<story><title>On the trail of my identity thief</title><url>https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/an-identity-thief-stole-5000-from-me-i-spent-two-years-tracking-down-how/ar-BB1mqh0b</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>neonate</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.ph&amp;#x2F;KG95Q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.ph&amp;#x2F;KG95Q&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20240520073631&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.msn.com&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;crime&amp;#x2F;an-identity-thief-stole-5000-from-me-i-spent-two-years-tracking-down-how&amp;#x2F;ar-BB1mqh0b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20240520073631&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.msn.c...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>On the trail of my identity thief</title><url>https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/an-identity-thief-stole-5000-from-me-i-spent-two-years-tracking-down-how/ar-BB1mqh0b</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>geek_at</author><text>I had something similar happen to me [1]. I won 500$ Apple gift cards in a sysadmin contest but they were for the US only and I (from Austria) wasn&amp;#x27;t able to spend them so I tried to sell them for about a year and then found someone who tricked me and stole the cards.&lt;p&gt;Over a year I tracked them down and in the end got my money back by sending facebook messages to his mother and brother. Found out his real name because some school friend of him had posted a screenshot of a windowed game which facebook open in the background where you could see his friendlist. Crazy stuff. Even BBC wrote about it later [2]&lt;p&gt;Fun fact: Since that article aired (8 years ago) I&amp;#x27;m still getting 2 to 5 messages per week from random people who ask me to track down their scammers too&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.haschek.at&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;how-a-scammer-stole-500-dollars-from-me&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.haschek.at&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;how-a-scammer-stole-500-dollars...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;technology-37348014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;technology-37348014&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>