A friend has been arrested for attempting to cash several checks that
turned out to be forged.  The provider of these checks is only known
to him through an e-mail exchange.  All information in these e-mails
also turned out to be false.  Can this individual be traced using the
ip addresses contained in these e-mails.  If so, is there a company
that provides this service and can provide this information to his
local law enforcement agencies?

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 17 Sep 2005 16:56 PDT

If you tell me what state and county you are in I will try to see if I
can find a private investigator for you who is knowledgeable in
computer forensics and able to give you a consultation, if you will
accept that as an answer.

tutuzdad-ga

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Clarification of Question by lavish01-ga on 17 Sep 2005 17:23 PDT

My friend lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  I live in King County,
Washington, USA.  This is at least a start.

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 17 Sep 2005 17:46 PDT

You sould uncertain as to wther or not you are willing yet to accept
my suggegstion about a PI as an answer, so I will leave the question
open and see if someone might have some useful information to your
original question before I attempt to answer with information about a
private investigiator.

tutuzdad-ga

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 17 Sep 2005 17:48 PDT

Sorry. Let me turn my keyboard around and see if I can type that more clearly:

You sound uncertain as to whether or not you are willing to accept my
alternative suggestion answer, so I will leave the question open for a
while and see if someone might have some useful information to your
original question before I attempt to answer with information about a
private investigiator.

tutuzdad-ga

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Clarification of Question by lavish01-ga on 17 Sep 2005 18:14 PDT

Please see my reply in comments.  Again thanks.

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Clarification of Question by lavish01-ga on 19 Sep 2005 23:35 PDT

A sidebar added in comments was a little disturbing but their point
was taken.  I'm ready for your final answer regarding the private
investigator.  However, I now don't have much confidence in that a
private investigator can be of much help.

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Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 22 Sep 2005 18:24 PDT

In spite of my best efforts I have come up short. Hopefully someone
else will know more about this subject and will offer to help you.

Regards;
tutuzdad-ga

There are websites and services that will track a IP address back to a
given computer. Often times they are not reliable because IP addresses
are dynamically given to users and change often. Your best chance is
to use
http://www.abika.com/Reports/verifyemail.htm
Also the ISP the email originated from may have a record of who was
assigned to that IP address when the email was sent.

It is also possible the IP has been spoofed. That is forged, and will
be useless in locating the person.

lol  I have the same problem when my keyboard turns over.  Of course,
this is first time I have been involved in something like this and I'm
not quite sure what I should do.  I go along with your recommendation
but I do want to get back with him within a couple of days.  Thanks
for your assistance.

Just a sidebar on that A B I K A link...Are they an email Vortex?
I mean, to "Get a Report" they just want *YOUR* email address....Caution.

and A B I K A have been mentioned in a complaint to the USA's ftc
(ftc.gov) asking it to investigate it and its data broker cohorts.

and finally, A B I K A is a Wyoming corporation which potentially
makes it EVEN harder to locate the beneficial owners.

http://www.corporationstoday.com/

www.epic.org

http://www.epic.org/privacy/iei/ftccomplaint.html