,
what are the "damages"?