Brought down by the devil’s horns. And a bunch of car nerds.

I love it when virtual communities act like real communities and come together to achieve a common purpose.  The special joy I have from this phenomenon is enhanced when the virtual community uses the everyday technology tools at their disposal to achieve their ends.  For that very reason, I spent some time a couple of years ago scambaiting;  it was fun using teh Intarwebs to interfere with fraudsters, and I’d like to take the practice up again some time.  I kept a diary for a short while about my scambaiting adventures;  sadly, I kept getting some momentum going in a scambait and then running into work-related madness that kept me away from my victims.  It was a fun little pastime, and there were a couple of bad guys who ended up getting arrested as a result of the work my fellow scambaiters did at www.419eater.com.

Here’s another great example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, though:  in Calgary, an online car enthusiasts’ community has located a vehicle stolen from one of its members.   As reported in Wired, the thief in question swiped a rather distinctive Nissan Skyline GT-R – the vehicle in question is a right-hand drive model imported from Japan.  The owner of the vehicle thought the car was gone, but posted a description of the unique vehicle in the car-buff forum he frequented, along with a description of the (also) distinctive looking thief, who was missing the middle two fingers on his left hand.

Sure enough, a moderator from the forum by the name of James Lynch spotted the car a day later and then did some awesome detective work:

“I pulled out my camera, but I wanted to see his hand, so I did the rock out sign,” Lynch, 22, told Wired.com, referring to the splayed finger gesture that’s ubiquitous at heavy metal concerts. “He did it back and I saw his hand. I rolled down my window and yelled, ‘Nice stolen car!’ He’s like, ‘It’s not stolen,’ ”

The suspect sped off in the turbocharged 400-horsepower car at more than 100 mph, almost running off the road in the process. “He’s a lousy driver,” said Lynch, who decided chasing him wouldn’t be wise. Instead, he called the police and posted the suspect’s picture at Beyond.ca.

Two days later, using tools like Facebook and Google maps, along with some old-fashioned gumshoe work, the community had found the car and local police soon arrested their man.  Bonus:  there’s video of the thief (dubbed “The Claw” by forum habituees) posted on youtube.