Don’t Steal A Laptop From An Ex-FBI Employee

A man who had his laptop, and other items, stolen from his West Kensington flat during last week’s looting and riots was able to trace the teenager in possession using Facebook. Although when trying to track down a stolen device it does help if you are an information security professional.

When Soheil Khalilfar was alleged to have stolen the laptop, he probably had no idea that the man who it belonged to was a former NASA and FBI employee. Greg Martin had installed a tracking device to his Macbook Pro, and after two days of waiting patiently, he received an email while on a business trip to Luxembourg that alerted him to the fact that his laptop was now being used to surf the web.

Writing on his blog, Mr Martin told how he monitored the suspected burglar as he spent two hours viewing religious revelation videos and shopping for a high-end car on Autotrader before making the crucial error of logging onto Facebook. Once he’d signed in to the social networking site, Martin was able to obtain information such as Soheil Khalilfar’s name, school, address in West London and information about his wireless internet.

Upon handing this information over to the police, they raided Mr Khalilfar’s flat and recovered the laptop. The suspect has since been arrested and the items recovered.