An Online Forum Catch a Car Thief

[paul]

An internet community forum solved a crime of car theft within 48 hours, as per the story "An auto dealer in Calgary lends a car for a test drive — a 1991 Nissan Skyline GT-R. The test driver and another person don't return the car".

The dealer files a police report and also posts a message in beyond.ca (forums.beyond.ca/st/212943/1991-skyline-gt-r-stolen-calgary-ab-cash-rewardpics-of-criminals-inside/) forum, as well the dealer used Facebook/Google Maps to pinpoint the thief's location. Interesting.

Full Story: nytimes.com/2008/04/13/automobiles/13STEAL.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

[Brian]

Read that a couple of weeks ago. Some of the pictures are really funny.

[WelshTom]

Lol!

Owned!

[DPS Computing]

Haha, it just shows how much computers and the Internet really are starting to affect reality! This is the first step of many to computers taking over the world. See you truely cannot hide!!

[eUKhost.com]

That thread has been viewed for 1160067 times till now

lol. This is quite similar to what we saw with Milliondollarhomepage.

[paul]

This is good example of alert citizen and a community driven initiative, also google map has major role in catching him instantly. I doubt police could have been act so fast.

[WelshTom]

It's a shame that it wasn't the eUKhost forums which catched him

[paul]

Originally Posted by WelshTom

It's a shame that it wasn't the eUKhost forums which catched him

Don't worry, We will catch someone like that, however I am sure I can make this thread popular too, just go on responding.

The Greater Manchester Police force looks like inspired by such initiative, they have developed a Facebook application to collect leads for investigations and encourage anonymous information. facebook.com/applications/GMP_Updates/9878600737