“Cyber vigilantes foil gadget thief” is not quite your everyday headline regarding the ever growing cyber community.  As many people feel violated with the theft of a purse or wallet, today’s tech savvy generation feels quite the same intrusion with the loss of digital data of any kind; this is where we meet 26-year-old Philadelphian Jesse McPherson who turned the internet into his own personal Dodge City.

photo courtesy of The Sydney Morning Herald

“On March 12, just as McPherson returned home from an out-of-town conference, his girlfriend broke the news that their house had been burgled and his Xbox 360, big screen TV and Apple G4 Powerbook were missing”

After the police made no progress, most of us would chalk up our losses and start from scratch. McPherson however did not feel this way, and he began investigating the matter himself. I wouldn’t have had the patience to go through the steps of calling local pawn shops, securing surveillance photos from them, and then posting them to my personal blog; maybe that’s why I admire what McPherson was able to accomplish.

Many times we are used to seeing news stories about the internet being used for scams, fraud, or lewd acts; it is refreshing to read about a person who used the power of the internet to achieve a result. Judging from the responses to McPherson’s blog about the incident, many people felt the same way I do, and some even went a step further by finding the YouTube and MySpace profile for the person who was trying to sell McPherson his own Xbox 360 back for $200. This person, by the way, was only identified after he sent McPherson a message from his personal Xbox Live account; as McPherson put it, “what an idiot”.  This is the web community at its best!

The boy who had the Xbox finally had some sense talked into him by his mom, and he returned it. There was also some coaxing by the police involved, as the man in the photos with the MacBook also returned the computer to McPherson after worrying that his photo was circulating over the internet.

Within two weeks McPherson has recovered two of the three items that were stolen; the TV has naturally been a little harder to track, and McPherson is currently using a 20” replacement until he has the money to buy another. I guess this wasn’t bad work for the internet version of Wyatt Earp and his marshalls!

Via: The Sydney Morning Herald and Jesse McPherson’s Blog