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Mafia Boss Betrayed By Facebook
An anonymous reader writes "One of Italy's 100 most-wanted criminals, a vicious mafia boss who had been on the run for months, was betrayed by his passion for social networking and flushed out thanks to Facebook. Using the name 'Scarface' from the gangster movie starring Al Pacino, Pasquale Manfredi, 33, a boss of the the ferocious 'Ndrangheta mafia organization from the Calabria region in southern Italy, had logged on to his Facebook account so often that police were able to trace the signal from his Internet key and find his hideout.' Seems the Mafia Wars Facebook phenomenon goes deeper than it seemed!"
I dunno I can't seem to bring myself to take a mafia boss who uses facebook seriously. I can only imagine how seriously people will take him when he's in jail. Getting caught by using facebook can't be good for your criminal reputation.
I bet one of the other mob bosses had more friends in his MafiaWars Mob.
Pasquale Manfredi has sent you an invite you cannot refuse. Do you want to accept?
Technically speaking, it works like this. There is a guy in a brightly lit room with about 30-40 computer screens of various sizes. He sees the bad guy log in to facebook and runs a trace on the internet key by typing furiously. A few of the screens show maps of the world with lines tracing the signal as it gets closer to the mafia boss's hideout. If he doesn't log out before the connect the dots reach him, he gets busted. Make sense now?
Saying goodbye to my little friends!
All things electronic can be trace
Wow, I didn't know that! Could you try tracing my microwave oven, please? Just to give you a bit of a head start, it's 800W, and I'll probably be using it tonight around 7pm, somewhere in the UK.
which is totally what she said
207.148.2.2
He should have known there was a problem when someone posted a picture of a horse's head on his wall.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
And of course he is running a custom OS where you can type in complete phrases that it will understand like "find the bad man's internet key" and 1.5 seconds later it has a GPS location, pictures of the bad man, all his recent activity, etc. all on the screen. It could also find any DNA or fingerprint info from it's imaginary worldwide database that contains this info everybody in the world and can also return the results in a matter of seconds.
Seriously though, if law enforcement had any of the programs and databases they seem to have on every cop show on television, I am pretty sure the unsolved crime rate would be below 2%.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Don Zynga strikes again! so, Facebook may be expecting a drive-by shooting any moment ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
What is this Google that you speak of?
Do I need an internet key to access it?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What's his score on Mafia Wars?
It basically means that law enforcement whipped up a GUI in Visual Basic in order to trace his IP address.
Then they just "log in" to get grainy security camera footage from a convenience store that shows him 50 feet from the camera at the back of the store. A few zooms and "enhance!" operations and you can clearly see each of the hairs in the suspect's beard. Case closed.
I wonder how many toolbars and trials Italy had to install to defeat this boss?
One of the investigators sat down at a terminal and said, "Hey... this is UNIX! I know this!" Then, he used the UNIX GUI to fly around the interwebs until he found a box with the name "scarface" on it. He clicked on that box, and it brought up this guys address, phone number, names of his family members, and favorite color.
It was pretty simple, actually. The investigator learned how to do it by watching Jurassic Park over and over.
What really bothers me about this is that this guy became a mob boss at 33. I really need to pick up the pace.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
You are really skimming the bottom of the barrel now. Butter luck next time.
"But this one goes to 11!"
The average Giovanni you mean :p
Because before they were on the lamb...
I thought he was Italian, not Welsh.
BWAHAHA, TV fail
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