Gmail email user pretending to be a Lawyer - needs to be traced.

[compcowboy]

I`m an IT professional and a very close friend of mine has been setup by a deadbeat. This guy has a past of setting people up and then settling out of court in short, I'm not at liberty to disclose some information since I signed a non disclosure with my friend’s lawyer, but here is the bottom line.

Back on December 23rd, 2008, my friend got two emails from someone claiming to be a Lawyer by the name of Ron Grindle with a Gmail account no less. :-) In the email he offered an out of court settlement of $10,000 with a deadline of Christmas day and implying as this joker’s lawyer if he did not settle for this amount he would go for $100.000. Three days later Mr. Grindle sent another email extending the deadline to December 31 st. 2008.

I suggested to my friend to forward these emails to his lawyer and I would meet with his lawyer to discuss. Well it gets better. My friend’s lawyer emails Mr. Grindle and about 4 hours later, gets an email from Mr. Grindle`s client stating he has fired him. LMAO!!! In fact he stated he had very little information on HIS LAWYER including NO PHONE number, since he only correcsponded to him by email. lmao!!!

This guy needs to GO DOWN since there is no Ron Grindle practising law in Canada. Unfortunately, Gmail does not include header information showing the originating address, so I`m unable to track this sucker! I do have the IP of the address he used to reply to my friend’s lawyer using a hotmail account, so now I would like to be able this email came from a local address also.

Can anyone help me out with this and be able to trace these gmails If it means installing a program or using a different email client, we have one shot at replying to this Moron, so whatever it takes, if there is an option, I`d love to hear about it.

Below is the header info from the Gmail with personal information removed.

<Received: from spooler by vxn.ca (Mercury/32 v4.61); 23 Dec 2008 18:40:51 -0600
X-Envelope-To: <jason@>
X-SPAMWALL: Passed through antiSPAM test by SpamHalter 4.4.0 on vxn.ca (728)
X-SPAMWALL: probability - 0.0%
Return-path: <grindle.law@gmail.com>
Received: from ag-out-0708.google.com (72.14.246.249) by mail.vxn.ca (Mercury/32 v4.61) with ESMTP ID MG01125F;
23 Dec 2008 18:40:45 -0600
Received: by ag-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id 31so2798744agc.0
for <jason@domainremoved.com>; Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:40:16 -0800 (PST)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to
:subject:mime-version:content-type;
bh=scdJN7diXs4hGT0bd/VCNpvXzVqktf1JVxlX5SJFya4=;
b=yEbT8vV/gV8pTYozO9IwclTMcrBM8xhB2c3tkBAUETy1IYXu8pEvwzenhk 4fBaGZnG
oZKt7STczNKXkP53NpU/imQnX+8fEWzDPHDSYqZyCGIJ9XPrt/8KkKXIAxz+MYk4dXsC
CZR3zj/0tVH2GqpgwUMCthFSBLLqr64YGXf5w=
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type;
b=Xax0OM4ksGdDDRF6+GOXhENhUZypRCDARNcsuykCm76Gvwgs 2D135tSU4W2x8v1bX4
32auyKsH+sJ9beKtCzCBYHIwpHU0uau2l46H1eLJQQ8LkletIE ZT2qSu7a4FuOcWDNfS
QoiAtBwwmAAPp2tXjH8r3rOypJFJDUL5lAwLY=
Received: by 10.151.143.3 with SMTP id v3mr9954459ybn.61.1230079215759;
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:40:15 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.150.58.7 with HTTP; Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:40:15 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <379924720812231640n65f5e9b5y334164d0e7634825@mail .gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:40:15 -0600
From: "Ron Grindle" <grindle.law@gmail.com>
To: jason@
Subject: Personal Injury Compensation
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_Part_25580_15306215.1230079215752"

Thanks in advance for any input in this matter. :-)

Russ

[AboveTheLogic]

I don't think tracking him down is possible with the information you provided.

Local IP is almost worthless... unless you can figure out what his local network is and contact the admin (which is going to be extremely difficult).

The best thing you can hope for is to keep emailing him back and forth and hope he happens to send from an email client or cell phone or something, and maybe you will get some more info that way.

That's all I can think of...

[compcowboy]

There are really only two provider's where he lives so if I can get a wan IP I can get the rest from his ISP.

I was hoping there was even a program I could email him with that when he replied from Gmail I would have more info to work with then what Gmail sends back.

[wimiadmin]

Gmail is a double edged sword. For cases like this, it would be nice if they gave the public IP the user was connecting from. On the other hand, in the interest of privacy, it's good they don't give the public IP.

It would probably be a lot of trouble, but you could try contacting Google through your attorney with the attached header. Perhaps they have their log files that far back and can tell you the public IP. I wouldn't hold my breath though. Unless you get a court order forcing Google to hand over the information, I doubt they'll be very cooperative. It might be your only shot though.

[compcowboy]

Yes I do agree. It's definately protects the bad guys but also protects users against abuse.

I'm in the process now of trying to find out what can be done.

In my job I'm usually fighting off "hackers" and now I could almost use one to help out my buddy.

If he is found guilty in "any" form, even a slap on hte wrists it will affect his business since he must cross the border. :-( Got to love the justice system. :-)

Thanks for your help guys. :-)

[compcowboy]

I posted this to Gmail today. Not that they will give a damm, but I'm hoping they may think about what they are doing. :-)

I am an IT Professional and have a close friend being targeted by a Gmail account. Unfortunately, your policy of not including the originating IP in the mail header is protecting the person sending and not allowing me to tracce this individual.

As an IT professional, I understand Google protecting the privacy of individuals, but you are also giving harbour to criminals.

I would suggest Gmail at least have an area to submit requests for further information with documented proof, or at least a set procedure in place for these cases.

I may be reached at ... if someone so wishes to.

[wimiadmin]

Well put. I'm interested to see what their response is. I'm sure in their Terms Of Service, they say somewhere they Google accepts no liability...blah...blah....blah, but as much data as they track and use to make their search and advertising engines the best, I'd bet they've got the log files.

[moderndogs]

If the legal route doesn't work I might recommend scambaiting - pretending to be a potential victim in order to elicit some type of contact information. Doing a google search for scambaiting will result in some interesting information. Most scambaiting that I know of involved getting the scammers to waste their time so that they have less time to trick others, but if you found this person's contact information you may have some method of actual prosecution if the person is based in Canada. Good luck!

[compcowboy]

Hmmm. Interesting, but I'm guessing this guy only used this account for this purpose and maybe has even deleted the account, and you know how the courts can be. :-)

Still no reply from Google and I would be shocked if someone replies. :-) They will have logs, but they seem to have found a nice niche to work. :-)