Tracking down internet scammers why not? questions

Many of you know more about the internet than me. How come those scammers (wire money to shipper from bad check) cant't be tracked down? 1. I seriously doubt that they are all in Nigeria. 2. Couldn't a trap be set and the guy who gets the money wired to him be "Taken out in handcuffs buy Marshalls" through a set up? Your thoughts please. Oh if he is facing 15 years federal time he will rat his accomplish's out might fast!!!

Most of them are so deep in "net works" that they are hard to track down. Plus, "home country" is someplace that is basically lawless, no extradition agreements, etc.

It seems to to me that they can be tracked down.
But, the problem seems to be lack of money and
manpower. The one example I had was a guy who
was a rogue internet tractor dealer. I brought
my case to the closest FBI office. The guy kept
changing his location so often that they could
not devote manpower to catch up with him.

One of the "investigative" tv shows like dateline or 20/20 did a story on this a few years ago. They sold something to a scammer, got the fake money order, and then started tracking them down with some computer folks much smarter than I. They found where this guy was sending hatefull emails every day about the same time from the same cafe in Nigeria. They went and found him, had to lie to take a tv crew into the country. Then they confronted him with fake money order in hand, he called the cops on them. If memory serves me right, they almost went to jail for harass'n the poor boy just try'n to make a buck because they were s'possed to be in contry for another story. Had to do some fast talk'n and faster drive'n to get out.

Dave

I was responsible for gathering evidence against a person who kept using our campus network for downloading child porn a couple of years ago.

I wound up delivering 12 different PC's as evidence, all loaded down with images he had downloaded, one with images time stamped within 1 minute of him logging in to another website with his userid/password (in other words proof that it was him using the PC at the time).

I also had several hours of video from a hidden camera of him sitting at the PC as well as video of the screen of the PC showing what he was doing. All of this was at the direction of the police before they finally arrested him.

It took about 40% of my time at work for 4 months before they did anything. Not to mention we were down 12 PCs for about 6 months.

Part of the reason was the state investigator that forensically examines technical gear for "official evidence" was so overwhelmed, the locals could/would only give him "slam dunks".

As far as I was concerned, its like you have to deliver the criminal with a signed confession AND the smoking gun before there is much hope of prosecution...

How much harder for someone clever who is wanting to hide their tracks AND is probably in a foreign country?!


Howard

Something may happen if President external_link gave the Justice Dept. back their cajoles(sp).
Most recent story I heard about the criminals Bush/Cheney is the development of Homeland Security was to pull fifty FBI agents, that investigated white collar crimes, out of the FBI.

Quite simply put , if it didn't work they would all stop. So who are the morons out there that are falling for it. It's not that hard to be smarter than the criminals is it? Lot easier to put criminals out of bussiness than to catch them , and a lot cheaper too. People just need to wise up!