FBI using social media to track down fugitives is nothing new – It seems it became the Achilles’ heel now for fugitives – using these websites to boast the crime they have committed, how they evaded the investigators or to blog about the guilt they felt while committing the atrocious act. Either way, the rate of their elusiveness falls down to a notch with the use of social media thanks to the cooperative officers who are willing to give up the information of these criminals making it easier for them to be caught.
And this is a great news indeed.
December 31, 2009 – a report surfaced the net that even a game can be used to smite crooks out from their nooks – World of Warcraft, more popularly known as WOW, is one of the most popular MMORPG game of Blizzard – was said to be used to track down Alfred Hightower an evasive drug dealer.
Wanted on charges of dealing in a schedule III controlled substance and dealing in a schedule IV controlled substance, and two charges of dealing in marijuana. A warrant was issued for his arrest in 2007.
This guy manages to skip the country making it difficult for US sherrif’s to put him behind bars. Until one day, Sheriff Major Matt Roberson had been tipped that Mr. Hightower is a very avid fan of World of Warcraft.
Roberson send a subpoena to Blizzard hoping that the giant gaming company would give the necessary information to catch the drug dealer. Although, Roberson already assumed that Bliz won’t cooperate that much because the subpoena only works on the boundaries of USA and the guy that they are catching is already on non-usa territory.
“They don’t have to respond to us, and I was under the assumption that they wouldn’t,” said Roberson. “It had been three or four months since I had sent the subpoena. I just put it in the back of my mind and went on to do other things. Then I finally got a response from them. They sent me a package of information. They were very cooperative. It was nice that they were that willing to provide information.”
Impressively it turns out that Blizzard didn’t only cooperate, the company even gave the player’s IP address, his account information and history, his billing address, and even his online screen name and preferred server – An action that brought Mr. Hightower on a silver plate to the US officials.
Roberson and Rogers contacted the U.S. Marshals, who immediately notified the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Border Services Agency. Wherein the marshals had the suspect deported back to USA to face the pile of charges.
Food for thought: This serves as a proof that you can’t hide yourself forever online especially when at some point in your cyberlife you gave up your personal details, billing information to a particular website which later can be harvest to pinpoint you down for real. However, this should be an eye-opener too for those netizens who leave a snarky comments and flame remarks to people they only knew on the net. Once you’re proven to harrass someone (e.g: cyberbullying) – Make no mistake about it, you can be charge with a grave cyber assault and the price is dear.
Let this story be an example on how google can give your blogger account details if ever they receieve a subpoena from the court.
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