question re. credit card fraud and law enforcement

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Say someone buys, with some else's debit card, stuff from an online store while on the countryside on the Dominican republic, while using an Ipad. Could a computer person track down where the purchase was made from?

They probably could if they wanted to but credit card/identity fraud is not a high priority for the FBI because it is not a high priority with the banks. The banks either screw over the merchants by doing a chargeback or the customer by hounding them for the money so much that eventually they pay just to stop the waste of time and effort.

why, planning something?

Its for a story I am writing.

I applaud you for wanting to be accurate/do your homework. Many people choose to Handwave such details and hope no one will notice.

If you would like to do some research of your own on this matter, take a look at this:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate ... ollarcrime

Good luck with your story!

Short answer...yes.

Long answer...not bloody likely.

To do what you propose, you would have to trace the IP address of where the sale was made from. This can be done because many merchants (who often bear the loss in fraud cases) log IP addresses when the sale is made.

The problem is that it's too easy to surf via proxies so that the IP address that is logged does not reflect where the person ordered from. SPAM e-mail is a perfect example of this...often done via proxies and dummy IP addresses.

Now, assuming the IP address is correct, it will, at most, log the general region where the contact came from. That might narrow it to an island, town, region of a state, etc. Even if it's more precice, any wireless device using a public WiFi hotspot would frustrate finding the real point of origin.

From there, you need some information that identifies which computer it came from. This is something an IP address will not tell you. It is possible to trace the actual data packets, but we're talking about a level of technology only the NSA/CIA has easy access to.

At most, the merchant might have cookie data identifying the buyer's PC, but any smart criminal would use (based on your scenario), an iPad bought with cash, registered (if needed to use it) with a generic fake identity and it would contain no personal details that would trace the crime back to the perpetrator.

Now, criminals do make mistakes all the time...or at least don't plan crimes out as much as they should. However, you can see that the average PD does not have the time or resources to investigate Internet crimes. Most times, they use the easy stuff to trace the crimes to a common place, get a tip, search the house, seize the computer then run software that pulls off the HDD data that proves it was the source. However, the gap from IP address to getting a warrant is fairly sizable. Since most ID fraud schemes have the ill-gotten goods shipped to the perp or his friends and family, you can see how it's easier to trace the goods than to trace the electronic trail.

I'm sure someone even more knowledgeable can tell you more.